by Roland Schimmelpfennig
GTA’s Road Theater USA embarks on a hilarious theatrical adventure – or misadventure – as five actors (three German and two from the U.S.), two Austrian video artists and the GTA team go cross-country in a tricked out school bus, travelling from New York to Los Angeles in search of the “American Dream” and touring the world premiere of Start Up, a black comedy written specifically for GTA by Roland Schimmelpfennig, Germany’s most produced contemporary playwright.
Young Germans come to the U.S. to find their fortunes: their million euro idea? To sell German culture. Of course, that is exactly what GTA’s Road Theater USA is attempting as it travels across the country presenting this fast-paced farce.
A video team documents this ambitious road trip, then mixes the video material collected up to that point live during each performance where it is projected on set. This always new and expanded dramatic “Road Journal” will interact with the production of the play Start Up as background and stage design. The audience is treated to a unique, riotous and ever-changing performance-event, a combination of the filmed “reality” of the tour and the theatrical “fiction” of the Schimmelpfennig play.
The trip will take the troupe from New York through 24 cities in the U.S. over 7 weeks. They will travel 6,000 miles and perform in 24 locations – including sleepy villages like Edmonton, Kentucky, Las Vegas, the original sin city, melting pots like El Paso on the Texas/Mexico border and even an actual ghost town, Death Valley Junction – until they reach Los Angeles on the Pacific Ocean.
Running time: 75 minutes.
GTA’s Road Theater USA Start Up is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation and the ERP Fund (Transatlantic Program) of the Federal Ministry of Economics and Labour.
On Saturday October 13 NY SALON will be holding a post-show debate and conversation.
U.S. Premiere
October 7-14, 2007
(no performance Monday, October 8)
Tuesday- Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays at 4:30 p.m.
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)