Work-In-Progress Showing: Ich, KürbisGeist

TUES JAN 10 . 3:30 PM

ABRONS ARTS CENTER PLAYHOUSE
466 Grand Street

Ich, Kürbisgeist, written by Sibyl Kempson, is a theatrical piece of writing, but it is not a play in the usual sense. The language manifests the harsh landscape of a world facing destruction, populated by five crude people speaking a rigorous, specific, invented language. Every word is semi-recognizable, an amalgam of English, Swedish, German and Sid Ceasar. The five characters boast of surviving prior catastrophes and they bitterly recount lost times. They harvest pumpkin seeds; they sing; they dance; they reminisce. They are ever under threat from vaguely understood, external forces from which there is no protection. Their outrageous costumes, created by visual artist Suzanne Bocanegra, place us in an unspecified medieval European locale. Characters pop up on video, further rattling our sense of time and place. Ich, Kürbisgeist, strangely comic, full of rawness, fragmentation, confusion, and superstition, is in the end a contemplation of language itself.

KurbisGeist is co-commissioned by The Chocolate Factory and PS 122. Big Dance is grateful to the Abrons Art Center for residency support. The finished piece will premiere at The Chocolate Factory in Oct. 2012.