2014 FURY Factory Festival to Kick Off July 6
By: BWW News Desk Jun. 20, 2014
FoolsFURY, "one of the brightest stars of the San Francisco experimental theater scene" (San Francisco Arts Monthly), is pleased to announce the program for the fifth FURY Factory festival of ensemble theater, July 6 - 20, 2014.
Since its inception in 2005, FURY Factory has presented the works of more than 60 companies from around the the U.S. and beyond, working in devised or collaboratively created theater. Initiated by foolsFURY Founder and Co-Artistic Director Ben Yalom in an effort to foster a sense of community and share ideas within the disparate world of ensemble theater, the festival has evolved to encompass a series of "main stage" performances and a series of works in progress.
This year's festival presents 9 main stage shows -- including three world premieres, one West Coast premiere and two Bay Area premieres -- and 15 works in progress. Packed into two weeks, the festival will occupy the Mission district's Project Artaud arts complex comprising Z Space, Z Below, the Joe Goode Annex and Theatre of Yugen's NOHspace.
The artists performing main stage works represent the metropolitan areas of San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York, and showcase the great breadth of ensemble theater in America, with shows ranging from technology driven avant-garde improvisation, to exuberant clowning, to work focused on social justice and community empowerment.
FoolsFURY is proud to present the following ensembles making their FURY Factory debut: Dzieci Theatre, Epic Frame, Post Natyam Collective, Teatro Luna, The Imaginists, The Submarine Show and WaxFactory. Returning ensembles include Dandelion Dancetheater and past festival standout Under The Table.
FURY Factory brings a significant focus on works in progress, which is uncommon in the ensemble and devised theater fields. The festival "provides a rare opportunity for new work to gain critical feedback through performance and audience engagement," says foolsFURY Co-Artistic Director Debórah Eliezer. "And it's great for audiences who get to see multiple artists' creations for a single ticket price."
FURY Factory's works in progress series features 14 ensembles from the metropolitan areas of San Francisco; Los Angeles; Atlanta, Georgia; and Austin, Texas. Of these 16 groups, five will make their Bay Area debut: Danielle Deadwyler, Estela Garcia, Hungry Bird Theater, Opal Street Dance Improvisation Theater and The Defenestrators. And six more will make their festival debut: Antic in a Drain, Bad Unkl Sista, The Illuminated Theater, The Real Kim Harmon Performance Collective and Theater Plastique. Returning groups include local favorites Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Killing My Lobster and Ragged Wing in addition to foolsFURY.
One final addition to the list of works in progress participants is a group from the University of Chichester / CIIS 2014 Performance Making Intensive. In a free performance on Sunday, July 6, the group will perform Unfinished Business 2014 (Bay Area Edition) followed by drinks and conversation. In addition to the festival's main stage and works in progress series, FURY Factory is delighted to offer a number of performance workshops open to professionals and the general public alike, pre- and post-show conversations with the artists, and a one-day convening to discuss the relationship of Bay Area theater to the national and international theater scenes. More information will be available later this spring.
Tickets for FURY Factory are $16 for single shows, with discounts for packages of three or more performances. Individuals may purchase tickets online at zspace.org, or by calling 866-811-4111.
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MAIN STAGE PERFORMANCES: DANDELION DANCETHEATER San Francisco-based Dandelion Dancetheater performs the world premiere of Tongues and Gather. Tongues, written by Sam Shepard and Joe Chaikin, is reinvented by Dandelion Artistic Director Eric Kupers as a confrontation with death. Using birth as a connecting point,Gather draws from many cultural traditions of gathering together to celebrate with dance and music, with an original score composed by former Sweet Honey in the Rock vocalist Ysaye M. Barnwell. DZIECI THEATRE Brooklyn-based Dzieci (Polish for "children") is an ensemble in search of the sacred through the medium of theater. Using techniques drawn variously from Grotowski and the Polish Theater Laboratory, Eugenio Barba, Peter Brook, Native American and East Asian rituals, and an ethic based in humanistic psychology, Dzieci aims to create a theater that is as equally engaged with personal transformation as it is with public presentation. For FURY Factory, they will perform Makbet, a ritualized, Gypsy version of Shakespeare's Macbeth. EPIC FRAME Epic Frame, based in New York, is the team of Angella Santillo, Lillian Meredith and Kevin Brouder. Performing for FURY Factory in their first project ever, Epic Frame presents the world premiere of The Unfelt Wonder about a woman who has never been touched. A dark comedy, The Unfelt Wonder follows the woman's attempt to escape the lifelong scientific experiment that has denied her physical contact with objects, people and even herself. POST NATYAM COLLECTIVE The Post Natyam Collective is a transnational, web-based coalition of women artists who creatively and critically engage South Asian dance. Members of the collective are as far-flung as Munich, Los Angeles and Kansas City. For FURY Factory, they will perform Super Ruwaxi: Origins about The Good Little Confucian Girl who discovers her super-identity as the Hairy Arm-Pitted Feminist, armed with magical gender-bending body odor that can change the course of patriarchal oppression. Super Ruwaxi: Origins mashes together theater, multimedia and contemporary Indian dance to create a live comic-book story about queerness, coming of age and the immigrant experience. TEATRO LUNA El Teatro Luna is Chicago's first and only all-Latina theater, founded for the purpose of exploring the varied experiences and cultures of Latina women. For FURY Factory the ensemble will perform Generation Sex, about the intersection of technology and romance, and what we find titillating in a digital world. From "sexting" to Skype to online dating, the Ladies of Luna guide us through stories of finding love and satisfaction. THE IMAGINISTS Led by Brent Lindsay and Amy Pinto, The Imaginists is an ensemble based in Santa Rosa, California. For FURY Factory they remount a work titled The Party, dramatizing a ritual re-enactment of The Story told annually on the longest night of the year, and taking place on, under and around a table. The characters include a soldier, a widower, a motherless child, a seer, a servant, a host and an uninvited guest. Together they recreate The Story as they have done for years. THE SUBMARINE SHOW Two men crash their submarine on the bottom of the sea, and must find their way to safety amid a landscape of strange fish, birds and monsters vividly sculpted from nothing. Created by Emmy Award-winning actor Slater Penney and former Cirque Du Soleil performer Jaron Hollander, The Submarine Show has received rave reviews since its premiere in 2011."These guys are not only good but perfectly matched... a must-see" (Robert Hurwitt, San Francisco Chronicle). UNDER THE TABLE Under the Table, based in Brooklyn, is known for their family-friendly and comedic brand of physical theater. For this year's FURY Factory, they present the Bay Area premiere of The Hunchbacks of Notre Dame, starring the Hunchinson Family Players, a theater troupe of hunchbacked siblings hoping to turn their luck around. Paul has artistic vision. Johann has merchandise. Hilda has room in her bed. Hugo's classic gets the production it never deserved in this eccentric comedy. This is "brilliant physical comedy," writes the Edmonton Journal. WAXFACTORY Since its formation in 1998, WaxFactory has been one of the most internationally active multidisciplinary groups to emerge from the New York downtown scene, creating installation, film and video works featuring physical performance, audio-visual, architectural and fashion design, and an integrated use of new media and technology. For FURY Factory, they will perform a work titled #aspellforfainting. Using 19th-century French neurologist Jean-Marie Charcot's Tuesday Night Lectures at the Salpêtrière hospital and his calculated provocation of "hysterical performance" among the female inmates as a leaping-off point, WaxFactory traces the lines of fainting, hallucination, delusion and love letters that run through the source material. Combining disparate musical selections and sounds, video animations and a multitude of objects, #aspellforfainting vividly celebrates the live, raw neurosis of being a performer. |
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RAW MATERIALS: RAW MATERIALS PROGRAM #1 July 8 - 9 Antic in a Drain, The Greatest Monkey Show On Earth A Monkey, a cage, a pole, an audience. The Greatest Monkey Show on Earth is a solo show that explores the themes of captivity and freedom through character-driven, audience-interactive clown and buffoon comedy along with acrobatics and the circus apparatus Chinese pole. Estela Garcia, Remedios Varo: La Alquimista (The Alchemist) Estela Garcia takes us on an intimate journey into the surreal in Remedios Varos, La Alquimista. Remedios Varo was born in the 1900s in Spain, she was pushed out of Europe and into Mexico during WWII where she created a career and a life for herself, becoming a prominent surreal painter. The Illuminated Theater, One Man Show: Being a Man in America Today What does it mean to be a man today? Created through interviews, autobiographical experience and physical theater, One Man Show takes the audience on a journey into the male psyche. RAW MATERIALS PROGRAM #2 July 10 - 11 foolsFURY, Baden Powell Wars An irreverent exploration of the man who ignited the Boy Scout craze, Baden-Powell Wars mashes up the frontal cortex and down the khaki shorts of the Boer War hero turned world leader of young men who may have had feelings for the African chief he put to death. Danielle Deadwyler, (dis)possessed: the live mix tape Channeling the funk of southern musical pioneers like Outkast and Joi, (dis)possessed is a stream of consciousness mix tape listening party. Music, movement, sonic play, video installation and lyrical monologues address the presentation of the black female body in popular culture through the voices of three female characters: an Emcee, a youthful girl and a wayward streetwalker. Killing My Lobster, Killing My Lobster Takes it All Off Killing My Lobster has been San Francisco's premier sketch comedy monster for 17 years, and now that they're angsty teenagers, they're shedding every possible frill and letting it all hang out. It's hot buttered Lobsters like you've never seen before. What will they do without giant burrito costumes, glow-in-the-dark robot suits and mile-high red wigs? RAW MATERIALS PROGRAM #3 July 14 - 15 Hungry Bird Theater, Get No Place Fast In Get No Place Fast the seedy underbelly of vaudeville meets the poetic storytelling of Cormac McCarthy. This imaginative acrobatic tragicomedy explores guilt, consequence, loss and adaptability in the wake of large-scale catastrophe. Opal Street Dance Improvisation Theater, A Portrait of Expression A seemingly still tableau evolves slowly through an improvisational performance. Is there an objective knowledge? What authorities do we rely upon for assurance? What will we remember? Theater Plastique, Emily Dickinson OUTER SPACE! Emily Dickinson OUTER SPACE! explores the poetic spirit of America as epitomized by one of our most acclaimed poets. It is an incantation that seeks to contain life without undoing its mystery. RAW MATERIALS PROGRAM #4 July 15 - 16 Bad Unkl Sista, The Space Between Bad Unkl Sista is a performance installation ensemble that fuses Butoh-inspired choreography, improvised music, couture costuming, and physical theater elements while producing site-specific experiences that seek to move each witness to a state of extraordinary and memorable being. The Space Between is a work in progress which focuses on the membrane of energy between bodies and the dynamic intersection of touch and stillness. Kim Harmon, it/self Fueled by over two years of responses to the question, "What are you afraid of?" and armed with heartbreak and hilarity, it/self explores that dangerous place where authenticity meets artistry on a darkly whimsical tour through the small and large things that scare us the most. Ragged Wing Ensemble, How to Ripen How to Ripen dramatizes the lives of give women in a dance class. What are the invisible connections that brought them to class? How does the repetition that builds our lives - in bed, in the kitchen, in dance class - create desperation or occasionally release? RAW MATERIALS PROGRAM #5 July 17, 19 The Defenestrators, La Fenêtre (The Window) Upon accident, three clowns find themselves employed by the god of security, Securitas. In a world filled with hooligans and mischief-makers our three heroes must complete their mission to install security alarms throughout the universe. La Fenêtre is physical comedy with high-stakes adventure. Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Private Life and The Line of Beauty How do we treat soldiers coming home? What do we fight for in our own lives? This is a jumping off point for examining intimate relationships and exploring ways in which one's actions and beliefs can encompass conflicting points of view. These are selected studies in preparation for a December 2014 premiere at ODC Theater. The Line of Beauty begins with an exploration of the senses, moving on to an examination of the so-called "line of beauty", an important feature of Hogarth's 18th-century theory of aesthetics. The Line of Beauty is ultimately a story about the human body. foolsFURY, The Seeing Place What is our relationship to tragedy? Who decides the rules of justice? The Seeing Place explores the startling connection between the Greek figure of Antigone and the real-life Martha Mullen, who was instrumental in burying the alleged Boston Bomber Tamarlan Tsarnaev. Each of these women challenged social norms in the name of justice. |
| ABOUT FOOLSFURY: FoolsFURY, founded in 1998 by Co-Artistic Director Ben Yalom, is a physically oriented theater ensemble based in San Francisco. Under Yalom's leadership, foolsFURY has been hailed as San Francisco's "Best Theater Company" (SF Weekly), "one of the brightest stars of the San Francisco experimental theater scene" (San Francisco Arts Monthly) and awarded the Goldie award for theater by the San Francisco Bay Guardian. FoolsFURY strives to innovate constantly, focusing on inspired uses of the body in creating narrative, and offering visceral experiences for audiences that cannot be replicated on film or television. In addition to creating and touring new works, foolsFURY produces FURY Factory, a festival of ensemble theater presenting diverse works from companies across the U.S. For more information, visit foolsFURY.org. |
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