Imago Theatre Returns With Creature Feature FROGZ
KEENE, NH, 2/14/03 - Responsible for some of the weirdest and wackiest shows ever to play the region, Imago Theatre returns Keene with their latest creature feature, Frogz. The performance marks the third time Imago has played at Keene State College’s Redfern Arts Center on Brickyard Pond. The performance will take place Tuesday, March 11, at 7 p.m.
With Frogz, Imago creates a carnival of the absurd, blending ingenious masks and costumes with biting social satire and astounding pantomime. Enormous slinkies snicker while showing off their supernatural flexibility. Gigantic, red-eyed reptiles ransack the stage and dive into the audience; a strongman strikes up a strange game of catch - with his head, and man-sized penguins partake in a preposterous game of musical chairs.
Ingenious masks, mesmerizing movement, outlandish costumes, and finger- snapping music create a carnival of the absurd. A mysterious worm performs impossible acrobatics. An invisible cat inhabits a giant paper bag. Vaudevillian orbs mischievously infiltrate the audience. This show is filled with creatures whose comical and clever stories provide striking, visual entertainment, whether one is five or 105 years old.
Jerry Mouawad, co-creator with Carol Triffle of Frogz, says, “The show is like going to a zoo and seeing an animal you’ve never seen before. You ask, ‘What is it?’ But never ever ask, ‘Why is it?’”
Frogz is made possible through a corporate sponsorship from The Keene Sentinel with additional funding from the New England Dance Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the six state arts agencies of New England.
Tickets are available through the Brickyard Pond box office, 603-358-2168, or on the web at www.keene.edu/racbp. Prices are $25 and $21 for the general public, $23 and $19 for seniors and KSC faculty and staff, $12 and $10 for Youth 17 and younger, and $5 for KSC students with ID.
Imago Theatre began in 1979 performing exclusively mask theatre in small communities in the Northwest, but it was only six years later that the company’s international touring began. Imago’s explorations of the stage began as a combination of theatre, movement and the visual arts as influenced by renowned theatre master Jacques Lecoq of Paris, France. First working in the realm of physical comedy and mask-theatre, the ensemble progressed toward creating and staging experimental works, original text works and contemporary adaptations of classics.
In 2001 Imago’s Frogz completed a two-week run on Broadway and returned to the New Victory Theatre for a four-week run in May 2002. Triffle and Mouawad have created a theatre company that is one of the most innovative in the U.S.
The ensemble’s ingenuity has manifested itself in numerous stagings including a tilting stage in Jean-Paul Sartre’s No Exit, underground projections of Triffle’s Buffo, a giant, 14-foot metallic wheel for Richard Foreman’s Symphony of Rats, the underwater soliloquies in Triffle’s Oh Lost Weekend, and the matrix puzzle of a set in Mouawad’s House Taken Over.
If you attended Imago’s previous productions you journeyed to some exciting, unusual and fantastic universes. Imago’s work has been seen on national television on several continents with extensive tours to Europe and Asia and throughout North America.
