Recent Stories with tag annex theatre

David Nixon (the meaning of life not pictured)

Occasionally, you come across a piece of art that can be enjoyed even without knowing exactly where it's headed. For me, that kind of gratification--art for art's sake--can be found in the writing of Marquez, Murakami, and Borges, Meirelles' City of God, and every single episode of Arrested Development. The Annex's new solo show by David Nixon--philosophy professor, actor, musician, artistic polymath, and member of absurdist art pop theater band "Awesome"--Center-Cut Ham Dinner Night Slide Show (Tuesdays and Wednesdays at 8 p.m. through Nov. 17th), doesn't quite reach those artistic heights, but it aims high and delivers non-stop ruminative delights, all while making comedy out of the big questions.

Take it from a doctor of philosophy: the topic at hand is nothing less that the Meaning of Life. Is it the ability to take simple pleasure in even the smallest of moments, like a cat? Can it be found in hard work, nature, family, or religion? What about the pursuit of sex, creativity, happiness, intellectualism, and/or money? The answer, of course, is yes and no to all of the above, especially since no matter what you do, or how you find your own individual meaning, you're still going to end up dead. (Spoiler alert.)

Nixon pursues these ideas through a mixture of monologues, pre-recorded music, cartoons, digital animation, and physical humor. The show's sharp and sly nature reveals itself in the details, like the homage to the Slog (the Slög). It's clear that Nixon is always thinking, and even parts of the performance that look sloppy are actually well-coordinated and choreographed to a T. The whole piece just moves, and by the time it starts to feel like it's running long, it's over. Such is life.... (more)

Everyone loves to bitch about their job. Even if you've got the best job in the world--quality control at the kitten factory--it's still essential and cathartic to find something or someone at work to complain about. (Not any of you at The SunBreak, of course. OMG, <3 u guys, j/k!!1!) Complaining about the ins and outs of a job gives you the laser-like focus you need to win those second-prize steak knives, or at least it gives you something to talk about when you're not working--whatever it takes to run out the hours. 

The Secret Lives of My Coworkers, the Annex Theatre's new late night show (running Fridays and Saturdays through Nov. 19; no show this Friday, but Saturday Nov. 6 is pay-what-you-can) keeps that all in mind, as local comedian Michele Colyn walks you through a team-building exercise in which everyone's thoughts are heard and appreciated. Yes, Powerpoint and stock photos are involved. There's a cavalcade of comedic storytellers, the roster of which switches up every night, all wearing employee badges and telling their personal tales of work woes. Don't worry, you can volunteer to share your own stories of hellish job experiences (TPS reports, office birthday parties) after the intermission.... (more)

Annex fields a large, capable cast for "Her Mother Was Imagination." (Photo: Ian Johnston/Annex Theatre)

Her Mother Was Imagination (at Annex Theatre through August 28), the dystopian satire from local playwright Elizabeth Heffron and collaborators Ellie McKay (director), Max Reichlin, and Daniel Worthington, is at war with many things, one of them being my desire to laugh all the way through the play. It's a fitfully entertaining fever dream, never settling on being either satire that leaves a mark, a timely cautionary tale about the world to come, or an affecting allegory about women's restricted choices.

At $15, you're getting more than your money's worth, except in lumbar support. The play stretches to two and a half hours so that it can fit all its targets in--Beck, LDS, eugenics, climate-change deniers, elderly patriarchs, young men who are dicks, whacked-out revolutionary feminists, subservient artists--but as the play progresses, the satirical impulse that fueled its opening number is sapped by earnestness.

From sketchy scene to scene, the energy level varies, and an unwonted sense of profanely dramatic importance grows, as if Will It Blend had tried works by Margaret Atwood and Mamet. Heffron's knack for dragooning historical figures (see Mitzi's Abortion, New Patagonia) into hilariously effective duty hasn't deserted her, but here her imported personages are made mostly of straw.

A raucous opening pageant retells how the prophet Glenn Beck (complete with mythologizing, homespun song, right out of "The Ballad of Davy Crockett") withdrew from public life as a "TV soldier" to the upper reaches of an empty high-rise (the WaMu tower, apparently). Beck's mask is on top of someone's head (none of the press materials notes who plays what role), so that when the actor's head is lowered, Beck's beady-eyed grin comes at you like a battering ram.... (more)

"When I Come To My Senses, I’m Alive" by Scotto Moore opens Friday, April 23, at Annex Theatre. Photo: Ian Johnston.

Scotto Moore, a playwright and member of the Annex Theatre company, won accolades for his 2008 original play, interlace [falling star], a sci-fi epic on Gnostic themes. Tomorrow, his new play, When I Come to My Sense, I'm Alive! opens at Annex. The SunBreak asked Moore to speak about why he brings the high-tech world of sci-fi to the low-tech world of the fringe theatre stage.

I've been a science fiction fanatic since I was a child, and I've been working in theatre about as long, so it's been pretty natural for my playwriting to veer heavily into science fiction. The last play I wrote for Annex, interlace [falling star], was an epic fusion of science fiction and fantasy, with demigods and archangels sharing the stage with lifelike robots and telepathic cops. For that show, we used abstract staging and a rich soundscape to help create an infinitely tall skyscraper in the center of the multiverse where you could imagine yourself living or working--or in the case of our heroine, Andrea Change, transforming into a being of divine wisdom.

When I started writing When I Come To My Senses, I'm Alive!, I very much wanted to tell a strictly science-fiction story, a technologically plausible (up to a point) kind of story. And I wanted to tell a story about down-to-earth characters that were very much like people I know. When I Come To My Senses, I'm Alive! focuses on the relationship between two DIY inventors, Annique and Micky, who create a method for podcasting human emotions; they develop a base of fans who download Annique's "emoticlips" and use hobby-built playback receivers to experience recorded versions of Annique's actual feelings. As the story opens, the project of "charting the emotional genome," as Annique refers to it, has started to tip past the point of simply being an engineering project, toward being more of an entertainment project—a development Micky's not too sure about.  

But the story takes its biggest sci-fi leap by presuming that introducing digital emotions to the Internet might cause botnets to attain a kind of consciousness. That led to the fun theatrical challenge of figuring out how to use actors to dramatize events happening deep within the Internet, and how to personalize a relationship between Annique and her unexpected progeny, all within a realistic presentational style. Another big challenge was striking a balance between realistic use of jargon versus overburdening the story with too much technical exposition. Even in the last week of rehearsal, I've been making cuts and edits with that in mind.... (more)

The Missoula Oblongata in "The Moon, The Raccoon, The Hot Air Balloon"

Tonight's the closing night of the Suitcase Festival at Annex, which sadly I didn't get to see any of. Infinity Live Productions arranged a killer five-week festival of great international touring theatre talent (liberally featuring the recent Stranger Genius Award-winning creators of The Cody Rivers Show). That said, this weekend was the weekend not to miss, because the two most exciting companies in the festival are performing back-to-back. The show's at 8 p.m. at Annex Theatre, 1100 E. Pike St., tickets $15 advance. However, the Missoula Oblongata (see below) has a rider that no one is turned away for inability to pay, so at the door it's a de facto pay-what-you-can.

The second act on the double-bill is Madison, Wisconsin's The Nonsense Company, with Storm Still. Set in a post-apocalyptic world, a bunch of school children trapped in the tattered remains of their school find themselves in an endless production of King Lear. I've heard great things about this company, and am sad to be missing them.

But up first is Baltimore's Missoula Oblongata. They were here at Theatre off Jackson just a couple months ago with The 50 Greatest Ladies and Gentlemen, and they kind of blew my mind. Missoula Oblongata embraces their own version of Poor Theatre: Everything they use in a show, from the lighting to the costumes to the set, is hand-made by the company and operated by the performers from the stage. This allows them to take their shows virtually anywhere, from traditional theatres to someone's backyard (which they do, in fact, do).

Their shows are a tender mix of the charmingly fantastical and painful, raw emotion. In The 50 Greatest, an entire city succumbs to tarantism, while a cowardly hero of the First World War searches for his brother. It's cute and wacky at the same time it's exploring the painful ways in which war and ideas of self-worth affect the average person. I have no idea what The Moon, The Raccoon, The Hot Air Balloon is about, but based on my last experience with Missoula Oblongata, I'm willing to wholeheartedly recommend sight-unseen.