SPAM

By The Cherry Arts
April 14 - 30, 2016

A great theatrical experience... smart, innovative, and delightfully snarky... a funny yet poignant look at a microcosm of our digital lives." - The Huffington Post

​The Cherry Arts presents SPAM, a new multimedia theatre piece based on a modular text by Argentine theater-maker Rafael Spregelburd and starring downtown stalwart Vin Knight of Elevator Repair Service. SPAM hops us out-of-order through thirty days in the life of a lost Italian linguistics professor who has awakened in a cheap hotel room in Malta with a bump on his head and no memories. A copy of Camus’ L’Etranger in his front pocket and the spam e-mails on his laptop are all he has to regain his identity. With a light touch and a dizzying intellect, Spregelburd spins an absurd apocalyptic fantasy that incorporates James Bond and the swirling island of plastic in the Pacific Ocean, wrestling not only with our chronically overstuffed inboxes, but with one man’s attempt at self-rescue in the face of the flood of consumer goods and media items that our late-capitalist civilization is generating with ever more speed.

PERFORMANCES:
Thursday, April 14 at 8 pm - preview
Friday, April 15 at 8 pm - preview
Saturday, April 16 at 8 pm
Tuesday - Saturday, Apr 19 - 23, at 8 pm
Thursday - Saturday, April 28 - 30 at 8 pm

Run time: two hours with one intermission

Text: Rafael Spregelburd
Translator: Jean Graham-Jones
Director: Samuel Buggeln
Performers: Vin Knight and Dominic Russo
Video Design: Lianne Arnold
Lighting Design: Jake DeGroot
Sound Design: M.L. Dogg

Rafael Spregelburd (text) is a playwright, director and movie actor, is one of the most celebrated theatre makers to emerge from Latin America in the last decade. Commissioned plays: Royal Court Theatre (London), Deutsches Schauspielhaus (Hamburg), Akademie Schloß Solitude (Stuttgart), École des Maîtres (Udine, Reims, Coimbra, Liege); invited playwright/director: Schaubüne (Berlin), Theaterhaus (Stuttgart), Chapter Arts Center (Cardiff), Badisches Staatstheater (Karlsruhe), Transquinquennal (Brussels). His works have been translated into over a dozen languages and performed at the National Theatre Studio (London), Théâtre de Chaillot (Paris), Stuttgart Staatstheater, Centro Cultural Helénico (Mexico City), Munich Kammerspiele, Chaos Theater (Vienna) and Frankfurt Schauspiel, and his own translations of Kane, Ravenhill, Berkoff, Shawn, Pinter, and others have been produced throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Awards/prizes: Madrid’s Tirso de Molina world playwrights’ prize, Casa de la Américas in Cuba, Ubú prize in Italy, Barcelona Critics’ Prize, María Guerrero prize, Trinidad Guevara prize, Clarín prize, and numerous others.

SAMUEL BUGGELN (Director) is a Canadian director and translator. He is the Artistic Director of The Cherry, a theatre company based in Brooklyn and Ithaca NY, focused on hyper-local, international, and formally innovative texts. Sam has directed over 20 productions at numerous regional theatres; in NYC he regularly develops new work at the Lark and is an Artistic Associate at the New Ohio Theatre. Works directed there (and at the old Ohio) include Cressida Among the Greeks (Drama Desk nomination); original adaptations of works by Marguerite Duras and Raymond Queneau; the world première of an award-winning play from Bulgaria; and Hater, his unconventional translation of Le Misanthrope. Hater has been produced by two universities and published in The Mercurian, as was Sam’s translation of Marivaux’ The School for Mothers. Sam recently co-translated works by Argentine playwrights Santiago Loza and Rafael Spregelburd, the former of which were developed at the Lark and the latter taught at the Chapin School and Pace University.

Vin Knight (performer) is a long-time member of Elevator Repair Service (2012 Obie for Sustained Excellence) and has appeared in the U.S. and internationally in its productions of Gatz; The Sound and the Fury; The Select (The Sun Also Rises); Arguendo; and Fondly, Collette Richland, among others. Other stage credits include Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (2013 Broadway revival), Marie Antoinette (ART and Yale Rep), Our Man in Havana (Portland Stage), The Temperamentals (Barrow Group) and U.S. Drag (Clubbed Thumb). Film and TV credits include “Younger,” “Louie” and “Robot Stories.”

Photo by Evan Bernardin