BLOOMSBURG THEATRE ENSEMBLE

We live and work in this rural region because, in an increasingly impersonal world, we need to be in a place where dialogue with an audience is possible. The impact of our theatre upon Bloomsburg, Pennsylvania, and the surrounding region is positive and demonstrable.

The Ensemble collectively chooses our seasons of plays to provide our non-urban audience with a wide range of theatrical experiences. To investigate American life today, our theatre uses the perspectives of classic, contemporary, and original drama as well as literature of diverse cultures. It provokes questioning and it has a sense of humor. It serves to awaken the imagination and enliven the senses, open the mind and embolden the spirit. Our theatre seeks to nurture respect and compassion for others, and to foster awareness, perseverance and hope. In these ways, theatre is a tool in the evolution of the human potential for enlightenment and positive action.

We seek to demonstrate the viability of a resident ensemble of theatre artists. We are united by the responsibility we share for the artistic growth of our theatre. We strive for versatility and excellence. We seek to surprise. We support our diverse and ever-evolving individual aesthetics. We endeavor as a collective to engage in a genuine interaction with our community. We hope the home we have found here will serve as a national example, encouraging like-minded artists and communities, encouraging a larger recognition of theatre as a force for good in this world.

Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble
November 1993
BTE1@aol.com


ANNEX THEATRE

Formed in 1984 as an alternative to established, available theatre, Annex has been in its downtown Seattle space since 1987. Our mission, recently refined, reads" Annex Theatre is dedicated to creating bold, new work in an environment of improbability, resourcefulness and risk. We are best known for irreverent humor, goats on stage, big ol' musical numbers, getting naked and putting boys in dresses and girls in positions of power.

Annex Theatre, Seattle, bruce@annextheatre.org


RUDE MECHANICALS

Rude Mechanicals is a locally grown crew of patches who collectively create and produce work that plays wild, digs deep and gives back. We are a debtor's theatre, theatre for the hungry. We don't want people to just observe art, but to sit in it, drink it, smoke it, read it in the newspaper, check the weather report for it and turn around and tell the person behind them.

We believe in theatre that invites debate - that carries the potential to start fistfights or seal friendships. Our performance aesthetic is simple and impoverished, using the actor's body as the primary tool to manifest and interpret the written word. We are committed to presenting bold re-visionings of the classics and to fostering new work by local theatre artists for fearless Austin audiences.

Rude Mechanicals, Austin, TX is at rudemechs@aol.com


theater simple

Founded in 1990 by two idea-wielding actors, theater simpletons try to strip the theatrical experience down to the elemental parts: the playwright's words, the director's vision, and the elasticity of the actors' and audience's imagination. theater simple has built solid local, regional and international followings producing provacative, entertaining and original theatrical experiences. Our motto, "That which doesn't kill us makes us stronger." We will only travel with sets that will fit on a '72 VW Van (for North American tours) or in our luggage (for int'l gigs).

theater simple, Seattle, WA is at thsimple@aol.com


(parenthical)

The parenthetical theatre company is a producing collective of theatre artists dedicated to the reinvention of the theatrical experience through experimental examinations of dramatic form and structure. By allowing pieces to evolve naturally out of the ideas being explored, parenthetical's work sheds the artificial structures that have come to define the contemporary theatre and replaces them with more organic structures; form follows function, how a story is told and what the story is saying are inseperable.

The work that the parenthetical theatre company creates draws from multiple mediums including dance, music, clowning, puppetry, trapeze, video, and fiction--as well as traditional theatre. It is done in high, theatrical style--with equal parts, sharp, striking images; an innovative use of sound; and a heightened use of language--that frees the act of storytelling from the text and incorporates it into the larger theatrical whole. Parenthetical's hybrid theatrical events follow their own individual, formal logics, but they are presented in an exciting, easily accessible theatrical language.

While, in many cases, the subtext may well be the plot of a parenthetical production, the goal is to produce theatre that reaches audiences emotionally, intellectually, and sensually. Good theatre is about transformation. At the parenthetical theatre, the audience is submerged in the transformation, leaving not only affected but changed.

(parenthetical) New York, NY is at joshuafurst@hotmail.com


PECULIAR WORKS PROJECT

Since 1993, Peculiar Works Project has generated original multi-disciplinary performance, encouraging collaboration, experimentation and a rebel spirit in emerging artists by providing them with the tools and opportunities necessary to grow throughout the creative process. We often perform in non-traditional spaces because we believe unique sites impact our work, that the work in turn impacts the site, and that audiences then experience both in surprising new ways. We have taken our work directly into local communities by presenting site-specific productions in landmark buildings, gutted storefronts and other peculiar sites throughout NYC. To reach a wider audience, PWP actively seeks out collaborations with other organizations. We have presented projects in conjunction with the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, Judson Church, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, Gertrude Stein Rep, The Culture Project, CHARAS/El Bohio Community Center and the Downtown Arts Festival, among others.

Peculiar Works Project, New York, NY is at info@peculiarworks.org


FUNKOPOLIS

Funk (fungk) n. 1. A type of popular music combining elements of jazz, blues, and soul. 2. Having an earthy quality. 3. Eccentric in style or manner. 4. The music of George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic, meaning the messy, unclean, fun, fuzzy, more interesting side of reality

Polis (polis), taken from the Latin. 1. A city or urban area regarded as the center of activity. 2. A mythic gathering place for all people, where individuality is explored and recognized as the engine of creation and life.

As America and the world lurch towards the next millennium, our technocratic, media-drenched cultures have obscured and devalued the inherent unique magic of individual identity. Funkopolis is centered in creating a vital theatrical experience exploring, analyzing, and re-valuing modern identity.

As any search for identity must be driven by a clear and critical eye towards contemporary culture(s), the work of Funkopolis strives to reflect the plurality of experience in America, not simply multi-cultural, but multi-identitied. We reject the Eurocentric notions of white, male, heterosexual, class power structures and the naive notion that all people share a common "culture" or "experience" in American society. The strength, the power, the magic of America is the individual's experience, and the constant need to explore and evaluate our experience in it.

The performance style of Funkopolis is physically based and gesture-centered, utilizing a Lessac-derived expansion of the voice, a density of language, a tracking-oriented approach to production, and a detailed attention to the visual consciousness of our work in its design and technical elements. What electrifies us is the theatre experience that is larger than the frame it is contained in. Combining Mac Wellman's concept of moment-to-moment rebirthing of the theatrical experience, Susan-Lori Parks' rep and rev, and the visceral edge of performance, we seek to create a Funkopolis Universe, a hyper-reality that the theatregoer visits and returns from changed, viewing the skewed reality of the real world in very different ways.

Finally, no connection to identity is capable without community; theatre's vitality is rooted in communal discussion. The work of Funkopolis includes this essential discussive aspect in a commitment to panels, lectures, after-show audience talkbacks, sociopolitical action, and public ritual, all of which are as necessary to our efforts as the performance itself.

Funkopolis, Baltimore, Maryland is at Graciela16@aol.com


CIRCLE X THEATRE CO.

We are a not-for-profit organization formed by seven classically trained, working actors for the express purpose of providing Los Angeles with affordable, intimate and exciting ensemble theatre. For Circle X, theatre is not merely a means to a career in film and television, but rather a unique medium of communication that demands a company of artists dedicated to expanding the appeal of live performance. This mandate will be accomplished through an innovative program for the development and production of new works, a conservatory founded on the assumption that theatre skills are useful far beyond the confines of the stage and a community outreach program designed to take theatre from the stage to the streets. We are determined to helm the effort to reach and develop a new generation of theatre artists and enthusiasts in Los Angeles

Circle X Theatre Co., Los Angeles is at mabretz@cbomedia.com


THEATRE DOUBLE

Theatre is native to all cultures. The live ritual of Theatre evokes universal sentiments with immediacy and passion. Through a resident company of actors, directors, musicians, visual artists and writers based in Philadelphia and New York City, we create and produce our own theatrical works as well as assist in the creation of other new plays and provide a venue for neglected classics. Multi-culturalism, artist-centered management and innovative approaches are fundamental to our work. We are dedicated to expressing the full range of the American experience.

Theatre Double, Philadelphia and NYC is at meta4@erols.com


MOVING ARTS

Founded in 1992, Moving Arts is a theatre in the historic Silverlake district of Los Angeles. We are a company of theatre artists committed to the development and production of new plays that speak to the human condition in a fresh and startling way. This often means world premieres, occasionally by first-time playwrights. Our work is imbued with a sense of joy, passion, and fun.

We are not limited to any particular style or genre; we are confined only by the inherent truth of the material.

Moving Arts, Los Angeles is at leewochner@movingarts.org


SACRED CHAOS

Sacred Chaos Project is my attempt to heal the many micro and macroi-divisions in the world by putting theatre in the service of historical discovery and societal change: The function of the work will be to discover the origin of institutionalized inequality in society, while the forms will be dedicated to changing the consciousness that has perpetuated that inequality.

The germinal idea for this company sprang fromfrom an academic essay I wrote called: You want Fries with that?: How the Commodification of Desire Leads to the Perpetual Repression of the Populace. After reading it , everyone agreed that it was not not in fact a true academic work, but rather a twisted artistic manifesto. I pared it to its essence and came up with Sacred Chaos Project

Some foci of the company will be to explore the concord and dissonances between ritual and technology, radical discontinuity as a fact of daily life and our need for space from that reality, the political ramifications of the chaos theory paradigm, and whether the theatre can be used as a space in which to rehearse political change.

Sacred Chaos, Philadelphia is at scrdchao@nni.com


OKU COOPERATIVE THEATRE PROJECT

Oku Cooperative Theatre Project's mission is to feed the hungry.

Oku Cooperative Theatre Project, Montreal, Canada is at oku_haiku@yahoo.com


Missions, write to rat@ratconference.com

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