Pig Iron Theatre Visits Utah State

Pig Iron Theatre Company journeys to Utah State University for three performances of “Chekhov Lizardbrain,”a quirky mixture of science and theatre. 

“Chekhov Lizardbrain” is on the Morgan Theatre stage on the university campus Feb. 21 and 22. Tickets are $10 for limited, reserved seating and are available by calling 435-797–8022. Curtain time for each production is 7:30 p.m. The production contains strong language and viewer discretion is advised. Children under 8 are not admitted, and an adult must accompany children under 13.

 

The setting for “Chekhov Lizardbrain” is part laboratory and part vaudeville, and the performance careens between dances, perception experiments and full-throttle hilarity. The four award-winning performers, Quinn Bauriedel, Geoff Sobelle, James Sugg and Dito van Reigersberg, present a series of highly physical numbers springing from disparate regions of the brain.

 

Kevin Doyle, who leads the visiting artist program in the Theatre Arts Department at Utah State, partnered with the theatre department and the Marie Eccles Caine Foundation in convincing Pig Iron to come to Utah to present the contemporary work.

 

“Pig Iron Theatre of Philadelphia was highly recommended,” said Doyle. “This is an explosive theater troupe that creates its own work and has won multiple awards.”

 

“We began with neuroscience and ended up speaking in tongues,” said director Dan Rothenberg. “When we began this process, I thought it might be difficult to find interesting material in the absence of the uniquely human skills of imagining the future, having two emotions at once, and logical argument. It turns out that everything we truly care about springs from these deeper, darker regions of the brain.”

 

The performance draws in part from Paul MacLean’s “Triune Brain Theory.” MacLean noticed that when the human brain is dissected and the neocortex pulls away, there is a “paleomammalian” layer beneath it, a brain that looks almost identical to a pig’s brain or a dog’s brain. If one continues to cut deeper into the brain, one finds a “lizard brain” in the form of the human brain stem.

 

Pig Iron’s four-man performance is loosely based on Anton Chekhov’s “Three Sisters,” and Pig Iron pulls from the Russian dramatist and doctor’s stories of social convention and territorial struggle in a decidedly 21st-century update of Chekhov’s quest to unravel the absurdities of human behavior.

 

Chekhov practiced medicine throughout his career, and his works often feature doctors and scientists in search of a deeper truth about life and love.

 

“Medicine is my lawful wife,” said Chekhov. “Literature is my mistress.”

           

Doyle said the visit by the troupe is invaluable to the USU theatre students who are so far removed from the professional world in Cache Valley. The group will offer classes and lecture and also present a daily workshop in the LeCoq style of physical movement and improvisation. LeCoq is a relatively new physical theater approach catching fire in training programs across the United States and Europe.

           

The City Paper in Philadelphia calls the production “distinctly ‘Pig Iron’ — physical and funny, moments of startling visual clarity and emotional intensity … a surprising success, a beautifully realized but abstract meditation … an indefinable yet fascinating whole.” According to The Philadelphia Weekly, “Chekhov Lizardbrain” is “a bold new work that show’s Philly’s most adventurous company has lost none of its zeal for theatrical exploration … With the experimental ‘Lizardbrain, Pig Iron takes more risks than most companies do in an entire season … Pig Iron’s examination of the human mind is never less than captivating.”

 

Pig Iron Theatre Company was founded in 1995 and has rapidly become known as a unique, innovative voice in American theatre and an audience favorite at the Live Arts Festival in Philadelphia. The ensemble’s physical precision, lyrical writing and exuberant productions have earned them 36 Barrymore Award Nominations in the past eight years; five grants from the National Endowment for the Arts; a Total Theatre Award at the Edinburgh Fringe; and an OBIE Award, Off-Broadway’s highest honor. Pig Iron’s work has toured to theaters and festivals in London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Boston, Atlanta, Ireland, Poland, Ukraine, Brazil, Romania, Germany and Italy.

 

For more information on “Chekhov Lizardbrain,” visit www.lizardbraintheplay.com.

 

Contact: Jeremy Gordon, 435-797-1500