Since postponing our spring production, we’ve been on the COVID merry-go-guessing-round: safe performances, safe rehearsals, indoors, outdoors, streaming, waiting, watching. Our show is election sensitive. It’s time.
Originally entitled THE OTHER, this is a companion piece to 2019’s DIFFERENT. Both are improvisations where fearless performers fly without a net held aloft by an invisible structure of physical and vocal ‘prompts’ along with stories they know but have not memorized.
FROM DIFFERENT, 2019
“Theater Grottesco’s ensemble of six women telling a story through movement and sound simply takes your breath away...” - Audience Member “I’ve spent a lifetime looking for avant-garde work that offers new possibilities for seeing and thinking. Early modern painters and composers did that. So did the 50’s Happenings and the postmodern choreographers. Grottesco is doing it with each performance of DIFFERENT.” - Audience Member
Heavy breathing and beautiful single-note songs somehow transport the audience to the fields of France through some uncanny collective consciousness.” - Charlotte Jusinski, The Santa Fe Reporter
DIFFERENT delved into the world of Greek Tragedy. Buffoonery is the opposite. As Tragedy speaks to the Gods, Buffoonery speaks to the devil. Buffoonery is inspired by medieval leper colonies and ships of fools, where those who were different were cast out. Legend has it they found each other one by one in the forests or on waterways, where they formed their own strange societies, reflections of our own. These people have nothing to lose. They are the King’s Fools, the only ones permitted to speak truth to power. Of course, if they go too far it could be fatal. THE OTHER celebrates a family of Buffoons summoned to entertain the King’s Court. They’ve dusted off their best rags and polished little tricks and songs. Each has a fairy tale to tell (none of which are completed in their roundabout logic. Then finally, they arrive at a shared tale calledTHE KING WITHOUT A KINGDOM,told in exquisite detail. This is why they've agreed to appear.
Our new title isTHE KING WITHOUT A KINGDOM. Each buffoon will tape themselves in the safety of their own homes. The timeless or medieval buffoons are now pandemic isolators who have spent a little too much time alone. They will shorten their introductions and get right to the shared story. Our longtime video collaborators at Lightningwood Productions will edit the 6 versions into a piece which we will stream online in early October. This will be the craziest stream you’ve ever seen. Information will be available soon on this website for viewing.
