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Pig Iron Theatre Company
World Premiere!
New Running Time:
2 hrs, 45 minutes (including intermission)
Live Arts Festival
Theater / 165 minutes
Venue
Suzanne Roberts Theatre 480 South Broad Street Philadelphia, PA 19146
“I’ve always been fascinated with this eternal struggle between imagination and death that runs through all of Shakespeare’s plays.”
Dan Rothenberg, director of Twelfth Night, or What You Will
“One of the few groups successfully taking theatre in new directions.”
The New York Times
Company Bio SHOW...
Scott Greer (Feste) is thrilled to be working with Pig Iron for the first time. He has worked for Walnut Street, 1812, Wilma, Arden, InterAct, Theatre Exile and others. Regional: Actor’s Theatre of Louisville, Round House, Cape May Stage and Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival. He has appeared as a solo vocalist with the Philadelphia Orchestra. Scott has won four Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre, including the F. Otto Haas Award for an Emerging Theatre Artist. In 2003 his co-adaptation of David Foster Wallace’s Brief Interviews with Hideous Men was produced by 1812 Productions for the Live Arts Festival, and was nominated for the Barrymore for Best New Play. Love always to Jen and Lily.
Birgit Huppuch (Olivia) grew up in Ossining, New York and for a few years spent weekends in West Philly when her mom was living there. She went to Williams College and majored in theatre, played field hockey, and had unofficial concentrations in Studio Art and Religion. She lives in NYC and has had the pleasure of working with Pig Iron before performing in ISABELLA and PAY UP . Other credits include The Foundry Theatre's production of TELEPHONE , for which she received a 2009 OBIE for Performance. Most recently she performed in PEER GYNT at La Jolla Playhouse and Kansas City Rep. Wow, her artistic vision is to keep expanding, keep challenging, keep trying, keep breathing, keep sharing in creation in community, keep playing in new and unforseen ways.
Rosie Langabeer (Composer) is no stranger to genre-defying, boundary-bewitching projects. Hailing from New Zealand Langabeer is a dab hand when it comes to interdisciplinary creative projects and is constantly seeking situations where she can put her talent and experience to good use, please feel free to send her an email if you have some cool ideas you want to talk about. Her main focus is anything to do with sound, especially designing it, recording it and performing it. She composes for ensembles of various sizes, theatre, film, circus, dance, performs on a wide range of instruments and currently plays in five bands - Russian Spy Band, Gringo Motel, Totally Super Pregnant, Tzarbomba and The Other Band. She has collaborated with Ballet X, The WILMA Theatre, Pig Iron Theatre in Philadelphia and award winning New Zealand companies Awkward Productions, Ake Ake Theatre Company, Zirkus, directors Deborah Pope, Darcy Gladwin, Briar March, Jeff Henderson and the Wellington Most Famous Orchestra. Langabeer has performed extensively throughout New Zealand including international festival performances and at the Silver Scroll Awards. Visit www.rosielangabeer..
com to listen and for contact information.
Tyler Micoleau (Lighting) has designed lighting for over 350 live productions in the last twenty years, including plays, dance, opera, multi-media performance, and puppetry. Tyler's past collaborations with Pig Iron include Isabella and Love Unpunished. In the Philadelphia area Tyler's work has appeared frequently at the Wilma Theater ( My Wonderful Day, Macbeth , Eurydice, The Life of Galileo), Curtis Opera ( The Cunning Little Vixen), Delaware Theater Company ( Mary's Wedding ) and the Prince Music Theater, garnering him three Barrymore nominations. He is also the recipient of two Village Voice OBIE awards, one for his design of the 2004 NY premiere of Tracy Letts' Bug and a 2010 award for Sustained Excellence. Tyler likes to stir the hornets' nest. He lives in Brooklyn.
Charleigh Parker (Mariah) was most recently seen as the mysterious fortune-teller Lady Jean in HBO’s Boardwalk Empire . Charleigh has also appeared in The Good Wife , All My Children and as the first female boss in Rockstar Games’ Grand Theft A
Andy Paterson (Andrew Aguecheek) finds himself in a happy place working with this company for the first time. He has been acting professionally for over 25 years across the country and in New York City (La MaMa, New York Classical Theater, Acting Company) where he has lived since coming from the West Coast in '94. He cut his teeth in Seattle (Intiman, Villiage Theater), then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area (San Francisco Mime Troupe, Utah Shakespearean Festival). He’s performed in over half of Shakespeare’s plays. Andy finds it a 'happy place' because it's the first time he's been with a group that will take the time, risk and trust it needs to put a collaborative, vital and true piece of theater like this together. A dream come true.
Amanda Robbins-Butcher (Production Stage Manager) began her stage management career at age 16 at the local children’s theater in Hudson, WI. She continued to explore the adventures of theater at St. Olaf College in Northfield, MN, under the mentorship of Gary Gisselman, earning her BA in 2005. Completely enthralled in all aspects of production, she dove into the professional theater world just after college, moving to Cambridge, MA to join Robert Woodruff at the American Repertory Theater. She has continued to further her adventure by working for Blueman Group Boston. She is thrilled to be joining Pig Iron Theater Company for this production of Twelfth Night.
Dan Rothenberg (Director) is a founding member and co-artistic director of the Pig Iron Theatre Company. Dan has directed almost all of Pig Iron's original performance works, including Poet in New York , Gentlemen Volunteers , Isabella , Pay Up, The Lucia Joyce Cabaret, and the OBIE Award-winning Hell Meets Henry Halfway and Chekhov Lizardbrain . In 2001, Dan co-directed Shut Eye with Joseph Chaikin. Other projects include creation of audio works to accompany the paintings of Alexandra Grant at MOCA in Los Angeles and ongoing collaborations with Stockholm's Teater Slava and the alt-comedy group The Berzerker Residents. In 2010, Dan directed the English-language premiere of Toshiki Okada's Enjoy for Play Company in New York. Pew Fellowship in Performance Art (2002); USA Artists Knight Fellowship (2010).
Dito van Reigersberg (Duke Orsino), originally from Washington DC, is a co-founder and co-artistic director of Pig Iron Theatre Company. He has performed in almost all of Pig Iron’s 25 productions since the company's founding in 1995, including the OBIE-winning original pieces HELL MEETS HENRY HALFWAY and CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN . A graduate of Swarthmore College, he trained at the Neighborhood Playhouse and the Martha Graham School of Contemporary Dance. He has also created and performed with Headlong Dance Theatre, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Azuka Theatre Company, and Mauckingbird Theatre Company. His alter-ego Martha Graham-Cracker is famously ‘the tallest drag queen in the world,” and her monthly cabaret series at L'Etage in Philadelphia has been running for 6 years. He is the proud co-recipient of both a Pew Fellowship and a Knight USA Fellowship with Quinn Bauriedel and Dan Rothenberg.
Sarah Sanford (Viola) acts, directs, and teaches theatre. A Pig Iron company member since 2002, she has co-created/performed in Shut Eye , The Lucia Joyce Cabaret , Hell Meets Henry Halfway , Love Unpunished , 365 Plays/365 Days , and Welcome to Yuba City . Sarah has also appeared locally at the Lantern, Wilma, Arden, Theatre Exile, BRAT Productions, and Mauckingbird, and internationally with The Riot Group, Jo Stromgren Kompani, and Volcano. Sarah’s directing work includes Makoto Hirano’s one-man show Boom Bap Tourism , an original dance theatre work entitled Appetite (winner of the Crow’s Theatr
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Photo: Photos (c) Jason Frank Rothenberg or Jacques-Jean Tiziou / www.jjtiziou.net
It’s Shakespeare, Pig Iron style.
Welcome to an uproarious world of drunkards and wine-drenched parties, depressive noblemen and dueling musicians, idiots and veteran jesters, religious zealots and erotic misunderstandings, performed to the beat of a live Balkan band. Pig Iron uses its highly physical performance style to ignite one of Shakespeare’s most wicked comedies, and infuses Shakespeare’s wordplay with an immediacy that is alive, funny, and unpredictable.
Alternately absurd and heartfelt, Twelfth Night, or What You Will is replete with practical jokes, gender confusion, and mistaken identity. Girl washes up on beach, disguises herself as boy. Girl, disguised as boy, falls in love with Duke. Woos lady on behalf of Duke. Lady falls in love with girl-disguised-as-boy. Longing ensues. As does the imbibing of enormous quantities of alcohol, plus outrageously melodramatic breakdowns to “the saddest music in the world.”
“Philly's most adventurous company.”
Philadelphia Weekly
In short: Toby Belch, gypsy-rock, eleven days, accordions, boy you look just like your sister.
Pig Iron brings a cast of familiar faces including Dito van Reigersberg, James Sugg, Sarah Sanford, Alex Torra, Birgit Huppuch (Isabella, Live Arts Festival, 2008), and Scott Greer making his Pig Iron debut. With music by Rosie Langabeer (Cankerblossom, Live Arts Festival, 2010). Previous Live Arts shows also include: Welcome to Yuba City (2009) and Pay up (2005).
Directed by Dan Rothenberg Text William Shakespeare Music Rosie Langabeer Performers Blake DeLong, Scott Greer, Birgit Huppuch, Jaime Maseda, Mark McCloughan, Michael Sean McGuinness, Charleigh Parker, Andy Paterson, Dito van Reigersberg, Sarah Sanford, James Sugg, Alex Torra
* Post-show discussion on Sept 7 moderated by Abbe Blum, professor of English literature at Swarthmore College.
** Post-show discussion on Sept 9 moderated by Nat Anderson, professor of English literature and director of the creative writing program at Swarthmore College.
Twelfth Night, or What You Will has been supported by The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage through the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the William Penn Foundation.
Photos by Dan Rothenberg and Jason Frank Rothenberg
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