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Performance dates: June 6, 7, 8, 2002 Performance venue: Linesight Theatre |
bash: latterday plays
"Bash" was first presented on June 24, 1999, in a widely praised
production starring Calista Flockhard, Paul Rudd, and Ron Eldard. A Los
Angeles revival of this production, featuring the same cast, was filmed
for Showtime television. In "Medea Redux",
a young woman (Karen Wild) tells of her complex and ultimately tragic
relationship with her English teacher. In "A Gaggle Of Saints",
a young Mormon couple (Nathan Boren and Amber Malott) separately recounts
the violent events of an anniversary weekend in New York City. And in
“Iphegnia In Orem”, a Utah businessman (Mac Welch) makes a chilling
confession to a stranger in a Las Vegas hotel room.
Order the Bash: Latterday Plays performance videotape.
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After
the sucess of "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll", we chose Neil LaBute's
"Bash: Latterday Plays" as our follow-up production. As with
Theatre On Consignment's debut show, the play was chosen not only for
it's powerful script, but it's simplistic staging and minimal costuming
and casting needs.
All
three are unblinking portraits of the complexities of evil in everyday
life, exhibiting LaBute’s signature raw lyrical intensity (the controversial
playwright/screenwriter also penned In The Company of Men, Your Friends
and Neighbors, and "The Shape of Things"). Taken together,
they present a dark vision of casual atrocity; "matter of fact brutality"
as LaBute puts it, in which understandable individuals with mundane characteristics
inflict pain on themselves and others in the name of prosaic goals with
socially insignificant results. With its unflinching honesty and brutal
realism, “Bash: Latterday Plays” proved to be as disturbing
and thought-provoking as theatre gets.
Theatre
On Consignment's production of "Bash: Latterday Plays" was previewed
at the Lawrence Arts Center in Lawrence, Kansas, on May 31 and June 1,
2002, as part of a collaboration with E.M.U. Theatre. The play made its
Wichita debut on June 6. Jason Bailey directed. Deborah Berry was costume
designer. Sara Evans was stage manager and light board operator, and Earnest
Roberson was sound board operator.