By Chris Page, Get Out
March 8
Mesa’s Insurrection Theater Company is calling its latest evening of one-act plays the Taboo Festival.
But the burgeoning small company’s artistic director, Dana Cianciotto, says the title’s more about poking fun at her fellow alternative troupes than challenging social mores, really.
“It’s kind of a joke,” she says. “So many alternative theaters do taboo stuff just for the sake of doing it. We’re tongue-in-cheek with this.”
Not that the show doesn’t cross boundaries of taste and taboo. The four short pieces tackle adultery, bisexuality, polyamory and — heck, might as well — racism. The latter comes courtesy a short play titled “I Don’t Hate Black People, They Just Scare Me.”
Written by San Francisco playwright Lauren D. Yee, it’s a motivational lecture by two white people about how to, says Cianciotto, “get over your fear of black people.”
Gulp.
“It’s clearly making fun of the people who are speaking,” she says. “We’re making fun of the stupid things they say. Like, how to get over your fear in the ghetto: Start small, start with black babies, and work up to black adults.”
There’s a PowerPoint presentation, too.
Cianciotto admits that one’s probably the touchiest selection. The others tickle taboos of alternative sex: The hourlong “Man on Dog” finds a woman getting involved in a long-term polyamorous relationship with a man and woman, only to get pregnant and discover they’ve been keeping a secret from her. “Say No More” finds double-daters playing a game in which they see who can cause the longest awkward silence; the winner is the wife who announces her husband’s affair.
And “The Naked People Play” is an absurd comedy about a man who tries to reconcile with his ex, only to find a naked man and woman at her apartment.
Cianciotto’s pretty sure the name alone will keep sensitive folks away from the Taboo Fest, so she’s not expecting much of an uproar. But even if the title’s a bit of a poke at her alternative theater brethren, Cianciotto’s learned a valuable lesson about courting controversy: It works.
Turnout for auditions was, she says, “the best we’ve had so far” in the company’s first full season.
And some pretty big advertisers, including the Arizona Renaissance Festival and adult novelty retail chain Fascinations, are throwing bucks to be included in the playbill.
“When you get a Fascinations ad,” Cianciotto says, laughing, “you’ve pretty much made it.”
The Taboo Festival runs 8 p.m. Fridays and Saturdays, 7 p.m. Sundays, closing March 18, at Soul Invictus, 1022 N.W. Grand Ave., Phoenix. $15-$18. (480) 242-0827 or insurrectiontheater.com. Not appropriate for those under 17; nudity, language and adult themes.
by Mark Turvin, Goldfish Publishers, 8/6/2006
As old favorites go through their death throes, new theatre companies set about to take their place. In the long shot sweepstakes of theatrical longevity, there’s little guaranteeing that those who are around today will still be producing tomorrow. A new collective, Insurrection Theater Company, is making a strong initial bid to join the ranks of such mid-range luminaries with staying power as Stray Cat and Nearly Naked by producing the nearly world-premiere (some company in Portland beat ‘em) of Tucson playwright Ry Herman’s spunky and precociously irreverent girl-on-Goth comedy Vamp. I normally skip first productions, figuring that the wheat will separate from the chaff soon enough, but I was intrigued by the press and buzz, and since this company was bucking the trend and premiering when other options are sparse (I mean, c’mon, who opens in the middle of summer in Phoenix anyway?!?), I figured I’d drop in. I’m very glad I did.
The company is renting the North Valley Community Playhouse space, a reminder of other past and present strip mall companies like Desert Rose, Metro, and the old Desert Stages. A space like this requires a box set, and Vamp is the type of script that works well in one. The concept reads like a contestant in the Too-Clever-by-Half Fringe Festival (which I’ll admit is more to my taste), but it goes a lot further than being odd-for-odd’s-sake. Chloe (Carrie Benton) is an emotionally-scarred and blocked writer who barely survives as a hermit in her messy apartment working for a big Theater company as a reader of their unsolicited scripts. Having done this job, I can tell you that Herman is right on in describing the types of script that are driving Chloe’s already addled brain to distraction. This loner shares her apartment with common characters from those awful scripts including Spunky Old Gal (Pina Sbrocca), the wisdom and cliché-spouting elder, Jesus (Xchel Hernandez-Zendejas), a messianic meddler, an unseen Irish band and an equally unseen psycho-cat. Chloe takes a tentative step into the world by going to a club where she meets Angela (Erin Del Rosso), a Gothic astrophysicist clad in black leather with preternaturally pale skin. The two hit it off, but as each tentatively brings the other into their world, the baggage they open to the other contains odder and odder surprises.
Self-referential shows that have the lead actors addressing the audience and occasionally acknowledging that they’re pretty much reading from the script can often be much too precious for their own good. However, Herman has a clever purpose for this distancing that turns these initially unbelievable characters into endearing, three dimensional people. Even as lessons and puppet show parables are tossed in, the show ironically becomes more universal and the characters more empathetic with understandable motivations and reactions. One particular monologue at the beginning of the second act concerning the creation and existence of legendary creatures in modern life is especially touching and surprisingly relevant. There are several moments later in the second act when the playwright has the characters speak much more subtext than is necessary, but by this point the play has already proven itself and successfully captured the audience.
Directed by Dana Cianciotto, Insurrection’s production has rough edges but a strong amount of quality for a first offering. Some simple physical problems include lines lost to the loud-though-indispensible fans over the audience’s heads and a few moments of rushed pacing, but in terms of blocking, most pacing, and the choices most actors make, Cianciotto does a nice job of blending theatricality, earnestness, and just the appropriate tinge of amateurishness.
One problem for the production, though, is Benton’s performance as Chloe. Benton’s voice is at turns whiny and too soft to hear, and her delivery is rushed in what seems to be an attempt at quick. Without these problems, she would seem to be a natural fit for the role, as she embraces her character’s quirks and listens well to those with whom she shares the stage, but with them, she switches between mildly annoying and throttle-worthy. Del Rosso is perfect for Angela. She is creepily attractive, believably says some hefty scientific terminology in some pretty unscientific costuming, and aces that second act monologue. I couldn’t imagine another in the role.
Pina (she prefers a single name like Cher or Bono) is too young to be Spunky Old Gal, but she is quite funny and manages to keep a potentially annoying character likeable. Hernandez-Zendejas is unlike any Jesus most would expect, but he does an excellent job of presenting the character’s unshakeable naiveté and optimism with a flip of his wavy black hair. What the hell, there’s little else going on now that those Phoenix Theater new play readings are done and the rest of the community is holding up until the snowbirds return. Drive on up to Cave Creek Road north of Cactus and catch this oddball offering. I can’t tell you whether this is the start of something great or another blip that will soon disappear from the community’s radar, but what Insurrection Theater Company is mounting right now is worth a bite.
by Kyle Lawson, The Arizona Republic, 12/17/2006
When the founders of Insurrection Theater say in their mission statement that audiences will never see a Neil Simon play produced by their company, it shouldn't be taken as a sign of disrespect for America's great comedy writer.
"There are other theaters that do that," says Dana Cianciotto, the troupe's artistic director and co-founder with Sarah Turner and Christopher Williams.
"We gave our theater its name because we wanted to do work that was against the norm."
That can be described in several ways, Cianciotto says, including non-conformist, daring, boundary-pushing and challenging.
"We really hope that, in a couple of years, you can say the name Insurrection Theater and people will not only know who you mean but just what to expect."
The company is making its first major foray onto the Valley theater scene with the musical revue Holiday Cheer, which opens Thursday and continues through Dec. 31 at the Little Theatre at Phoenix Theatre.
"I don't want to say it's a parody, but it does take the songs you hear all the time and tweak them a little," Cianciotto says. "For instance, Baby, It's Cold Outside is usually sung by a man and a woman, but in our show, it's sung by two women. It changes your perspective."
Other tunes to get the Insurrectionist treatment include The Twelve Pains of Christmas, The Lonely Jew and I Saw Daddy Kissing Santa Claus.
"It's really not for kids," Cianciotto says. "We do use the 'F' word. It's a party for adults who don't want to see the same heartwarming show they saw last year."
The company plans two other productions in the coming months. In February, it will stage Taboo Who? A Forbidden Play Festival, which will include short works on taboo subjects. In April, the playbill will feature Twisted Tales: Fairy Tales for Adults, written by Cianciotto and Williams.
"We've taken all the old tales and tossed them into the blender," she says. "Even we were surprised by what turned up."
Why would Cianciotto, a well-regarded performer, assume the burden of running a theater company?
"Honestly? I'm kind of a control freak," she says. "If it comes down to auditioning for someone else's show or producing my own, I'd rather do the latter. At least I'll have a say in how things turn out."
She's also a bit of a political junkie, and the company will find room for plays that comment on politics and social issues. A play being considered for next season is a remount of Lysistrata, the ancient Greek satire in which women give their men a choice between sex and war.
"Whether you update the play or not, it has some pertinent things to say about what's happening today," she says.
Although the company also intends to produce plays dealing with homosexual themes, Cianciotto says it would be a mistake to label the company as a gay and lesbian theater.
"I would much rather be billed as an alternative theater," she says. "I don't want us to be pigeonholed in the kind of stuff we do. There so much out there that needs to be talked about onstage. You can expect to see original and underproduced work, but just how it will work out, I don't know. We're learning as we go."
She does know one thing for sure.
"We plan to be around for a while and get to be a staple for those who want something different in theater."
by Thomas A. Leveen, Phoenix Art Space, 1/2007
You're already online anyway -- take a moment to visit ShowUp.com [http://www.showup.com] and see what's playing in local theatres this weekend. No, not Harkins, AMC or UA; click the Theatre column and see what fifty-plus live theatres in town are producing. Skip the professional groups -- your Arizona Theatre Companies, your Phoenix Theatres -- and browse what the community theatres are offering. You may have to scroll down to the More Events section most alternative companies are frequently relegated to. Falling in this part of a calendar listing, particularly in mainstream media news outlets, is the norm for most community theatres.
As urban sprawl continues unabated, theatre aficionados who used to drive forty miles for a rehearsal have taken it upon themselves to open up indie venues in distant enclaves such as Surprise, Queen Creek, and Cave Creek. Alternative theatres continue to crop up all across Phoenix, Mesa and Tempe. Fountain Hills, Scottsdale and other metro areas all have a theatre or two or ten to choose from. Distance is no longer the excuse it used to be.
'Community theatre' and 'black sheep' are often synonymous terms in the Valley. Some are semi-professional, with larger budgets, bigger venues, and often professional actors (members of the Equity Actors union). Many offer what audiences would recognize as the usual fare: popular musicals and comedies, with the occasional Pulitzer-or Tony-winning drama. But it's at the smallest venues with the slimmest budgets that you'll find the edgy, experimental, and frequently disturbing plays -- in other words, some of the best theatre you'll ever see. This is art that makes you question assumptions and to hold, as 'twere, the mirror up to nature.
"In the valley, we have four styles of companies," said local theatre critic Mark Turvin, [http://www.goldfishpublishers.com], himself an independent critic who runs a website which reviews all manner of Phoenix theatre. "We have our professional companies, including Arizona Theatre Company, Actors Theatre, and Phoenix Theatre. We have our semi-pro theatres, those that use professional actors but also include non-contract performers and elements, such as Arizona Jewish Theatre Company and Black Theatre Troupe. Then we have our community theatres, including Tempe Little Theatre, Mesa Encore Theatre, and Stagebrush. Finally, there are the others that defy description. These are the ones that cater to the off-kilter (Stray Cat), or the racy (Nearly Naked), or the truly experimental (Theatre in my Basement). They defy pigeonholing. They�re not any the lesser for not being easy to define, they're just hard to pin down." Other such category-defying companies include Insurrection Theatre, Desert Rose Theatre, and Algonquin Theatre Company, among others. (Turvin's site includes a list of links to most such companies with hotlinks to their websites and press releases, well worth a visit.)
Producing work that would never be touched by a pro company is one of the benefits of working under the indie umbrella. Ron May, Artistic Director of Stray Cat Theatre [http://www.straycattheatre.org] in Phoenix, pointed out that choice of material is a benefit to the black sheep herd. "If most theatres, using a film analogy, can typically only offer a PG or PG-13, we almost always offer up R-rated or NC-17 material," May said. "We know it's not for everybody. It's definitely a niche thing. Being smaller is also a huge advantage. We can take much bigger risks each season and play with more experimental material than the bigger houses. We've been around long enough now that our audiences will come on the ride with us. It's not really all that different from mainstream films versus indie films. Most [live] theatres veer mainstream. We're definitely indie."
Dana Cianciotto, Artistic Director of Insurrection Theater Company [www.insurrectiontheater.com], agreed. "We want to produce work no one has seen before. We focus more on the 'meat' of the product -- the acting, the direction -- as opposed to the 'side dishes' -- the set, the costumes, etceteras."
Making the most out of little is at the core of alternative theatre. Smaller companies all face similar problems, with money, decent venues, and publicity topping the list. These drawbacks, however, also focus the energies of the artists calling the shots. "It's tough because we don't have a reserve of money to be working with from previous seasons," Cianciotto said. "Our ticket sales, though they've always been surprisingly good, are really our only source of income. We aren't well-known enough to receive large sponsorships from Valley organizations or businesses, though many individuals and businesses do buy ad space in our programs. At the same time, not having an excess of money does keep us concentrated on the product itself more than the presentation. We can't build lavish sets or rent the finest costumes, so we focus on what we can give you: deep, creative performances that entertain and challenge both the actor and the audience."
Phoenix has long been a haven for plucky little companies willing to make a go of it. The question is, does Phoenix care? "I think the thing that Phoenix denies these companies is a home," Turvin said. "Stray Cat is a perfect example. It's been through five different homes, four of which have fallen to consumerist ventures. Nearly Naked has found a home through Phoenix Theatre, and Desert Rose has its lonely outpost out in the wilds of Mesa, but the Valley values another strip mall or condo over the arts. Even when they do create a center like the Mesa Arts Center and the [upcoming] Tempe and Peoria Arts Centers, they price their spaces out of reach of all but the most established companies."
The "community" in community theatre doesn't just refer to the audience, it also typifies the sense of shared risk alternative theatres face. Like cliques at high school cafeteria tables, alternative theatres have a tendency to stick together and help each other out in ways pro companies (the popular kids) rarely have need for. Small companies who shut their doors due to financial trouble or lack of a venue are often mourned by those companies who've survived another season, with support, well-wishes, and condolences pouring in from artistic directors and actors across town for their fallen comrades. "I've been very well supported by other theaters in town and I've made friends through their generosity and eagerness to help," Cianciotto said. This sort of camaraderie is visible in alt-theatre productions, where passion for the art eclipses the lack of beautiful set designs and costumes.
While alternative theatre companies rise and fall with shocking regularity, the ongoing state of such companies doesn't change much. Turvin eloquently summed up the reality facing "black sheep" theatres in the Valley. "Black sheep companies are, by their nature, always one flop away from shuttering," he said. "The more established ones, like Stray Cat, Algonquin, and Nearly Naked are more stable, but nothing's guaranteed. It's important to remember that Actors Theatre, a strong and visionary professional company, recently nearly collapsed under financial burdens, and ironically, it can trace its start back to being a 'black sheep' company. Will Desert Rose or Insurrection Theatre become as entrenched as Stray Cat and Nearly Naked? That's all in the spirit of their leaders, the tenacity of their collective, and the luck of the cards. Others are in the works. For example, one company, Off Center Theatre headed by The Shakespeare Theatre's former Artistic Director Wes Martin, plans to open at the Peoria Arts Center later this season. There'll always be five new black sheep ready to take their chances. In any given season, one may survive."
Despite the risks, being small and an alternative to the norm is an attraction, not detraction. It's an artistic approach that has worked well for Stray Cat and its sister companies. "It's our aesthetic and what draws most of us to the work in the first place," May said. "It's a lot more artistically satisfying, for us at least. It separates us from every other McSeason out there. The programming [in the Valley] tends to bleed a little homogenously. If you were to stick up the season from every company in the valley and didn't attach the names of the theatres, you'd be hard pressed to correctly pick who was doing which seasons for 90% of the theatres out here. So many of them are so interchangeable. Ours would immediately stick out as categorically ours. Odds are you wouldn't see a title we're doing and mistake it for some other theatre, and vice versa, which is kind of nice."
"I think it's a good thing to be alternative," Cianciotto added. "It drives you closer to your mission statement; it makes you work more passionately to achieve the things you're aiming for and succeed in everything you do. It's challenging and exciting at the same time. When you're a black sheep, you have something to work toward."
What this means for regular theatergoers and potential audience in the Valley is this: Alternative theatre is alive and well, and creating outstanding art despite their labels. "Theatre is not just another musical or another Neil Simon [play]," Turvin said. "On any given night, you can see Chris Dankowski's Theatre in my Basement theatricalizing immigration issues, Stray Cat making its audience face disquieting truths, Nearly Naked putting new spins on recognizable tales, and Desert Rose dusting off some forgotten classics to show how relevant they are today. Whatever your taste, somewhere out there a live theatre is catering to it. Put down the remote or the game controller and become a part of it."
Seeking the best in local art, no matter the relative 'size' or popularity of the artist, and its mission to bring lesser-known work to the foreground is what Phoenix Art Space is all about,. Like all the arts, what you get can be a mixed bag, but the gems found shine brighter. When it comes to alt-theatre, prepare for a profound experience. "If you think you've seen all there is to see of live theatre in the valley, wait till you see what we drag in," May said. "It may offend you. It may test your limits. It may cause controversy. It may not. But you won't see it anywhere else. It may be horrifyingly violent, it may be funny as hell, but it will have a seriousness of purpose, presented with skill . . . and without compromise."
And that, the last time we checked, was what art was all about.