The Nonsense Company
Storm Still
“After hearing what composer Rick Burkhardt can make from singing wineglasses and a scraping fork, we feel better prepared for the exquisite musicality of his text. Elegantly weird… virtuosic performers.”
– Helen Shaw, Time Out New York
“Thrilling performances… spiked with intense shots of satire. Through precise delivery and the sheer force of their concept and subject material, captivate their audience even as they disorient it.”
– Ronni Reich, Backstage New York
“Shows that expand the perspectives and materials of theater, twitching from one vantage point to another, from ghastly grandeur to snips of irony.”
– Scott Gordon, The Onion AV Club
Outside an abandoned school, a war rages. Inside, three kids have been performing an unsupervised rendition of King Lear for years. Further inside, the mad King debates the purpose of theater with his Fool, a licensed therapist.
The Nonsense Company, based in Brooklyn, NY performs new and innovative works of contemporary music and theater, with an emphasis on the musical use of speech in estranged contexts and the application in theater of techniques more commonly associated with music. The Company’s name is borrowed from Franz Schubert’s ensemble, die Unsinn Gesellschaft, who with radically spare resources spawned a revolution in the music and poetry of the nineteenth century.
The company’s current members, Rick Burkhardt (of Three Pianos), Andy Gricevich, and Ryan Higgins, have worked and studied with composers and performers such as Steve Schick, Chaya Czernowin, Red Fish Blue Fish, John Fonville, Herbert Bruen, The Performers’ Workshop Ensemble, Ed Harkins, and Brian Ferneyhough, as well as with theater directors Rachel Chaivkin, Matt Wilder, David Wheeler, and Stefan Novinski. Their programs emphasizing the works of startling emerging composers have received repeated invitations to theater and music festivals throughout the United States, Mexico, and Europe.
Made possible with commissioning support from Performance Space 122 and the Jerome Foundation.
NY PREMIERE | THEATRE
Saturday, February 19 – Sunday, March 6, 2011
Wednesday – Saturday 8PM
Sunday 6PM