Who Do You Think You Are

In the tradition of earlier SITI pieces such as The Medium, Going Going Gone and Cabin Pressure, will be a theater “essay.”  Like the earlier plays where the company explored themes that fascinate us, we will devise Who Do You Think You Are collectively. Marshall McLuhan served as the anchor for The Medium a play that investigated how cutting edge technologies such as the computer, television and the Internet are effecting who we are becoming. Going Going Gone examined recent breakthroughs in Quantum and Astral Physics as a source for gaining insight into perception, relationships and life itself.  The audience-actor relationship formed the foundation of our exploration in the creation of Cabin Pressure.  And now we turn to the quickening field of neurology and brain science to further explore the human experience. 

Who Do You Think You Are will premiere March 1, 2008 at ASU Gammage. More info here.

American Museum Cycle

A quartet of plays that investigates American culture through the lens of its visionary visual artists. Currently two of the four plays are completed and in repertory: bobrauschenbergamerica and Hotel Cassiopeia. The final two plays in development are Under Construction and Soot and Spit.

Under Construction is inspired by American life over the past fifty years - by the spirit of Norman Rockwell's paintings for the old Saturday Evening Post and by the pandemonius art installations and performance art of today, by movies and short stories and songs and dances and moments of daily life. This Piece puts on stage America as it is and always has been: a nation forever unfinished and under construction.

Soot and Spit is based on the extraordinary life and art of outsider artist James Castle. As SITI’s first ever folk musical, it is the sort of piece Castle himself might have made if he had been a theater-maker instead of a visual artist. In the construction of Soot and Spit we will study the American folk tradition, not only in the musical forms, but also the folk dance culture. Our hope is that the experience of seeing Soot and Spit will be joyful, touching, tender and novel for diverse audiences everywhere.

Reunion

Reunion is about eight aging, negative, still angry Group Theater people who are reunited for a public symposium to discuss the story of the Group Theater in the 1930s. They come on stage for this conference barely speaking to one another, grumpy and ill-mannered and then slowly, through their reminiscences and interactions, they rediscover the old juice, love, hope, political engagement, and suddenly find themselves in the midst of a Clifford Odets play. The alchemy of their co-presence conjures the past. What begins as a very pedestrian event turns poetic and transformative. This piece was workshopped a the White Oak Dance Center in May 2003.