VARIATIONS ON THE MAIN | By William Burke
composer
March 14 - 30, 2019, @JACK
Playwright/director William Burke and composer Catherine Brookman return to JACK with a "theatrical séance for listening," co-directed by Burke and Bryn Herdrich. As the final show at JACK’s current location, the audience and performer will collectively strip the space of its contents over the course of the three-week run. Through this process of emptying, the team will strive to clear the air of distractions and ask us to help each other and take care of our brains in the most theatrical of ways.
From the artists: "We will try and fail and try again and ask for a commitment to our fellow humans sharing our air. Not a self-help cult...not a thing...just some floorboards and some real time."
Written by William Burke
Co-directed by William Burke and Bryn Herdrich
Composed by Catherine Brookman
Designed by Megan Lang
Stage Managed by Renee Yeong
Produced by John Del Gaudio & Bryn Herdrich
Performed by
Layla Khoshnoudi
Marisela Grajeda Gonzalez
Catherine Brookman
Press: https://www.culturebot.org/2019/03/29833/william-burkes-containers-variations-on-the-main/
“Comprised of a series of ruminative monologues and several pieces of shared text which I hesitate to qualify as “scenes” (although they do involve a conversation between actors, of which there are three) and structured on top of and around musical sequences composed and performed by the ineffable Catherine Brookman, the show is described within marketing materials as ‘a theatrical séance for listening,’ which isn’t inaccurate, although the word séance feels misleading. It’s not so much a communing with the dead as an un-containing of the self, casting meaning into the void, hoping perhaps to receive some echo of that meaning back, in the shape of a hug, or song, or strip of tinfoil torn from the wall”.