Welcome to the new WNEP website. Take a look around.
All (or at least most) of our company members will be blogging about WNEP stuff, their own stuff, and stuff. We would love for you to support our shows by coming out to see them. We’d love for you to check out their shows because the WNEPeeps rock.
Why is that so hard to understand?
METALUNA AND THE AMAZING SCIENCE OF THE MIND REVUE was originally produced at the old Annoyance Theatre on Clark in 1996.
It then was mounted in Los Angeles by original cast member (and current Trap Door Resident Director) Kate Hendrickson.
It has lay dormant, gathering dust and fermenting since. The words didn’t change but the world did and thus a remount.
The story (if that’s what we can legally call it) follows Dr. Carlton Twist and his friend Sigmund Freud as they enlist a DADA Performance Troupe from Zurich to perform Vaudeville in Metaluna, Indiana in order to trick audience members into becoming victims in Twist’s experiments with the Brain.
Once in Metaluna, they encounter Mayor Armitage Shanks who is running his first contested election against his Elizabeth Cady Stanton-quoting daughter. Also there is a blind woman somewhere in New York City who thinks she’s in France. And lots and lots of DADA.
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“Joe Janes’s 1996 play–about a company of dadaists set loose on a small Indiana town bursting with pent-up sexuality and incipient gender wars–started WNEP Theater off on its anti-art Soiree Dada productions. Its vaudeville-cum-Dada shows-within-the-show feel quaint, though frequently hilarious, and its Freudian underpinnings (the performers are supposed to be part of a mind experiment) remain underdeveloped. But Jen Ellison’s staging reaches near perfection in quiet moments of unlikely connection, including an interlude between Lisa Fairman’s Dietrich-esque Dada vamp and Regan Davis as Rupert, the burg’s smitten laureate. Though the concluding scene flirts with sentimentality, echoing Great Expectations, it’s as strange and satisfying as anything I’ve ever encountered.” HIGHLY RECOMMENDED –Kerry Reid (Chicago Reader)
“This is horseplay-as-theater, with charisma to spare…With its loopy sideshow aesthetic and provocative spirit, the play (by Joe Janes, who also performs) is an assemblage of absurdist vignettes and comic curiosities…an exaggerated vaudeville and a Euro-carnival on crack…” — Nina Metz (Chicago Tribune)
“If you’re having trouble seeing how one plot point connects to the next, welcome to Dada. Janes’s script doesn’t aim for cohesion so much as some hooks on which to hang the ridiculous. Like the Soirée series, Metaluna is chockablock with clever absurdist set pieces performed by an engaging cast and with a fair deal of audience participation…Janes creates actual plotlines but then refuses to resolve them…” — Kris Vire (TOC)
SOIREE DADA: SCHMUCK DER HALLEN took on the holiday season with penetrating wit and outrageous absurdity. Assisted by the audience (and including an ensemble ranging from eight to twenty depending on the night), the DADAs created a chaotic Christmas spectacle using the tools of deconstruction, derision and nonsense to shatter all that is the commerce driven Birth of Jesus holiday.
“Part of the company’s commitment to contemporary exploration of the aggressive nonsense art pioneered by Marcel Duchamp, this is WNEP’s sixth Soiree experiment. You’ll laugh, but possibly one at a time: The overall effect is more alarming than funny—which, given the material, is another way of saying that the show has the courage of its convictions.” —Ben Kenigsberg (TOC)
“The holidays prove to be perfect fodder for an interactive Dada celebration, as one Dada aptly explained, since both events promise to likely ’shame and exalt you.’
Chock-full of absurdity, chaos, audience participation (beware!), and chance elements, “Soiree Dada” features a talented cast of many performers and poets speaking (sometimes nonsense and oftentimes over one another) in terrifically thick German accents. Song, dance, poetry, storytelling, and a lot of noise await you – and it’s all especially acerbic for this time of year.” — Danny Orendorff (EDGE)
“…one doesn’t often have the opportunity to see such a sustained and entertaining attack on the audience’s usual expectations. It’s a dangerous world onstage at the Storefront, and those willing to take the risk will find the evening rewarding.” — Zev Valancy (Centerstage)
A lot of people, including many improvisers, seem to think that improv is low-effort theatre. That couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I’ve just wrapped up the openings for 3 different pieces I directed: a sketch show, a play reading, and an improvised form, and by far, I was the hardest on the cast of the improv show. The show, River Lethe, is a full-hour improvised piece based on the malleability of memory, and has a lot of recurring elements that morph throughout the show. (It runs on Saturday at 8pm at Emerald City theater. Check out www.theatremomentum.com for more.)
I am a lengthy note taker when I direct, I generally go through one or two notepads through the course of any show. For plays or sketch shows, it’s line notes, or blocking changes. For improv shows, it’s a furious combination of curse words, absurd praise, and pleas that line my yellow legal pad. And it’s not because the improvisers aren’t good, in fact, this cast is top-notch. Which only gives me license to be harder on them.
Recent notes from a run-through:
The thing with improv is, it’s always wonderfully different, and it’s also wonderfully terrifying to direct, because the notes aren’t going to come back up again the next night. My notes, if not about the mechanics of the form, are always about pushing the actors to simply react to what their partner gives them (which makes things so much easier than inventing) and after that, about giving them license to set their own challenges. As an audience, I get really excited to see actors taking bold chances and connecting with each other to make sense of it all. This cast has totally excited me. You should come see their work.
Saturdays, 8 PM, June 19-July 31 (no performance July 3)
FREE
Emerald City Theatre School (2933 N Southport Ave)
Like many of the company members in WNEP, I wear many hats and get involved in all sorts of projects with multiple companies.
So, here is an audition notice for SEVEN SNAKES. I hope you’ll consider coming out and auditioning!
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The Mammals are holding auditions on July 24th for our next production called SEVEN SNAKES. Part Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, Part The Searchers, Part Naked Lunch, Part Romeo and Juliet, Part Beauty and Beast. That’s a lot of parts!
SEVEN SNAKES is an apocalyptic western set 30 years from now in the remains of what was once The Arizona desert.
A Young Woman must choose sides as a Group of Octogenarian Veterans of Foreign Desert Wars engage in a mythic battle with a team of mysterious masked gunslingers known as the Seven Snakes.
The Mammals are currently looking for actors of Latino, Arabic, or Native American descent to audition for the team of gunslingers.
The Mammals are also looking for Men of all ages and types to audition for the roles of the Octogenarian Veterans.
This will be a huge ensemble piece in the spirit of Sergio Leone and Sam Peckinpah.
If you would like to schedule an audition or ask questions, then email us at themammals at gmail dot com.
Please share this audition notice with any actors who you think might be interested!
Rehearsals Start August 1st
The Show Previews Sept 18th and opens Sept 25th running Fridays and Saturdays thru November 6th
