Tag: Theatre

Pittsburgh, PA –  What if your ability to make personal connections helped you unlock a bigger story? Mingled, Uncumber Theatrics’ newest experimental immersive work, invites audiences to discover hidden connections and add their own stories to the mix.

Participants will be asked to “dress to impress” as they assume the role of speed-daters in this interactive experience mimicking the conventions of a speed-dating event. Patrons will be guided to form deeper connections with friends and strangers through intimate one-on-one interactions and challenging “ice-breaker” questions. Participants may not know at first which of their fellow minglers are actors and which are audience members like themselves. But as the evening progresses, the perceptive will notice that not everybody is who they seem. And while they attempt to uncover these secrets, patrons may discover few of their own.

Building off of the Stony Brook University study that developed 36 questions designed to foster deeper intimacy in dating couples, Mingled melds these bonding techniques with cold-reading and gamification elements in order to bring audience members into a story.  Part improvisation and part mentalism, this highly experimental micro-theater experience will change night after night, influenced by the information and interactions supplied by patrons.  While some participants who openly engage in the unfolding story will be rewarded, others may only brush the surface of the underlying narrative.

“Only open hearts can unlock this mystery,” says Creative Director and Story Creator Ayne Terceira, whose other immersive work includes serving as a cast member of immersive experience STRATA (Bricolage) and creative contributor to fear experience The Basement (ScareHouse), as well as Uncumber’s previous fully sold-out runs Her Things (Uncumber) and Prof. Eldritch’s Asylum for Uncanny & Extraordinary Women (Uncumber with Devious Maid Productions) . “Mingled invites everyone to form real connections with both actors and audience members alike. If you walk away with the sense you engaged deeply with a stranger, that is enough. But if you are brave enough to take hold of our outstretched hand, we will take you on a ride.”

Because of the intimate nature of this production, a limited number of tickets are available for each performance.  Mingled will open on July 31st at 8pm at ModernFormations Gallery in Bloomfield. The run will feature five performances: July 31st at 8pm, August 1st at 3pm & 8pm and August 2nd at 3pm & 8pm.  Tickets can be purchased online at the Uncumber Theatrics website (www.uncumbertheatrics.com). Depending on online sales, tickets may be available at the door for $20. In light each of the previous Uncumber Theatrics shows selling out, reservations are encouraged. Shows will be open to the public and are suitable for adults ages 21+.

Mingled is the third production of Uncumber Theatrics, under the creative direction of Ayne Terceira and the technical direction of Aaron Tarnow (whose experience in innovative, site-specific theatre includes two seasons as the Technical Director of Quantum Theatre). Uncumber Theatrics’ mission is to push the limits of improvisational actors and improvisational techniques to create new and innovative staged theatrical work. The cast therefore is drawn heavily from Pittsburgh’s booming improvisational community.

By Mike “Buzz” Buzzelli, ‘Burgh Vivant

On the coast of County Kerry, on the desolate cliffs of Southwest Ireland, an old man (John Henry Steelman) writhes in his deathbed in the final full day of life. Enter a thatcher, Peadar Minogue (Byron Anthony), who wanders in looking for work. He finds far more than he bargained for in John Brendan Keane’s gloomy, lyrical love story, “Sharon’s Grave.”

Minogue is immediately smitten with Trassie Conlee (Karen Baum), a mere slip of a lass, tending to her dying da. The beautiful young woman is so overwhelmed in her familial duties, caring for her sick father and looking after her younger brother Neelus (Alec Silberblatt), she doesn’t even notice the way Peadar looks at her…with fire in his eyes.

Meanwhile, Trassie’s brother spent the day cliff side, overlooking the Atlantic, staring into a churning abyss below, the eponymous Sharon’s Grave.  Neelus recounts the myth of Sharon and her crippled handmaiden and how the two perished in the dark waters below. Hint: The Gaelic folktale features prominently in the play, and not just metaphorically.

As Donal Conlee lay dying, his brother’s children, Dinzie (James FitzGerald) and Jack (J. Alex Noble) arrive to lay a claim to the Conlee domicile. Dinzie is a ruinous wreck of a human, deformed physically on the outside with a hump and useless legs. It doesn’t take long to learn that the crooked cousin far more twisted on the inside; devious, maniacal, murderous. Without the luxury of a wheelchair, he rides on his brother’s back, treating the sturdier Jack like his pet pony.

Dinzie terrorizes and taunts his cousins in the Conlee clan. Convinced that if he had a home to call his own, he can woo a woman to be his wife. His desperation and villainy grow once the Banshee wails and Donal shuffles off this mortal coil. His master plan involves institutionalizing feeble-minded Neelus and exiling Trassie to his parent’s home. However, Peadar’s timely arrival has thrown a wrench into his wicked plans.

Dinzie hires Pats Bo Bwee (Martin Giles), a Celtic Shaman, blustering about like Prospero with a hammer, to assess Neelus’s mind, and institutionalize the boy.  He gleefully harasses the lad.

Dinzie’s determination to take over the Conlee abode grows, and he vows to have the house by any means necessary. Villainy ensues.

PICT Classic Theater has a reputation for excellence, and the actors do a remarkable job, but special attention must be made.

FitzGerald is magnificent as the heinous hunchback, spewing vile epithets, swilling whiskey, and brandishing a dagger. He’s ready to slice anyone who stands in his way. FitzGerald plays against type, normally cast as comic relief. In “Sharon’s Grave,” the amiable actor is demanding, desperate and despicable. It’s a stunning performance from a man who played meek and mousy a merely a month ago in “How the Other Half Loves.” The juxtaposition is hilarious. He is so utterly immersed in his character, you want to rise up from your seat in the audience and smack him in the face with a shovel.

Giles is electrifying as the shamanistic charlatan. It’s another superb performance in a terrific cast.

To be fair, FitzGerald and Giles have the most boisterous and bellicose roles in the play, and they give blustery, full-bodied performances.

PICT keeps moving the bar higher with visual design. Johnmichael Bohach’s set is stunning. It is a rustic, earthy, unsophisticated and ancient Irish home plopped down in the middle of the Henry Heymann as if it landed there in Dorothy Gale’s Tornado. Moody lighting and sound design, from Keith A. Truax and Elizabeth Atkinson, respectively, add to the visual experience.  Director Aoife Spillane-Hinks makes great use of the sound and space.

If you can get past the off-putting title, “Sharon’s Grave” is actually a delight.

(“Sharon’s Grave” runs till August 1 at the Henry Heymann Theater, inside the Stephen Foster Memorial Theater, 4301 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213)

-MB.