FURY Factory Festival Of Ensemble And Devised Theater Returns This July

FoolsFURY Theater Company, "one of the brightest stars of the San Francisco experimental theater scene" (SF/Arts), has announced the program for the seventh FURY Factory Festival of Ensemble and Devised Theater, July 10 - 22, 2018.

Since 2005, FURY Factory has made the San Francisco Bay Area a national hub for devised theater, presenting a cross-section of the field with works by more than 90 companies from around the U.S. and beyond. Initiated by foolsFURY Founder and Co-Artistic Director Ben Yalom, the festival has evolved to encompass a series of Main Stage performances and a series of works-in-progress or "Raw Materials."
This year's festival presents 12 main stage shows - including two world premieres, two West Coast premieres and three Bay Area premieres - and nine works-in-progress.

Packed into two weeks, the festival will occupy the Mission district's Project Artaud arts complex including Z Below, the Joe Goode Annex and Theatre of Yugen's NOHspace. For the first year, the festival will also cross the Bay for presentations of two companies hosted at The Flight Deck in downtown Oakland. FURY Factory 2018 is presented in association with the Joe Goode Annex, NOHspace, The Flight Deck and Z Space.

"One of the reasons we organize a festival on this scale is to help bind our far-flung community of ensemble-based theater makers together - and in so doing to invite new collaborations between artists, " said Yalom.

"This year we're presenting companies from nine regional centers around the U.S. and Canada, with artists' personal lineages stretching even farther, from Puerto Rico to India. We're also proud to present new configurations of several artists who have performed in previous FURY Factories, artists who were inspired to strike out in new directions or to partner with artists they met through the festival."

In keeping with the original spirit of the festival, this year's FURY Factory offers no single prescription for what makes devised theater. The companies on view this July span the gamut from realism to expressionism, making creative use of puppetry and video projection, dance and circus, clowning and live music. "Above all," says Yalom, "the festival showcases the endless imagination of ensemble artists making devised theater today. There is no other festival in the U.S. that's shaped quite like this."

FURY Factory also brings a focus to the development of new works through its Raw Materials series. Because staged readings, one of the dominant development tools for mainstream theater, are often counter-productive in the making of devised works, FURY Factory "provides a rare opportunity for new work to gain critical feedback through the presentation of fully staged excerpts and post-show moderated discussions with audiences," said foolsFURY Co-Artistic Director Debórah Eliezer. "And it's great for audiences because they get to see multiple artists' creations for a single ticket price."

Each ensemble participating in the Raw Materials program will also receive the benefit of being paired with a dramaturg from the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas or LMDA. Emily DeDakis, a dramaturg and producer for Accidental Theatre in Belfast, Northern Ireland, returns this year to lead the program.

The ensembles and artists taking part this year include 13th Floor, A Host of People, Alison De La Cruz, Cynthia Ling Lee, foolsFURY, Deborah Slater Dance Theater, Felonious, Hope Mohr Dance, Human Ark, marzipanik, Naomi Stein, Pelú Theater, Pratik Motwani, RE:ACT, Sandglass Theater, Square One Collective, San Francisco Neo-Futurists, Swim Club, The STATIONS Ensemble, UMO Ensemble and Uplift Physical Theater.

In addition to the festival's main stage and Raw Materials series, FURY Factory offers public workshops by festival participants, a community engagement program joining select artists with schools and other organizations in San Francisco, as well as industry "convenings" exploring specific topics within the field of ensemble and devised theater. The first convening, "Place, Politics and Story," will take place on July 14 at 11 a.m., followed by "Queerness and Ensemble Theater," on July 21 at 4 p.m. The series concludes with "The Changing Nature of 'Live'" on July 22 at 3 p.m.

"We have always sought theatrical works that take full advantage of the 'liveness' of live performance," said Yalom. "But just what constitutes 'live' is changing. Developments in virtual and augmented reality, in transmedia storytelling, and other technologies are altering what it means to be in the same space at the same time. I am immensely interested in what we can learn from experts in these fields."

The convenings and workshops are open to professionals and the general public alike. For more information, please visit foolsFURY.org.
Single tickets for FURY Factory are $30 in advance and $35 at the door, with half-price discounts for packages of three or more shows. Students, artists and groups of five or more individuals are eligible for additional discounts. To make a purchase, please visit foolsFURY.org or call 415-685-FOOL.

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