Announcing I've Never Been So Happy World Premiere!

Rude Mechs, in association with Center Theatre Group, is proud to present the world premiere of

I'VE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY

 

I've Never Been So Happy, with music and lyrics by Austin Experimental Punk Grand Wizard Peter Stopschinski (Brown Whornet, Golden Hornet Project), and book and lyrics by Austin Experimental Theatre Mascot Kirk Lynn, fluxuates freely between high art and Hee-Haw, treating both with respect. The music pits a "Grand Ole Opry" style West against an "El Topo" style West. The writing butts lyric poetry up against bar jokes with finesse. Directed by Thomas Graves and Lana Lesley, the evening challenges what it means to "go to the theater" in 2011.

WHEN: April 21 - May 7, 2011
Thursday - Saturday at 8 PM
Additional Sunday performance on May 1st
10 performances only!

Friday April 22 - Opening Night Gala - see details below. 

Saturday May 7 - Special Closing Night Performance featuring post-show concert by Austin's newest Alt-Country phenom Chablis (Best Local Show 2010, Austin Chronicle Critics Poll), and good eats from La Condesa - tickets $25

WHERE: The Off Center, 2211 A Hidalgo, Austin, TX 78702

"The Rudes continue to deepen their creative process and challenge themselves in new ways. And that results in smart, terrific theater that takes us some place new." - Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin-American Statesman review of December 2008 workshop production.

"BEST INVESTIGATION OF THE WEST: The Rude Mechs' funny, well-informed multimedia performance was a refreshingly queer interrogation of the West. - Claire Ruud, ...might be good (Fluent-Collaborative's contemporary arts e-journal Best of 2008)

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YOU ARE INVITED TO I'VE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY'S

OPENING NIGHT GALA!

 

This unprecedented evening of celebration and performance will include:

A pre-show toast with the Board and Artistic Directors of Rude Mechs

Amazing complimentary food and drink curated by Edible Austin

The world-premiere performance of our new western musical & transmedia shindig

And post-show two-stepping with the cast and crew with cash bar provided by the side bar

Plus 75% of your ticket price is tax-deductible to the full extent of the law!

Your unwavering support has helped Rude Mechs have a spectacular year, including a premiere at the 34th annual Humana Festival of New American Plays, a wonderful, critically acclaimed tour of The Method Gun, and the development of a radical new play here at home.

 

Come celebrate this world premiere in Austin with a company that is garnering high critical praise and building audience around the country.

Time Out New York says of Rude Mechs, "They keep taking perilous theatrical leaps, but we are the ones to feel sweaty-palmed, nearly vertiginous exhilaration."

The New York Times says Rude Mechs "...makes the Wooster Group look conservative."

Time Out Chicago calls our work "...relentlessly inventive... "Beneath its zany, passionate surfaces lie some fierce investigations into the nature of art... brilliantly orchestrated"

The Louisville Courier-Journal calls us "..absurd and awe-inspiring."

Some facts about I've Never Been So Happy:

• It is 1 of only 5 projects selected from a national pool for the National Endowment for the Arts New Play Development Program.
  
• It received a work-progress-presentation at Washington D.C.'s prestigious Arena Stage at the New Play Festival.
  
• It is featured in an upcoming PBS documentary by Rob Levi about "how America makes theater."
  
• It is produced in association with Los Angeles' Center Theatre Group.
  
• It features a cast of nine, a small orchestra, a dance team, video animation and a mountain lion!
  
• It is not just a show, it's also surrounded by a transmedia shindig which includes food, games, and wild western fun.
  

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I'VE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY features the extraordinary performing / design / production talents of:
Cami Alys, Kerri Atwood, Lowell Bartholomee, Noel Gaulin, Thomas Graves, Amy Hackerd, Hannah Kenah, Jenny Larson, Lana Lesley, E. Jason Liebrecht, Erin Meyer, William Moses, Paul Soileau, Peter Stopschinski, Meg Sullivan, along with Eric Roach on guitar, four very fine string players / Laura Cannon (Portland), Dayna Hanson (Seattle), Miwa Matreyek (LA), Stephen Pruitt, Leilah Stewart / Woody Golden, Charlie Llewellin, Jazz Miller, Lorenza Phillips, Denise Martel, Rick Thompson, and two thoroughly awesome interns, Taylor McCaslin and Ashley O'Brien. And creating the carnival so far we have the fabulous Jodi Jinks, Kirk Lynn, Edmund Martinez, Robert Pierson, Rachel Shannon, Silky Shoemaker, and Aron Taylor.

I’ve Never Been So Happy was selected for the NEA Distinguished New Play Development Program, and received a development residency at The University of Texas Department of Theatre & Dance’s Musical Theatre Initiative. Creation support for I've Never Been So Happy also comes from The Orchard Project Theatre Residency Program, the National Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Arena Stage's New Play Festival, and the National Endowment for the Arts.

The Method Gun at Dance Theater Workshop

Right, so we finished up our perfect week at  Yale Rep's - No Boundaries festival and landed our tails in NYC that Sunday with a van full  of Method Gun set, props, costumes.

Monday morning we loaded that puppy in to Dance Theater Workshop, and thanks to no light hang, a crack crew, and volunteers  Michael, Megan, and Zach, we did it in record time. Tuesday, our sweet friend D. tuned the room. And Wednesday, well, Wednesday, we did tech/dress and our first photo line-up ever, ate a little food... and then we had what we can only describe as the most perfect opening night possible - and it was press night, so we were more than a little freaked out.

We papered the house with many friends and friendlies, gave as relaxed a performance as we could under the circumstances, and were lucky enough to have a warm, generous, and supportive full house. Thursday, Friday and Saturday went pretty much the same - loving audiences and good times at the bar afterwards. Lowell with Brittany, Tina, Meredith, and Max hit new highs in tech supremacy - they ran a tight tight show, and made everyone's jobs a pleasure. Major props and thanks to Vincent, Mike and Chloe. And of course to Carla! Next time we will hang out!!

Most gratifying, though, was the support we received from our buds in NYC, and the really beautiful emails and notes - thank you all so so so much for coming out and spending time with us and making us feel so at home there.

Here's the review call - it's overall pretty dang nice. There is one shite review from legit source - New York Post - man, we pissed her off ("But overall, this "Method Gun" shoots a blank."). And a couple of shite reviews from non-legit sources, like theatremania and some california lit magazine thingie, so if you're LA press, feel free to copy the good ones listed below when we get there. Or if you want to copy a bad one, at least lay off the Boston Globe review - he gets a lot of shit wrong and you just look stupid when you ape him. I'm talking to you, theatremania.

"I was left breathless... Who knew experimental theater could be both daring and sentimental all at once?" Jerry Portwood, New York Press

"In this immensely funny, abruptly touching physical-theater work... They keep taking perilous theatrical leaps, but we are the ones to feel sweaty-palmed, nearly vertiginous exhilaration." - Helen Shaw,  Time Out New York Review

"The Method Gun: Our own Helen Shaw raves about the Rude Mechs' "intensely funny, abruptly touching" play in her review in this week's issue, and having seen the show last night, I couldn't agree more. This is a special piece of work that will leave you thinking about theater, people, theater people, teachers, students, nostalgia, kisses, perfection, balloons and tigers. As of this writing, a few tickets remain to the show's last three performances at Dance Theater Workshop, tonight at 7:30pm and 10:30pm and tomorrow at 7:30pm. Buy them." - Upstaged Blog Post - Time Out New York  

"This weekend sees the closing of several of my favorite shows, so this edition of Critic's Picks is less a case of "run, don't walk" than a "stand in line, don't take no for an answer" set of recommendations." - Critics' Picks - Time Out New York

"All I can say is get tickets to this show. It is not to be missed." - Jeremy M. Barker,  Culturebot

"...a fiendish piece of post-ideological work. And like any great piece of theater — or theory — it lies shamelessly to tell the truth." - Scott Brown,  New York Magazine Critics Pick

"...a tender, smart play." – Jason Fitzgerald, Backstage Review  

"Leave it to the Rude Mechs to take a topic that would seem to only speak to insider (aka theater insiders), and make it not only fabulously funny, but also universal. " - Amanda Cooper, Curtain Up

"Coming off the 2010 Humana Festival (and no doubt on its way to a theater near you), "The Method Gun" is a choice example of Rude Mechs' satirical wit and inventive performance style." - 

Variety Review

"It’s nice to finally see a company from Texas that I’ve been hearing and reading about for years, and to find that they’re as good as the advance word suggested." -  New Haven Advocate Review

"The Method Gun is funny, bleak, satirical and serious in equal parts, so well-balanced and timed that you trust it implicitly and just follow along without questioning its intentions. " - New Haven Advocate Review

And last but not least... the fun one

New York Times Review - Jason Zinoman - Yeah - we're told this is a nice review "for The Times". The only real reason to share this slap/tickle paragraph is to let us all stare slack-jawed at The Times for being so freaking lazy, and sexist.

Zinoman writes: "But despite the sophomoric moments the performers win you over with sincerity and even showmanship. Lana Lesley spins mundane moments with a delightful quirk. And the director, Shawn Sides, lanky and swaggering, doubles as a performer whose persona might be called Indie Rock Brando. He stages a lovely montage sequence, including swinging industrial lights, that gives the piece an elegant finish."

This is the correction after we alerted NYT to the fact that Shawn is, in fact, a woman.

"But despite the sophomoric moments the performers win you over with sincerity and even showmanship. Lana Lesley spins mundane moments with a delightful quirk. The actor Jason Liebrecht, lanky and swaggering, has a persona that might be called Indie Rock Brando. Shawn Sides stages a lovely montage sequence, including swinging industrial lights, that gives the piece an elegant finish."

Rude Mechs Feature in The New York Times

Many Methods to Collaborative Madness

Alan Simons

From left, Hannah Kenah, rear; Lana Lesley; Jason Liebrecht; and Thomas Graves of Rude Mechs perform “The Method Gun.”

By JOAN ANDERMAN

Published: February 22, 2011

IT began, as actors’ stories often do, with a guru. Her name was Stella Burden, a k a “the other Stella.” Ms. Burden created a risky suite of training exercises called the Approach, attracted a fervent band of followers and abandoned them nine years into rehearsals for a high-concept production of “A Streetcar Named Desire,” to be performed without Stanley, Blanche, Stella or Mitch.

Alan Simons

Shawn Sides, left, one of the Rude Mechs’ co-producing artistic directors, in “The Method Gun” with Jason Liebrecht, center, and Thomas Graves, another one of the ensemble’s “co-pads.”

What in the name of madcap Method acting is a company member to do?

That’s the absurdly literal and keenly figurative question at the heart of “The Method Gun,” a play about the creative process by the Austin, Tex., ensemble Rude Mechs, which since it was founded in 1995 has become one of the nation’s leading proponents of devised theater: works developed collaboratively by a company rather than an individual playwright.

“The Method Gun,” which comes to Dance Theater Workshop from March 2 to 11, is the most autobiographical of the company’s pieces. It’s satirical and celebratory in roughly equal parts, exploring ideas of togetherness and loss, the dynamics of being part of a tight-knit group and what it means to take care of one another.

While the show’s premise nods to celebrated acting teachers like Stella Adler and to extreme, emotion-based techniques like the Method, specifics are left aside in favor of merciless riffs on codified approaches to art. But the Rude Mechs’ wicked sense of humor tempers a sincere streak that the company wears like a badge of honor.

“Humor leavens the cringe-worthy part of being totally earnest,” said Kirk Lynn, who wrote the script. “It makes a little space for us to speak our desires or, God forbid, our message.”

Themes of community bubble up in many of the Rude Mechs’ shows, including the current work in progress, a musical exploration of the American West called “I’ve Never Been So Happy.” It is a big moment for the company, which received one of only five inaugural grants from the National Endowment for the Arts’ New Play Development Program.

Last month the company presented a concert staging of “I’ve Never Been So Happy” at Arena Stage, in Washington, which is administering the Endowment program. “One of the things that’s so disarming about them is how much they are themselves,” said the Arena Stage associate artistic director David Dower of the members of Rude Mechs. “It’s challenging, not so much for them but for East Coast audiences, which are much more used to irony.”

The company’s unstructured methods place it alongside the New York contemporaries Radiohole, Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and National Theater of the United States of America. Six of the Rude Mechs’ seven founding co-producing artistic directors , or co-pads, shared (or, as they put it, survived) a common guru in the late 1980s and early 90s. The University of Texas professor emeritus James Ayres ran the school’s demanding and rigorously communal Shakespeare at Winedale course, a nine-week play-performance program 75 miles from Austin.

“I’m not going to say that Winedale is a cult,” said Shawn Sides, who directed “The Method Gun.” “But we were isolated, there was sleep deprivation and a charismatic leader.”

The Rude Mechs’ 1996 debut was staged with cardboard sets and clip lamps in a rented hall. Three years later they landed the lease on 10,000 square feet of cinderblock and tin in east Austin, dubbed it the Off Center and christened the space with an unlikely adaptation: “Lipstick Traces: A Secret History of the 20th Century,” based on rock journalist Greil Marcus‘s mind-bending, plot-free ode to fringe cultural movements. It toured internationally, and blew Mr. Marcus away.

“There was an energy, a flair, a looseness, a daring in their play that I felt I was always reaching for,” Mr. Marcus said in an interview. “For me their production was the completion of the book.”
“The Method Gun” was the Rude Mechs’ first play to receive significant development support, including grants from the Creative Capital Foundation and the MAP Fund. It was hatched at the Orchard Project, a theater retreat in the Catskills where company members began to build the Stella Burden myth and formulate the fictional Approach. In one series of workshops members masterminded their own training methods and put their colleagues through the paces. It was intense.

“At some point one of us just sort of had a tantrum and screamed and got up and left the room,” Ms. Sides recalled. ”We were all pretty sure it was a put-on, but we were 20 percent worried that she was going to quit the company.“

It wasn’t the first time, nor would it be the last. “The collective remains tenuous,” Mr. Lynn said.
The idea for “The Method Gun” stretches back to 2005, when after receiving numerous invitations to teach master classes on the company’s process the co-pads realized they didn’t have a process. Soul searching ensued around notions of structure, self-transformation and what on earth it is that actors do. “I feel like this show is, in a lot of ways, as silly as some of the moments are, pretty naked,” Ms. Sides said. (In one scene some of the actors are thoroughly naked, if you don’t count the balloons tied to the men’s penises.)

Because the Rude Mechs operate as a consensus democracy, with forays into a sort of ardent autocracy, there is no hierarchy, no decider. A reporter is instructed to e-mail the co-pads en masse; a response from one is accompanied by an invitation to the others to confirm or deny. Asked to explain how they make choices, one of the co-pads, Lana Lesley, said, “Sometimes there’s a particular person who’s particularly passionate about a particular thing.”

That’s an arduous way to create, and a rarity, even in experimental theater.

“It’s very, very tricky,” said Anne Bogart, the artistic director of the SITI company in New York and, as co-developer of another performance-training technique, called Viewpoints, something of an expert. Rude Mechs has close ties with SITI, having trained and worked with that company over the years.
“My company is very collaborative, but there has to be, I think, a leader,” said Ms. Bogart. ”Somebody has to say, ‘We’re going over here.’ What Rude Mechs manage to do is nothing short of remarkable.”
The secret to the Rude Mechs’ success? Amnesia. “Putting on a play is hell. But once we get the production up, we forget about how hard it was on all of us to do it and how hard we were on each other,” Ms. Lesley said.

The payoff erases the memory of pain, a version of transcendence that “The Method Gun” captures in its penultimate scene.

Think of Indiana Jones dodging boulders and knives. Onstage. While performing a classic.

A version of this article appeared in print on February 27, 2011, on page AR4 of the New York edition.

Rudes Off Center to Arena Stage to Yale!!!

Oh - we're playing catch up - so it's not gonna be very in-depth, but for the record, here we go:

November / December - CL1000P

We spent the month of November working on our newest production. It doesn't have a title yet, but was called CL1000P - we can't say why. For the month of November we thought about game theory, puzzles, ARGs and pervasive games, and then we put together about 60 minutes of performance that we shared with audience in early December - 12/10/10. That 60 minutes of performance could, if you were interested/noticed, have lead to a few more tasks to be executed at your leisure over the weekend, which would then lead you to a party at The Off Center on Sunday night. What we learned: our puzzles are too easy, it's hard to care about a main character that can't do things for him/herself, when given tasks, most people will execute them right away, and want an instant reward, everyone digs white pleather. We're not sure what we will keep from that workshop, and what we will toss, but we are grateful to the audience members that participated whole-heartedly, and that shared their feedback with us as that is how we move forward.

January - I'VE NEVER BEEN SO HAPPY

INBSH rehearsal @ Arena Stage Photo by Lowell Bartholomee

The month of January was dedicated entirely to I've Never Been So Happy. Back in 2007, were lucky enough to have been selected for the NEA's New Play Development Program grant, hosted by Arena Stage, and that resulted in a booking to be a part of Arena' Stage's New Play Festival showcasing the first-round recipients of that grant. We rehearsed the first three weeks of January and then Arena was generous enough to bring 18 of us up there, and to hire 4 DC violinists to boot, put us in a hotel, give us production staff and rehearsal time, and host a two-night concert-staging of the show. It was the first time this cast had ever worked on a few of the scenes, and the very first time we have ever seen the show from beginning to end. We were able to share a little of the video from Miwa Matreyek and a little of the dance from Dayna Hanson, and every single song and bit of text that exists.

We could not be more grateful to David Dower and Vijay Matthews for insisting that we present what would further the development of the project rather than freak out and try to put on a "show" for the "people" who were all industry the first night and DC audience (including some ambassadors, apparently) the second night. We learned so very much and totally fixed Act I. It's perfect now. Well, it's definitely put us in great shape to premiere in April. We've Never Been So Grateful.

Arena Stage @ night Photo by Lowell Bartholomee

At the New Play Festival, we were in the company of really interesting artists from all over the country (and we all developed a profound crush on Polly Carl - Director of Artistic Development, Steppenwolf Theatre and Editor of HowlRound, the Journal of the American Voices New Play Institute at Arena Stage, who moderated the artist panel):

• Bengal Tiger at the Baghdad Zoo
  by Rajiv Joseph
• I've Never Been So Happy
  created by Rude Mechs
• Agnes Under the Big Top, a tall tale
  by Aditi Brennan Kapil
• Happy End of the World
  by Lloyd Suh
• The Provenance of Beauty
  by Claudia Rankine and The Foundry Theatre

Lana sat on a panel with the amazing artists listed above to talk about our project, and to view clips from the beautiful forthcoming documentary by Rob Levi and Rebecca Halbower - so so nice to see them again! And Kirk participated as a panelist and participant in Arena's concurrent New Play Institute convening titled "From Scarcity to Abundance" which brought in 200 producers, presenters, and art-makers from all over the country to participate in round-table discussions on everything under the sun. You can watch all of them here: http://www.livestream.com/newplay/folder

INBSH @ Arena Stage photo by Stephen Pruitt

You can also follow all of David and Vijay's work inspiring ideas and conversation with artists around the country, on the New Play Blog and check out what's happening all over the country on The New Play Map

THANK YOU, DAVID AND VIJAY AND 

EVERYONE THAT WORKED ON THE CONVENING AND THE FESTIVAL!!

February - METHOD GUN

Kinda... We got home January 30th, got a couple days off, and then went into a five-day dance workshop for INBSH... then a week off, and then we hosted two days of NEFA's National Theater Pilot meetings, while prepping Method Gun for its impending tour.

Method Gun at Dance Theater Workshop photo by Yi Chun-Wu

Dayna Hanson thrilled the dance team by spending a few days with us refining the choreo that we had learned so far, and then creating new movement for Dog's Life and Search Party - couldn't be more fun to perform! As soon as Dayna went back to Seattle, we cleaned up the room, pulled out the big table and welcomed the New England Foundation for the Arts and the advisors and artists that are participating in the first round National Theater Pilot program. We were, as always, glad to see our old friends and thrilled to meet all the new ones. We are looking forward to getting all those folks in the room again and continuing what turned out to be some interesting and pretty honest conversation. We were rehearsing Method Gun at night while they were here, so we couldn't really wow them with our hosting savvy...  but we did host a night for the New Works community to meet all these lovely presenters at Shangrila. Rubber Repertory were the only folks that could fit it into their schedule, but fun was had nonetheless. The NEFA staff also used their time in Austin to arrange a meeting to convey to Austin ensembles the information they need to apply to Round 2.

Yale Rep

Then off to Yale University's No Boundaries Festival!! We fly in on Monday slightly freaked 'cause we open Wednesday night. We go from airport, drop off bags at apartments, get weeks' worth of groceries, and then head straight to the theater to find Sunder Ganglani in his pretty blue hardhat on stage loading in our show. Turns out the world is that stupid small. Sunder was our spotlight operator on Lipstick Traces in 2001 at the Ohio Theater in NYC. And of course Jake and Andrew from Orchard Project and Anne Erbe who we know from those same Lipstick Traces days... so in brief, we had a lot of friends there and they couldn't have made us feel more welcome. Frankly, there's not one single thing they could have done better - from the contract to the marketing to the travel to the housing to the load-in to the house management to the talkback moderating to the master class organizing... we were blown away by our crew - super skilled, funny, on top of it - seriously well done, and done with grace and a smile. Can't stress enough what a smile will buy you with this group of people. For reelz.

And then we somehow managed to come close to filling that big beautiful old mess of a 400 seat theater on our last night - we had super healthy and enthusiastic audience the whole run, and had a blast restaging the play to work in that space, which used to be a big beautiful church.

Massive thanks to Suzanne Appel for being a producorial and organizational genius, to Jennifer Kiger and James Bundy for the hosting us and feting us, and to everyone on the crew for killin' it.

Thanks also to David Chambers and Liz Diamond for bringing great students to play with at our class, and for offering their help. Hopefully we can take you up on it before the semester is out.

Amazing Crew at Yale - yay!!!

Gratitude to the evolutionary biologists for the coming to the show and then proving you don't have to be a theatre artist to appreciate it, and for the behind the scenes tour some of us were privy to, and we hope we can find a way to work with you all!

Overall, Yale - we hope we'll see you again soon. That was well done and loads of fun.


We do all very much still blame you for Bush, just fyi.

Off to DTW.