It’s not exactly a “dance barn” – no animals were ever kept up in the rehearsal space, there aren’t any bales of hay – but when I tried to think of a name for this place, that’s what first came to mind. We are in the Mendocino back-country, full of nervous ganja farmers, far enough outside Willits that no one hears us but the bullfrogs and the crickets. This place is off the grid. We all sleep on futons on a cabin floor, and the shower is outside on the deck. The fog comes over the hills every night, and then in the mornings, it lifts from this valley full of oaks and volcanic outcrops…
Carpetbag Brigade’s working style is what you might call rural and intensive, rather than urban and regular. Months of seeming inactivity are followed by huge surges of effort. The bunch of us in don’t live in San Francisco and rehearse together like a regular dance or theater company. Instead many of us are traveling all the time — two people came from Canada, one from Arizona, for this project — and we all get together in a remote retreat, and work crazy hard and then put up a show. Right now we’re in the rehearsal space twelve hours a day, with breaks for meals.
The drawback to this approach is that we don’t often work together. The glory of it is what happens when we do. There’s a depth of ensemble connection that nothing but time spent working and living together can create. There’s an intensity in the space easier to reach, and deepen and sustain…
Anson
Undine and You Don’t Know Jack
Hand2Mouth Theatre and the Carpetbag Brigade
Thurs.-Fri. June 18-19, 8pm, $18 (Members $13)
Special double bill performance, produced in association with the NET (Network of Ensemble Theaters) summit.
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Adding a Jungian twist to Jack and the Beanstalk, You don’t know Jack is the Carpetbag Brigade’s surreal, comic tragedy of an alcoholic dead man and his wildly dysfunctional family. Inspired by The Sibling Society by Robert Bly, this hour-long nightmare fairy tale mixes physical theater, dance and a live musical score created by the ensemble cast. A San Francisco premiere! “The Carpetbag Brigade of San Francisco are a company not to be ignored; and they’re presenting this most extreme and mind-blowing of all the shows on this year’s Fringe about the damaging impact of war.” – The Scotsman, Edinburgh UK, August 2008 |
“Electro-sorceress of sound” Faith Helma presents her song cycle inspired by the fairy tale anti-heroine, Undine. Faith Helma has mesmerized audiences in clubs, theaters and arts centers in Seattle and Portland, opened for Justin Bond and Holcombe Waller, and for the first time brings her delicate melodies, live loops and wicked beats to San Francisco. A lonely water creature find a microphone, and an enchanted girl lost between night and the dawn of day sings her heart out. “Things got off to a spooky start with ‘Undine’ by Faith Helma, who proved to be an electro-sorceress of sound as she told the tale of a water-nymph having a rough time on land.” – Michael Upchurch, Seattle Times, May 2008 |
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