More Details About Project Wonderland
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Website: http://www.bootlegtheater.com
Bootleg is proud to announce Project Wonderland, a phantasmagorical evocation of Lewis Carroll's hallucinatory classic, Alice in Wonderland. Visionary director and adaptor Robert Prior is making his Bootleg debut with this expanded exploration of a piece that has had many incarnations and was originally developed by his company, Fabulous Monsters.
In this production, for the first time, Prior integrates a full musical score, original choreography and puppetry. He joins forces with renaissance man Ken Roht, who will be choreographing dances specific to Project Wonderland. Indira Stefanianna, a part of Project Wonderland from the beginning, has created an entirely original score. Also on board is the brilliant puppet artist Lynn Jeffries (Shadow puppets in Rogue Artists’ The Gogol Project and Set Design for Cornerstone’s Someday, both at Bootleg); for the first time Project Wonderland will have the puppets it deserves. Teresa Shea, a many time collaborator of Mr. Prior, takes on the Herculean task of designing and building both the costumes and the set. Rounding out the design team is Brandon Baruch on lighting design (99¢ Only Calendar Girl Competition and Wildboy ’74 with Bootleg) and John Ballinger on sound design (Ovation nominated Co-Composer of 99¢ Only Calendar Girl Competition.)
Project Wonderland is an homage to the mystery, power and beauty of a strange literary masterpiece and a tribute to its author, the enigmatic Reverend Charles Dodgson, better known to the world through his nom de plume, Lewis Carroll.
In its action, the Reverend is transformed during a vision quest into his own creation, Alice, and thrown down his own rabbit hole to confront the bizarre characters of his own psyche. Working in close proximity to the text, Project Wonderland creates a bizarrely outrageous dream-like- ever-morphing carnival of wonder, mystery, grotesquery and mischief. A celebration of the theater’s potential for magic and the potency of the storyteller’s art.
Cast includes: Michael Bonnabel, Matt Davis, Shar Gabriel, Lon Haber, Jessica Hanna, Lucie McGrane, Henry McMillan, Lori Scarlett, Raul Staggs, Daniele Watts, Silvie Zamora, Jabez Zuniga.
Bootleg is a space for art. A place where Los Angeles artists of all mediums can come together and create new, exciting theatrical events. In this 1930’s warehouse (formerly a bra factory), we have been producing theater since 2000. We produce brave, boundary-pushing, artistically outstanding new work. Work that is exciting to many different kinds of people, serving as a reflection of the city we live in.
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ROBERT PRIOR: Playwright, Director, and Designer Robert Prior creates multi-disciplinary theater works inspired by world mythology and literature. He has a lifetime's fascination with Asian Theater, most notably reflected in his piece RAMAYANA 2K, a contemporary re-telling of the ancient Hindu myth, incorporating traditional and electronic music, dance and acrobatics. Ramayana 2k won several LA Weekly awards and toured to La MaMa in New York where it received five Drama Desk nominations. In preparing for that piece Robert and choreographer Stephen Hues traveled extensively in East Asia. Fifteen years ago Robert founded Fabulous Monsters Performance Group and has created over twenty pieces with them, including adaptations of the Gilgamesh myth, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Grimm’s Fairy Tales, Alice in Wonderland and the aforementioned Ramayana. The early work of the company was concerned with gender roles and the relationship of contemporary "drag" performance with ancient trans-gendered shamanism. His most recent work was SHADOWDANCE IN TOYLAND which integrated shadow puppetry in telling fairy tales. He also directed a major revival of the musical HAIR in Toronto. In addition to Peony Pavilion he is currently at work on a production of MEDEA to take place in the fall of 2010 in a cave outside Athens.
Project Wonderland will be produced for Bootleg by Alicia Hoge-Adams, Corbett Barklie and Jessica Hanna, the producers of last year’s 99¢ Only Calendar Girl Competition and Stranger.
