PIONEERS#goforth / COMPOSER

by william burke

March 24 - April 9, 2016

​After turning JACK into a canine kennel for 2015’s Comfort Dogs, and dramatizing the plight of a Times Square Elmo in Furry (JACK, 2013), theater-maker William Burke returns to our venue with an audacious framework for his mystical texts.  In PIONEERS#goforth, Burke suspends actors Nikki Calonge, Zoë Geltman and Ugo Chukwu in a net above the audience for a play about making choices and the limitations placed on the experimental nature of our young. Composer/musician Catherine Brookman will provide live underscoring, employing her technical wizardry and ethereal voice.

With set designer Carolyn Mraz inverting the space, the audience views the performance from below, basking in beautiful, uninhibited youth and trying to balance the harmonies of the outdoors and the clanging silence of the indoors.  This is a youth play. With a middle finger.

Featuring Nikki Calonge, Zoë Geltman and Ugo Chukwu.

Designed by Carolyn Mraz

Live music composed and performed by Catherine Brookman

Lights by Megan Lang

Costumes designed by Alice Tavener

Produced by John Del Gaudio

Press:

https://www.culturebot.org/2016/03/25640/alive-as-fuck-pioneersgoforth-at-jack/

“We see a huge net, hanging above us, watching us. JACK’s perimeter begins to rumble with the war chants of a fearless ensemble. Then there is that voice, Catherine Brookman’s voice, which has always sounded to me like it’s harnessing the metaphysical forces of a hundred sinners in some holy service in the center of America. From behind us, she propels the rumbling and the chanting onward”.