AT HOME WITH THE HUMORLESS BASTARD

By Annie Wilson
March 29 – 31, 2018

Philly-based choreographer/performer Annie Wilson returns to JACK with At Home with the Humorless Bastard: an exploration of personal and collective grief that shifts the audience’s perspective by bringing them onstage and casting them in the dance. The show involves water, waterfalls, wombs, grief, gravity, glitter, charles manson, chaos, the olympics, natural disasters, encephalopathy, ambition, guilt, shame, violence, relational aesthetics, the politics of mental illness, heroin, cell death, menstruation, banshees, scotland, keening, booze, magic, money, the eagles, tribalism, erica’s sports bar, hopelessness, despair, “sexy nihilism”, spatial anything, reproduction, representation, and the cuisine in hospitals. Wilson is the only performer but she is joined, as always, by the army of dead people that she loves.

COLLABORATORS:
Annie Wilson, creator and performer
Rebecca Wright, director
Lisi Stoessel, set design
Adriano Shaplin, sound design
Andrew Thompson, lighting design
Dramaturg Plus: Miguel Gutierrez
Creative Collaborator: Alex Torra
Stage Management: Nicole Labadie-Bartz

Annie Wilson makes performances in order to practice survival. Her work has been presented by Fringearts, Bryn Mawr College, JACK, thirdbird, the Center for Performance Research, Mascher, SmokeyScout Productions, and <fidget>. Most recently, At Home with the Humorless Bastard premiered December 2016 at FringeArts. Other recent work includes: Lovertits, At the Gloaming with the Hipster Shaman, and Solo. She is a 2017 Pew Fellow, a 2015 Independence Fellow, a proud incubated artist at Headlong, and an Applied Mechanics Associated Artist. Some artists she has recently worked with: Meg Foley, Nichole Canuso, and Almanac. She bartends Sunday nights at Lucky 13 Pub in South Philly and is assistant property manager at Simpson Mid-town. www.theanniewilson.com

Rebecca Wright is a Philadelphia-based director-creator, and the artistic director of Applied Mechanics, with whom she has created ten original immersive plays. Recent credits include Articles of Faith with Cynthia Hopkins, Peaceable Kingdom with Orbiter 3, Close Music for Bodies with Michael Kiley and FringeArts, Marcus/Emma at InterAct Theater Company, Emma Goidel's The Gap at Azuka, Kafka’s The Metamorphosis and Shaw’s St. Joan with Quintessence Theater Group, Sarah Flood in Salem Mass at The Flea, Sophie Gets the Horns with The Riot Group, and FEED and We Are Bandits with Applied Mechanics.

Adriano Shaplin is a sound designer, playwright, and performer. Recent designs include At Home with the Humorless Bastard (Annie Wilson), I Am Not My Motherland (Orbiter 3), Magic Wand (Riot Group/Headlong Dance Theater), Saint Joan (Quintessence Theatre Group), It’s So Learning (Berserker Residents), Hello! Sadness! (Mary Tuomanen), Bortle 8 (Chris Davis), The Metamorphosis (Quintessence Theatre Group), Lovertits (Annie Wilson), (some) Love & (some) Information (Headlong Dance), We Are Bandits (Applied Mechanics), My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (The Flea), and Sophie Gets the Horns (Riot Group) www.adrianoshaplin.com

Andrew Thompson (Lighting Designer) is a Philadelphia based designer and technician. Previous work with Annie includes the original run of Bastard at FringeArts and Lovertits. Other recent credits - Abbot Adam: None, THE TOP (No Face Performance Group), Breathe Smoke (Orbiter 3), The Shame Symposium (Chelsea & Magda), 901 Nowhere Street (Sam Tower + Ensemble), Let The Dog See The Rabbit (Lightning Rod Special). http://athompsondesign.com/

Lisi Stoessel is a hybrid theatre artist exploring the aesthetics and transformative potential of the moving body in space. She has performed and created sets and puppets for many companies along the east coast of the US and beyond. Recently Lisi was nominated for a Baker Artist Award, and awarded a 2017 Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant for her immersive theatre production, H.T. Darling's Incredible Musaeum. Lisi is an Artistic Associate of Submersive Productions (Baltimore, MD) and Core Collaborator of feminist punk rock dance band Tia Nina (Washington, DC). She holds her MFA in Scene Design from the University of Virginia.

Nicole Labadie-Bartz is a Philadelphia based Stage Manager. Since graduating from The University of the Arts in 2016, they have stage managed with Philadelphia theatre companies Applied Mechanics (Chronotope, FEED, Bandits), Orbiter 3 (I Am Not My Motherland, Peaceable Kingdom), The Bearded Ladies (Marlene and the Machine) and New Paradise Laboratories (Gumshoe). Other favorites: Hello! Sadness! (Mary Tuomanen), Close Music for Bodies (Michael Kiley with FringeArts Curated Festival), Me First: An Autobiographical Comedy about Dying (Jason Rosenberg), Destiny Estimate (MJ Kaufman).

This production is supported by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.