CELEBRATION! BARN!
CELEBRATION BARN!
We few, we happy few, we band of mechanicians descended on South Paris, Maine on June 5th for a residency at Celebration Barn for our September show, FEED. With us were the usual suspects:
Artistic Director Becky “Fearless” Wright
Designer Maria “Zoomba” Shaplin
Stage Manager Bayla “Bay-ray-roo” Rubin
Dramaturg Jess “iron fist of UChicago” Hurley
Performer Mary “run this town” Tuomanen
Performer Tommy “Strong Arms” Choinacky
And some new recruits:
Set Designer Caitlin Lainoff
(Los Angeles resident whose set design skillz graced our 2014 show We Are Bandits)
Performer Brett Robinson
(whose recent liberation from the rigors of Pig Iron’s APT program has made her one of the most sought-after badasses in Philly Theatre, you may remember her has The Revolution in Interact’s #therevolution)
and Vernon Shapwright
(whose recent birth was heralded by this writer as “the best thing to happen to social media since Blue Ivy”)
We enjoyed cross pollinating with two other groups in residence, musician Howard Fishman’s project a star has burnt my eye (slated for BAM in November) and Brave Bucket’s amazing clown piece, Please Send This Wet Gift (coming to Philly soon, we hope!). Check out more info about the Celebration Barn Residency HERE!
As far as FEED development goes, we created characters from three different time periods, made food experiments with ingredients as disparate as mushrooms, beets, cacao, tumeric and soylent, and started to define some of the parameters of our world. Jess Hurley wrote a ritual for harvesting the food of the dead. Mary Tuomanen started conceptualizing a toxin filter made of fungus. Thomas Choinacky danced a Finnish dance and made a traditional “higge”, or “cozy place”. Brett Robinson designed a fortune-telling game to play with the Mainers who came to our final showing, who got to experience an Applied Mechanics-style show for the first time — wandering in a mysterious and beautiful environment designed by Maria and Caitlin. Our local audience was comprised of folks of all ages (as young as four) and was one of our most interactive showings yet: at every turn, the audience members could taste, smell, touch, write, or play a game with the characters. It was exciting ground work; we were sad to leave and so grateful to the Celebration Barn staff for hosting us.
FEED has its rehearsal August 3rd.
Can’t wait.
