The Future is a Fancyland Place

The Allways Theatre
2240 St. Claude Avenue
September 16 – October 20, 2011

Jarville is a mess, seeing visions and watching cows make proclamations on their hind legs. It doesn’t help that his sister, Sheila, is setting up tents in his backyard. His neighbor, Hudie, keeps going on about messages in the static, messages that confirm what Jarville wants to deny: the clock is ticking.

Nominated for six Big Easy awards, The Future is a Fancyland Place is a massively successful collaboration between GRP and New Orleans-based Cripple Creek Theater Company.  Through a year-long ensemble process exploring ancient and contemporary apocalyptic prophecy, the two companies create a show rife with dance, song, movement, ritual and stretched-canvas cow puppets.  A show that takes a peek at America’s obsession with apocalyptic prophecies, our desire to create an ending again and again, and what happens when it doesn’t end… again.

Written by Andrew Vaught and Chris Kaminstein
Directed by Chris Kaminstein
Music by Will Bowling, with assistance from Emilie Whelan
Ensemble:  Ian Hoch, Emilie Whelan, Francesca McKenzie, Andy Vaught, Shannon Flaherty, Ross Britz, Cecile Monteyne, Dave Davis, Matt Standley
Designers:  Selena Poznak (Lights), Eric Gremillon (Sound), Phil Cramer (Sets), Andrew Larimer (Special Projects), Katie Gelfand (Costume), Rebecca McLaughlin (Stage Management)
Photos by Jess Pinkham

“…a timely and fascinating endeavor of failed prophesies, failed rituals, and failed utopia.” – Helen Jaksch, NOLA Defender

Our Man

Two men in a box decide to elect a tennis racquet named Ronald Reagan their president.

Nov. 17 – 21, 2010
New Orleans Fringe Festival
Marigny Theatre (2240 St. Claude Ave.)

Our Man is a comedic multidisciplinary performance work that explores the intersection of performance and politics in the modern age, through the lenses of 1950’s era radio broadcasts, and a decidedly fictional approach to American political history. Two men in a small glass box are tasked with narrating the life and accomplishments of one of the nations most controversial leaders, “The Gipper”. Forced to perform the same radio play over and over again for an invisible audience, the lines of fact and fiction blur as the men begin to slowly re-write the course of history in an effort to entertain each other and understand the context of their unusual situation. Through clever and hilarious half truths and brutal mudslinging tactics, the two find themselves arguing their way through small towns in the Midwest, to Europe on the front lines of WWII, all the while deciding whether or not to elect their only possession, an old wooden tennis racquet, their President.

Created and written by: William Bowling and Christopher Kaminstein, and Sascha Stanton Craven
Directed by: Andrew Vaught
Set/Lights/Sound Design by: William Bowling, Shannon Flaherty and Christopher Kaminstein
Production Manager: Shannon Flaherty
Photos by Shannon Flaherty

After premiering at the New Orleans Fringe Festival in November 2010, Our Man had subsequent performances at Interstate Fringe in Houston, TX, at the Bloomsburg Theater Ensemble’s Mitroni Studio in Bloomsburg, PA, Underground Arts in Philadelphia PA, and at the 2011 Berkshire Fringe Festival in Great Barrington, MA.

“Kaminstein and Bowling are theatrical vaudevillians of the first rank.”  - Jim Fitzmorris, NOLA Defender

Our Man was included in the NOLA Defender’s “5 Arresting Moments” of 2011.

Fronteras (Borders)

July 27, 2011
The Shadowbox Theatre, 2400 St. Claude Ave.

Borders was the culminating performance of an artistic exchange residency between GRP and Artzenico (link), an innovative theatre group based in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.

In July 2011, two performers from Artzénico traveled to New Orleans for a 3-week residency during which they worked with GRP to generate material for an original piece which explored immigration and the nature of the borders we create. During the 3-week residency Artzénico was fortunate to be able to work with Grupo N.O.H.A. (New Orleans Hispano America), conducting two theatre workshops with members of the organization.

This residency was part of an exchange that began in August 2010 when GRP members Will Bowling and Rachel Carrico worked with Artzenico in Guatemala.

Created by Will Bowling, Rachel Carrico, Bonifaz Diaz, Shannon Flaherty, Chris Kaminstein and Jordi Mollering  

Directed by Jordi Mollering

This project was made possible in part by a grant from the National Performance Network’s Performing Americas Program.  Lead funding of the National Performance Network Performing Americas Program was provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.   For more information: www.npnweb.org. It was also supported by Tulane University's Roger Thayer Stone Center for Latin American Studies.

The Don Effect

Humanity’s desire to re-create the un-re-createable.

June 10 – 13, 2010
The Candle Factory (4537 N. Robertson)

The Don Effect explores humanity’s desire to re-create the un-re-createable. Six ensemble members play a diverse cast of characters: an executive chef; the interim CEO of a sinking corporation; a grieving granddaughter; two dance archivists; and more. In their struggles to reconstruct originals -from famous concert dances to grandma’s biscuits – each encounters the failure of written language to capture embodied experiences.

Click here to see photos from the show.

Conceived and directed by Rachel Carrico
Music by Will Bowling
Ensemble:  Rachel Carrico, Phil Cramer, Shannon Flaherty, Chris Kaminstein, and Francesca McKenzie
Designers:  Rachel Lee (Stage manager), Becca Chapman (Production manager), Selena Poznak (Lights), Adam Tourek (Set design), Jaquelin “Chex” Sindelair (Video design), Sebastian Fig (Poster design), Hannah Adams (photographer), Joanna Russo and Deb Moore (videographers)

The Don Effect Exhibit showed at the Southern Food and Beverage Museum from September 2010 – December 2010.

Major Swelling's Salvation Salve Medicine Show

Nov. 11 – 15, 2009
New Orleans Fringe Festival
Marigny Theatre (2240 St. Claude Ave.)

A co-production with the Cripple Creek Theatre Co., Major Swelling’s Salvation Salve Medicine Show is a musical about schemer, huckster, and Civil-war veteran, Major Swelling and his traveling troupe rolling through New Orleans to sell their salvation salve – a potion found deep within the swamps of Louisiana that cures anything and everything. When the salve actually heals, and Governor Bobby Jindal shows up to take over the show, a showdown begins between the old way of doing things and the new, progress and stasis, tradition and reform.

Written by Andrew Vaught
Directed by Chris Kaminstein
Music by Will Bowling
Starring: Ross Britz, Rachel Carrico, Nicholas Clark, Shannon Flaherty, Michael Gottwald, Ian Hoch, Francesca McKenzie, Kristen Schafer Ewbank, Emilie Whelan, and Andrew Vaught
Designers:  Selena Poznak (Lights), Rachel Carrico (Choreography), Jacqueline Sindelar (Stage Manager), Ezra Greenbride (Scenic Design), Sophie and Scott Kosofsky (Scenic Artists), Megan Staab and Jessica Daigle (Costume Design), Zalia Beville (Lighting Design), Alden Eagle (Production Manager), and Kevin McCaffrey (Director of Video)
Photos by Lee Celano

“…an exuberant, audacious mini-musical…” David Cuthbert, Steppin’ Out (Nov. 27, 2009)

Rinse & Repeat

October 30, 2008
"On Piety"
617 Piety St., New Orleans

April 17, 2009
"Previously on Piety"
Contemporary Arts Center, 900 Camp St.

Rinse & Repeat is site-specific, environmental performance work was designed to interact with the seven installations in the warehouse exhibition space "On Piety". The improvisational performance highlights, distills and theatricalizes the relationship between the installations, the physical space that contains them, and those who visit it.

Rinse & Repeat's theatrical activity periodically bubbles up among and emerges from the crowd, dissipates, gains momentum. The entire performance loops repeatedly, as gallery visitors wander in and out of the space.

Created and directed by William Bowling and Rachel Carrico

Starring: William Bowling, Wendy Bushman, Rachel Carrico, Vignette Ching, Aminisha Ferdinand, Denise Frazier, Antonio Garza

Second performance: William Bowling, Rachel Carrico, Vignette Ching, Aminisha Ferdinand, Denise Frazier, Lorenzo Gonzales, Kat Johnson, Jennifer Mefford

Whatever Just Happened, Didn't Happen

Whatever Just Happened is the first of GRP’s political trilogy that explores the state of politics and the media in our great country. A 25-minute performance piece, Whatever Just Happened explores the Monica Lewinsky scandal from the point of view of two government workers condemned to sorting the seemingly endless stack of documents created by the inquiry.

Written and performed by William Bowling and Chris Kaminstein

Whatever Just Happened, Didn’t Happen premiered at the State of the Nation Festival on March 21, 2009 at NOCCA’s Nims Blackbox Theatre in New Orleans, LA. It was subsequently performed on April 10-11, 2009 at the Allways Lounge & Theatre in New Orleans, LA.

“…Whatever Just Happened, Didn't Happen... was a cleverly absurd riff on the Bill Clinton/Monica Lewinsky scandal...” Will Coviello, The Gambit (April 20, 2009)

The Calculus of Hope

November 2008
New Orleans Fringe Festival
Skull Club, New Orleans

Levees collapse. Steam pipes explode. Bridges crumble. Our fragile bodies move through it all. In a reflection on life, love and bridges, two friends carry, push, silence, hold and drench each other. They dance and tell stories to balance the equation: complex infrastructure + fragile bodies = safety is relative(loving is risky).

Created and performed by Rachel Carrico & Jamie Coffey Reynolds
Music by William Bowling