Looking for the latest on Philadelphia’s theater scene? Metro has you covered.
Pig Iron Theatre Co.
The creativity at the Obie and Barrymore Award-winning Pig Iron Theatre Co. is always in motion, creating new work through its Pig Iron School, and this month, its presentation of the Catapult Festival of original, full-length, graduating MFA program student devised works on Dec. 9 and 10 at The Arts Bank in Philadelphia.
For those yearning to see a full-fledged Pig Iron production, look no further than their collaboration with Daedalus Quartet and visual designer Sebastienne Mundheim — ‘Bartok’s Monster‘ — on Jan. 21, 2024 at Penn Live Arts at Philadelphia’s Annenberg Center.
And on Feb. 7, 2024, Pig Iron holds its annual Smells Like Pig Spirit! at Paprika. Pig Iron Co founder Dito van Reigersberg is back in action as Martha Graham Cracker following an heroic struggle with leukemia over the past year.
“We have been deeply moved by the outpouring of support and love for Dito, and in September, shed some tears of joy when Dito was able to join us again in the rehearsal room and begin to resume teaching cabaret to our grad students,” noted Pig Iron co-founder/co-artistic director Quinn Bauriedel.
“Pig Iron, amazingly, is 28-years-old and was built by a collective of like-minded devisers who liked working together making original works,” added Bauriedel. “Along the way, we realized that we were not too different from a school in that we started with sets of questions, brought those queries into the studio space, trained as an ensemble in a variety of ways – music, movement, improvisation, clowning – and realized that there was a next generation of folks equipped to shake the foundations of the earth beneath us.”
Voila! The Pig Iron School for finding your artistic, performative voice was born in 2011, a 2-year-graduate certificate program that in 2015 partnered with the University of the Arts for a 5-semester, MFA program filled with interactive student-teacher devising. Pig Iron School teaches the art of perplexing and thrilling audiences just as the theater company does on a regular basis.
Pig Iron School’s Catapult Fest’s live interactive “thesis statements” find MFA graduate students such as Alyse James and Mitchell Nease doing collaborative work on stage at the Arts Bank.
“These final projects are modeled after Pig Iron’s own work, something we call “The Island,” which brings about seeds of fresh ideas and existential questions, a test – where there’s no pressure or deadlines – and nothing here is good or bad,” said Bauriedel. “The Class of 2023 is a wonderful bunch of weirdos, all marked by the pandemic and the uncertainty that it brought – uncertainty on so many levels – and this is the group of students that wanted something certain: contact, touch, camaraderie, community and healthy activity after so much isolation and doubt.”
For all things Pig Iron, go to pigiron.org and pigironschool.org
Curio Theatre Company
West Philly’s Curio Theatre Company is opening its 2023-2024 season in an inventive, all-ages fashion by welcoming children and adults to concoct their props and set pieces. Starting on Dec. 6 (until Dec. 30), with its presentation of ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’, Curio’s Makerspace Theatre concept welcomes one-and-all to design and build things that will be used in ‘Jack’ – props, set pieces, even voice recordings, that become part of the production, and help tell the story.
Children and adults will make things for Jack, the Giant and company, which will be moved into the theater space (the Calvary Center for Culture and Community, 4740 Baltimore Ave.), and then watch their vision intertwine with that of playwright, co-founder and Artistic Director Paul Kuhn’s vision and Curio Theatre founding member Aetna Gallagher playing the intrepid Jack.
“We are so excited to bring this interactive and fun show to the kids in our community,” said Kuhn. “Director Mya Flood carefully chose actors who are also educators. They use their expertise in both entertaining and teaching as they move the audience through this experience. And Jack is the first of many plays to come in our new Makerspace theatre program. It is an immersive experience from the moment it starts. When they arrive to see a performance, the children will begin by “making theatre” in the lab… They will have the opportunity to create props, set pieces and voice recordings. They will even color a large cow on wheels. All of these will then be part of the show. We believe that all children benefit not from just watching plays, but from making art. Plus, it’s fun for the whole family.”
For information, dates and tickets, visit curiotheatre.org.
