What is Living Without…

That’s right, our title is a sentence fragment.

That is, it’s a sentence that should be whole, but isn’t.

                            Something is missing, or left out.

Maybe it hasn’t arrived yet.

Maybe that whole sentence is just broken, and the fragment is all that is left.

Like our title sentence, our inaugural season focuses on things fragmented; on living, on great dystopian worlds and on terribly dysfunctional minds.

Our season takes us from a world without death to a world of transformation and finally to a world seeking to live forever.  As we undertake this transformation, our company continues its birthing process.  In our last two years of operations, we have dealt with a fringe-sized budget.  Which is why our first announcement is how we cannot be living without…

Our Kickstarter!

We have decided to launch our Kickstarter on Wednesday, December 19th.  We are boldly going where we, personally and professionally, have never gone before, and are attempting to raise $10,000 for our first three-show season.

We’ve tossed around a number of great ways to make this fundraiser fun for donors, including tantalizing promotional videos, artistic and creative rewards for donors, and milestone rewards as part of our fundraiser project.  And, possibly as a bonus, a certain kind of challenge may be undertaken.  You’ll have to follow our Kickstart to find out about it, but…

who knows?

If you believe in theatre that  breaks down the barriers between performer and audience, if you believe in introspection, discussion and catharsis, then take a look at what to have to offer.  If you can’t live without seeing fresh theatre, if you can’t live without discussing great issues, if you are constantly searching for catharsis, then you should catch our season, which asks:

what is living without…

…Dying

We begin with a workshop of A Bid to Save the World by Erin Marie Bregman.  In her dystopian fiction, several stories intermingle in a world without death. A pair of students study how it used to happen, one woman longs for love lost, and a song great sorrow and beauty is sung and sung again by a singer out of place and time.  Death peels oranges that whittle away her thumbs, bargaining and bartering with the lost and bereaved.  A rich man seeks to buy world peace.  Librarians stack cards recording death.  And while we watch the normality of their immortality, we may find ourselves asking, ‘what is living without death?’

A Bid to Save the World is a workshop set to run March 25-Apr 1, with a performance at the end of the workshop.  Location is TBA.

…Deities

Our second show is Apotheosis, Jon Jon Johnson’s brainchild, performed as part of the Capital Fringe Festival.  Apotheosis means “the glorification of a subject to divine levels”, and this works aims to use art to make five subjects sacred and divine.

A collaborative project dealing with multidisciplinary artists mixing poetry, music, movement, dance and theatre, Apotheosis explores what it is to live without…

~Eroticism

~Brutality

~Addiction

~Ecstasy

~Depression

Avalanche will host a collective of artists creating original works (poems, music, scenes, movement vignettes, etc), that take the aforementioned themes and deify them.

This production proposal has been submitted to the Capital Fringe Festival, but dates and times are both still TBA.  Look for Apotheosis mid-July.

…Humanity

Our final production is The Immortal Jellyfish by Keegan Cassady.  While A Bid focuses on a world without death and Apotheosis deals with deification, Jellyfish turns to science to reexamine ancient mythology.  This short play takes the Gilgamesh myth and Darwinism and throws them in the face of human relationships. Will and Tara sell genetic modification to the rich and famous.  When Will meets Kid and makes a new best friend, jealousies erupt and transgressions are made.  Kid’s death sends Will spiraling into madness, turning his science from a business to an all-consuming quest to live forever.  As Tara tries desperately to save her partner, Kid is transformed into something both more and less than human.

The Immortal Jellyfish will perform in either October or November of 2013, location TBA.  In the meantime, a workshop session of the play is planned for January 24-30 of 2013.

That’s our season, folks!  More announcements to come as we settle on dates and places.

rumble rumble,

Avalanche Theatre Company