You know what I’m going to do? I’m going to start a blog devoted to Piper McKenzie’s upcoming show, BABYLON BABYLON, which I’m directing, kinda-sorta writing, and (god help us all) acting in. I’m going to call it BABYLBLOG BLOGBYLON, and you’re going to read it while drinking coffee or trying not to masturbate or whatnot.
BABYLBLOG BLOGBYLON is not going to be an exegesis of my creative process, because if I were to do that then why would you want to come and see the show? Rather, it is going to be a serial repository, a living clearinghouse for words, images, sounds, and – oh yes – feelings about this crazy piece of art we’re trying to make. It will tease and hint at notions of the show to come, hopefully without giving too much away. Mostly, I hope it will entertain you enough to consider shelling out the $15 to come to The Brick and see what the fuss is all about.
After the jump I’m going to paste in the press release for the show. Is this lame? Totally. But when otherwise awesome people do lame things, the world should sit up and take note.
Previews Fri 4/11, Sat 4/12 & Thu 4/17, 8pm
Shows Thu-Sat 4/18 through 5/10, 8pm
at The Brick, 575 Metropolitan Avenue, Williamsburg, Brooklyn
one block from the Lorimer stop of the L train / Metropolitan stop of the G train
$5 previews, $15 performances; all tickets available at www.theatermania.com
The place is the archetypally decadent yet holy city of Babylon – history’s most notorious hot spot. The time is 539 B.C., the eve of Babylon’s conquest by the marauding Persian army. The location is the Temple of Ishtar, goddess of love and war, where, according to a strange, sensational paragraph in Herodotus, “every woman who is a native of the country must once in her life go and sit and there give herself to a strange man.”
Welcome to BABYLON BABYLON, the new show by Piper McKenzie Productions at Williamsburg’s Brick Theater. No stranger to grand spectacle on a shoestring budget, The Brick (home of 2007’s Pretentious Festival, the New York Clown Theatre Festival, and, most recently, DoWhatNow’s critically acclaimed Bitch Macbeth) will itself be transformed into the Temple of Ishtar during the strange, dramatic final hours before Babylon’s unsuspecting fall. No stranger to theatrical hubris, Piper McKenzie (2006’s multimedia comic-book musical Adventures of Caveman Robot and 2007’s aptly titled Macbeth Without Words) will craft a sweeping narrative in this exotic environment of ritual prostitution – an unholy mix of Herodotus, Cecil B. DeMille, Kenneth Anger, Richard Schechner, the Bible, Charles Ludlam, Robert Altman, Busby Berkeley, and much more.
Addressing issues of sex, religion, war, and history through a cracked lens of comedy and movement, BABYLON BABYLON explores the ways in which the past both reflects and refutes the present. A tapestry of intertwining narratives winds its way through the temple: untrustworthy historians, gyrating priestesses, doomsday prophets, grasping plutocrats, undercover lovers, displaced Jews, seekers of bloody vengeance – all of these, and many more, meet beneath the erotic, leveling stare of Ishtar…
Written and directed by Brick Associate Director and Piper McKenzie Artistic Director Jeff Lewonczyk (director of Macbeth Without Words, Sexadelic Cemetery, Adventures of Caveman Robot, and other Piper McKenzie classics as well as last year’s hit FringeNYC musical John Goldfarb, Please Come Home), BABYLON BABYLON will feature a cast of dozens – both Brick regulars and new faces – including Gyda Arber, Fred Backus, Aaron Baker, Ali Skye Bennet, Eric Bland, Danny Bowes, Lily Burd , Katie Brack, Michele Carlo, Hope Cartelli, Maggie Cino, Michael Criscuolo, V. Orion Delwaterman, Siobhan Doherty, Marguerite French, Melina Gac-Artigas, Adrian Jevicki, Gavin Starr Kendall, Kamran Khan, Angela Lewonczyk, Jeff Lewonczyk, Toya Lillard, Roger Nasser, Robert Pinnock, Robin Reed, Iracel Rivero, Heather Lee Rogers, Alexis Sottile, Adam Swiderski, Elizabeth Hope Williams, & Rasha Zamamiri.
Production design will be provided by Julianne Kroboth, with lighting design by James Bedell, video by Jason Robert Bell, choreography by Amantha May, and fight direction by Qui Nguyen. Jessica McVea is the Assistant Director, and Lindsay Vrab is the Stage Manager.
Previews will be held on Friday April 11, Saturday April 12 and Thursday April 17, at 8pm, with $5 admission. The official press opening will be Friday, April 18 at 8pm, and performances will continue Thursday through Saturday nights at 8pm until Saturday May 10; admission will be $15. Tickets will be available through Theatermania.com (212-352-3101).
The opening night performance on Friday, April 18 will be followed by a party, sponsored by Brooklyn Oenology (www.brooklynoenology.com).
For more information about BABYLON BABYLON, please visit www.bricktheater.com and www.pipermckenzie.com.
3 Comments
February 22, 2008 at 8:12 pm
Babylblog Blobylon is the best blog name since Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog.
February 27, 2008 at 6:05 pm
i love the banner image!!!
February 28, 2008 at 1:06 am
Thanks, matanzera (though I know your REAL name as well). It’s from a painting by a 19th-century British painter name of Edwin Long, called “The Babylonian Marriage Market.” As such, it reflects another aspect of Babylon discussed by Herodotus, similar to the Temple of Ishtar but not quite the same, which (to simplify things) we’re not dealing with in this show. Still and all, isn’t it awfully appropos? Read more about it at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Babylonian_Marriage_Market