Stolen Chair launches its 8th season with a workshop presentation of its 13th original work, developed in conjunction with America’s first Community Supported Theatre:
Quantum Poetics: A Science Experiment for the Stage
June 11-13, 2010
“Scrappy”-American Theatre “Endearingly eclectic” -Village Voice “Inventive” -TimeOut NY “Smashes genres in an aesthetic supercollider” -NY Press
Laboratory theatre meets laboratory science in Kiran Rikhye’s latest “unholy hybrid,” Quantum Poetics: A Science Experiment for the Stage. Directed by Jon Stancato, the one-weekend workshop production runs June 11-13 at the Connelly Theatre.
Quantum Poetics is a mind-bending science experiment for the stage. Setting out to prove the existence of his creations, God, a god, enlists the support of a quantum physicist, a 19th century children’s book author, a 13th century mystic nun, a 16th century alchemist, a 7-year old girl, and, stepping straight from the pages of a storybook (or movie musical), Lancelot and Guinevere, taking the audience on a time-travelling adventure through the multiverse. Impossible paradoxes and cognitive dissonance abound in this Escher-esque philosophical romp.
The production stars returning Stolen Chair veterans David Berent, Liz Eckert, Liza Wade Green (Gemini Collisionworks’ George Bataille’s Bathrobe), Chris Hale, Timothy McCown Reynolds (Untiled Theatre #61’s Rudolf II), and Noah Schultz, welcoming Sarah Engelke (Banana Bag & Bodice’s Sandwich) and Miriam Lipner, with production design by David Bengali. The production was made possible, in part, by the Nancy Quinn Fund and public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts. It was created in Stolen Chair’s Community Supported Theatre (CST). Drawing inspiration from Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), Stolen Chair’s pilot CST brought theatre-goers into the studio with theatre-makers each month for the entire development process, offering work-in-progress sharings of Quantum Poetics paired with thematically linked cultural activities, like an intimate talk with quantum physicist Gabriel Cwilich, a screening with science cartoonist Odd Todd, and the science-themed Atoms & Eves Valentine’s party. The CST is made possible by The Field’s Economic Revitalization for Performing Artists (ERPA) program, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation’s 2008 Cultural Innovation Fund
Named “Best Genre-Bending Theatre” by New York Press, Stolen Chair is a theatre laboratory dedicated to the creation of playfully intellectual, wickedly irreverent, and exuberantly athletic original works. Since its inception in 2002, Stolen Chair has created 13 critically-acclaimed original works including the absurdist noir Kill Me Like You Mean It, the Weimar child’s-play cabaret Kinderspiel, and the vaudevillian memento-mori, Theatre is Dead and So Are You.
Quantum Poetics runs Jun 11-13, Friday & Saturday at 8pm and Sunday at 6pm, with a free post- show panel with the company, science journalists, and physicists following the Saturday performance. The Connelly Theater is located at 220 East 4th Street, accessible from the F at 2nd Ave-Houston St or the 6 at Bleeker. Free wine at all performances.
Tickets are $12, available at 1-800-838-3006 or www.stolenchair.org
