Hand2Mouth Theater
PERFORMING AT SOMEDAY
Saturday, Feb 17 › 8pm › $10
Hand2Mouth Theater, Fever Theater, Iretsu, with DJ Brokenwindow
Three troupes at the forefront of experimental theater have claimed this evening to present three interrelated new works. Part of the scene of performers that is wildly cross-pollinating in the upper floors of the Portland Art Center, this triumverate is united by their fusion of physical and comic stage traditions with the stylized speech and staging of postmodernism. Strictly 21st-century, evocative at once of the oldest traditions (commedia, kabuki, clown) and the newest (Brecht, Wilson, Foreman). Earlier works by this approximate collaborative assembly include the musical play Mitlaufer, and the performative installation Catacombs. What will they call this one, I wonder?
About the artist
Hand2Mouth Theater is a nonprofit Portland, OR based theatre ensemble that uses heightened physicality, a cappella song and poetic imagery to create original performance. Praised by the Willamette Week for their "capacity for both wild imagination and careful precision," Hand2Mouth is equally adept at creating large-scale outdoor spectacles and intimate chamber pieces. Hand2Mouth has performed throughout the U.S., and in town squares, street festivals and villages in Europe, to great acclaim.
Hand2Mouth Theatre was founded in 2000 by Artistic Director Jonathan Walters following extensive study with street theatre troupe Teatr Biuro Podrozy in Poland. He began working in Portland, Oregon with performers interested in a physical, imagistic approach to the creation of theatre, and out of this work an ensemble formed, incorporating elements of mask, puppetry, clown, stilt-walking, acrobatics, and vocal and song work. Hand2Mouth has premiered nine original works of theatre since that time, and has performed throughout Oregon, Washington and California, as well as Central and Eastern Europe.
Hand2Mouth focuses on two types of performances: outdoor spectacles—which use stilts, masks and song to tell imagistic and poetic stories—and indoor chamber pieces, which work on a more intimate scale. Hand2Mouth currently has four permanent company members (Julie Hammond, Faith Helma, Erin Leddy, and Jonathan Walters), each of whom traveled to Poland in summer 2005 to create and tour the outdoor theatre performance BLUE, co-produced by Teatr Stacja Szamocin and Hand2Mouth Theater.
In the last two years Hand2Mouth has received financial support from Oregon's Regional Arts and Culture Council, Metro, the Trust for Mutual Understanding and the U.S. Embassy in Warsaw. Hand2Mouth also is part of the 2005/06 Cultural Leadership Program administered by RACC, and Artistic Director Jonathan Walters is a current recipient of the 2005-07 TCG/National Endowment for the Arts Career Development Program for Directors.
Performer links
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