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Directed & Designed by
THADDEUS PHILLIPS
Music Composed & Performed by
LE CHAT LUNATIQUE
Created with
JEREMY WILHELM
MUNI KULASINGHE
TATIANA MALLARINO
CHARLOTTE FORD
Video by LARS JAN
Lights by DREW BILLIAU
Premiere:
June 28th 2007 |
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CAST |
JEREMY WILHELM |
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MELINDA MCCARTHY |
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MUNI KULASINGHE |
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THADDEUS PHILLIPS |
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MUSICIANS |
LE CHAT LUNATIQUE |
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(Muni Kulasinghe, John Sandlin, Jared Putnam, Fernando Garavito) |
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| The LUCIDITY SUITCASE INTERCONTINENTAL - PHILADELPHIA |
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The LUCIDITY SUITCASE Intercontinental is a theater creation team made up of artists from Colorado, Colombia, Iowa, New Mexico, New York & Bulgaria that with 'rough' media, documentary footage, improvisation and research to create theaterical epics and windows into not-often seen worlds.
Created works include: The Melting Bridge (2008), !El Conquistador! (2006), Red-Eye to Havre de Grace (2005), The Earth's Sharp Edge (2002), Lost Soles (2001).
Lucidity Suitcase's work has been presented at: New York Theatre Workshop, Festival de Otono (Madrid), Traverse Theatre (Scotland), 4+4 Days Festival (Prague), Mladi Levi (Ljubliana), On The Borads (Seattle), MassMoca (North Adams), Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, La MaMa & Under the Radar (New York), Arcola Theatre (London), Teatro Calderon de La Barca (Valladolid, Spain), Festival de Teatro International (Malaga, Spain), Teatro Rojos (A Coruna, Galicia), Teatro Garcia Lorca (Victora-Gastiez, Pais Vasco), Noorderzon Festival (Groningen, Holland), Dublin Intenational Fringe Festival (Ireland).
LE CHAT LUNATIQUE is quickly becoming one of the West's most sought after Gypsy/Jazz/Rock Bands. Founded in 2005, the band blends Gypsy, Western Swing and the 'Hot Club of France' Django Reinhardt style of Jazz.
LE CHAT has performed all across New Mexico, Colorado & Arizona. Ther first studio album, DEMOINC LOVELY in 2007 was nominated for 7 New Mexico Music Awards won for 'Best Song' (Miss Lady). |
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P E R F O R M A N C E...... |
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Creation
In January 2007, the Lucidity Suitcase hit the road to gather materials for a new theater work about Peak Oil, old gas stations and our future. Using hand drawn maps, they travelled along the forgotten and buried parts of Route 66 collecting artifacts, images & stories. A side trip to Las Vegas allowed Thaddeus Phillips to research the grandfather he never knew, Abe Schiller, who was an icon of the Flamingo Hotel. Thex also found a great Gypsy Jazz band in Albuquerque in a bar on Route 66, called Le Chat Lunatique.
A set based on a classic gas station was designed & though a series of improvisations and explorations, a new work was created with a team of actors and the musicians of Le Chat Lunatique.
The Show
Flamingo / Winnebago follows the story of Ageet Pradesh who travels in a Winnebago RV (Caravan) acroos the US fitted to run on fryer grease and a young man in search of his grandfather in Las Vegas. The show explores the planet's tipping point: peak oil theory and US's excessive use of energy, car culture, OnStar navigation, and old gas stations, motels and diners. Road-side attractions include: New Mexican pueblos, the Wigwam Motel, Route 66, RV parks, the Las Vegas Monorail and Korean Karaoke. |
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S E L E C T O R ' S...R E P O R T...... |
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Theatre should be the mirror of our spirit. To show us the other face of our spirit. To play with our expectations and surprise us with new revelations about ourselves and the world that surrounds us. Theatre should be other us... or other me... or in your case, since you will come to the festival - OTHER YOU! * In connection to this approach to the theatre form I selected two Czech and one American play:
Lucidity suitcase theatre from Philadelphia, USA, comes with the play FLAMINGO / WINNEBAGO, whose structure is close to the cinematographic narrative of Jim Jarmusch. A witty and painful story about the disappearance and the end of the world and a search of one's own roots will also represent its premiere in Europe.
* A play on words: the word Drugovi (Comrades) can be separated into Drugo-vi (Other-you)
 Nikola ZAVIŠIĆ |
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| Thaddeus Phillips is an actor/designer/ director/tap dancer/ with a bachelor's degree in Drama from Colorado College in 1994. He received the 1995 UNIMA-USA (International Union of Puppetry) Scholarship to study design and directing at Charles University in Prague, Czech Republic. He is the Artistic Director of The Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental, a company that makes original innovative theater based on subjects ranging from airline security to the last 7 days of Edgar Allan Poe. For Lucidity Suitcase he has designed and created Red-Eye to Havre de Grace, The Tempest (in a kiddie pool), PlanetLear (King Lear performed on a putt-putt golf course), Lost Soles (a solo tap adventure about Wyoming and Cuba), The Earth’s Sharp Edge (a travelogue through Morocco, 1970’s hijackings and Newark’s ‘Liberty’ Airport). Lost Soles was nominated for a Village Voice Obie award in the 2000 - 2001 season. He was part of an international team of actors and dancers that developed a new work based on the lives of Frank Lloyd Wright and G.I. Gurdjief, entitled The Geometry of Miracles. It toured for two and a half years with special performances presented at the Royal National Theatre in London and The Brooklyn Academy of Music. In 1998, he created an international company called STATELESS with Tea Alagic, a Bosnian theater artist. With STATELESS, he designed and co-directed The Filament Cycle, a work about an American filmmaker who encounters a Bosnian refugee. In November of 2000, the show represented the United States at the 4+4 Days of Movement Theater Festival in Prague where it was hailed as the best work in the festival by the Czech press. In 1997, Seven Arts Magazine listed him among 50 area 'rising stars'. |
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Thaddeus Phillips returns to Earth with a Peak Oil parable
The texture of a cracked desert floor. A plastic flamingo. The twin tones of gypsy jazz and western pedal-steel guitars. According to Thaddeus Phillips, these are the sounds and images that guide his new Flamingo / Winnebago. In collaboration with Lucidity Suitcase International and the Albuquerque, N. M., jazz ensemble La Chat Lunatique, Phillips' multimedia theater piece touches on a kitschy past (Vegas gangsters) and a bleak future (peak oil theory, the Earfth consumed by gluttonous ruin). Phillips, a Denver, Colo.-born freestyle-skateboarded-turned-performance-artist who lives in Philly (when he's not living in Bogota, Colombia), has touched on the planet's piggish use of its resources in previous stage productions The Earth's Sharp Egde and Henry Five Live. But not with warmth or wariness Flamingo / Winnebago promises. (...)
The main point we're making regarding energy is the pesk oil theory - or that all the oil on the Earth will soon be discovered and because of that, the world as we know it will cease to be. humanity doesn't have a clue how to deal with this problem - there's no way we can come up with alternative sources to meet our needs. The USA is built as a nation for cars. We won't have stuff to run those cars on. We're presenting the fact that my grandghildren will not know what it is like to fly in a plane. We're sacrificing the future.
Thaddeus PHILLIPS, City Paper-Net, Aug 29, 2007 |
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Flamingo / Winnebago is an ambitious creation by the playwright and director Thaddeus Phillips. The separate guests of two men intersect. Both yearn to discover America, and what they encounter is disturbing: The environment is perilous and the nation's indeed, the world's future is bleak... Music by the Albuquerque band LE CHAT LUNATIQUE is superb, and the set and projections are impressive.
Broad Street Review
Carefully coordinated, intelligent and imaginative, Flamingo / Winnebago criss-crosses time and space with twisty action, Peak Oil Theory, fresh music and inimitable characters... Lighting design and costumes are remarkably good, and the cast members, who shared in the writing and creation, are as versatile as the set. Human transformers, they shift into a number of characters.
CurtainUp |
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