PAST
Smoke The New Cigarette
Reviews:
NYTheatre.com: http://www.nytheatre.com/showpage.aspx?s=smok13026
The Happiest Medium: http://thehappiestmedium.com/2011/08/smoke-the-new-cigarette-fringe-festival-2011/
FringeNYC 2011
@ the Bowery Poetry Club (308 Bowery NYC)
Tickets & Info: http://www.fringenyc.org/basic_page.php?ltr=S#SmokeT
Showtimes: August Fri 12 @ 6:45; Sat 13 @ 7; Fri 19 @ 2; Sun 21 @ 12; Thu 25 @ 8:15
This newest production from Inverse Theater – “Best Downtown Theater Company” (NY Press) and “Brooklyn’s Finest Experimentalists” (Time Out NY) – tells the story of The New Cigarette, a one time “freeform chamber punk” band from Gowanus that came and went so fast it basically destroyed everything in its path. Using live music, video, dance and prepared audio, the show explores the outer reaches of so-called “new music” and features a steady cast of Kirk Wood Bromley (three time FringeNYC Award winner), Leah Schrager (Center for Contemporary Art), Beth Griffith (John Cage), Peter Schmitz (Yanira Castro). Different visiting musicians appear nightly (see below). Come smoke The New Cigarette, and then try to walk home.
Crashing musicians:
August 12: Edward Schneider (sax), Pete Selbo (guitar), Constance Cooper (piano)
August 13: Edward Schneider (sax), Pete Selbo (guitar), Constance Cooper (piano)
August 19: The Broadcloth Trio: broadclothtrio.com
August 21: Edward Schneider (sax), Anne Rhodes (voice), Constance Cooper (piano)
August 25: Adam Matlock (accordion/pipe), Nathan Bontrager (cello), Edward Schneider (sax)
Audio & sound mastering by John Gideon
Stage managed by Bettina Warshaw
Only freeform chamber punk kills earworms
Hear some songs by clicking on links in the right hand column.
What they’ve said about Inverse/Bromley:
“Brooklyn’s finest experimentalists” – Time Out NY
“Best downtown theater company” – NY Press
“Perfect” – The New Yorker
“Some of the most crafted, interesting stuff in the New York theater” – Robert Lopez, Tony Award-winning composer of Avenue Q and Book of Mormon
“Theatre at its best” – TalkingBroadway.com
“Stoppard squeal, and set your pen to squirm! / Bromley would your match be, term for term.” – The Village Voice
“The beloved bard of downtown theater.” – New York Magazine
“Kirk’s writing is some of the most crafted, interesting stuff in the New York theater. And it’s almost as much fun to read his plays as it is to see them — he’s one of the few playwrights whose work can be considered literature.” – Robert Lopez, Tony-Award winning composer of Avenue Q and Book of Mormon
“Kirk Bromley is one of the most intrepid, visionary playwrights working in New York today.” – Greg Kotis, Tony-Award winning composer of Urinetown
“Very impressive! A nonstop parade of puns, tweaked aphorisms, and linguistic gymnastics…a barrage of jokes that hit more than they miss.” and…”It sparkles and shines. It rants and raves. Its language is sublime.” and “Full of lyricism.” – The New York Times
“Near perfect!”…“Bromley writes with witty bite and bawdy flair …a wonderful blend of wordsmithing and wackiness.” The Los Angeles Times
“Shakespeare on mushrooms!”…“So many quippy, quotable lines, they fell off my notepad.”…”a bona-fide modern classic.” – LA Weekly
“Genius…as stimulating visually as it is intellectually…the banter, reflection, and fantasy in his text possess all the vitality and zaniness of 120 actors” and “Startlingly clever and wise; in comparison, all prose plays seem facile.” – Backstage
“Poignant and thrilling…egregiously absurd…the inspired blocking and choreography keep things lively”…”The Verse Play Champion”…“The Vanguard Versifier!” – The Village Voice
“Remarkably intelligent… complex…witty…could be on a comparative Shakespeare class syllabus”…“An overflowing smorgasbord of verbiage and imagination”…”The Best Musical in the Fringe!”…”an uncommonly talented cast”…”a talented up-and-comer.” – Time Out NY
“Bromley is beyond reproach.” – Show Business
“The best play on London’s stages.” – BBC
“Theatre at its best” and “Fiercely political…shattering and unsettling…a celebration of excess…a post-apocalyptic anti-drug theme park filled with animatronics.” – TalkingBroadway.com
“A quite extraordinarily brilliant piece of theater.” – What’s On London
“A brilliant barrage of wordplay and low comedy…exceptional.” – San Francisco Bay Guardian
“Extraordinary… brilliant…breathtaking…exhilarating”…“Intense originality and passionate intelligence”…”The most important new American play of the season”…“For originality, clarity and depth of vision, humor, and utter humanity, who can match this big-souled poet?”…“If you prize the kind of theatre where language flexes its muscles to challenge your intellect, where pure poetry produces gasp-inducing flights of fancy, where ideas leap ingeniously all over the stage making connections you never quite saw before—then this is the show you will want to see this month.” – NYTheatre.com
“This verse play speaks directly to its audience’s concerns and in its dialect.” – American Theater Magazine
“Great talent! Topnotch! Real flashes of brilliance!” – The New York Sun
“Immensely imaginative.” – offoffonline