Frankenstein (Mortal Toys) is a full-length miniature spectacle based on a distilled adaptation of Mary Shelley's evocative novel. Frankenstein (Mortal Toys) follows the haunted journey of Victor Frankenstein and the startling monster created by his own hands. The menacing beauty of the arctic and the high Alps surround the distraught scientist as he confronts the loneliness and rage of his alienated creature. Performed within a miniature proscenium frame, Frankenstein (Mortal Toys) uses puppets based on 18th Century American portrait paintings and lush sets inspired by Romantic-era landscape painting. Shadow and film sequences emerge from this central set to provide windows into the souls of the man and his monster. The piece reveals a vivid world of melancholy, loss and existential longing.
Frankenstein (Mortal Toys) features Severin Behnen's hypnotic and live score for accordion, organ and toy piano. Performers include Chris Payne, Dana Wilson, Eli Presser, Sarah Brown, Susan Simpson and Janie Geiser. Lighting Design is by John Eckert and Jeanette Yew, with shadow puppets by Leah Chun.
Janie Geiser (co-director, designer) is an internationally recognized visual/theater artist and filmmaker, whose work is known for its sense of mystery, detailed evocation of self-contained worlds and strength of design. Geiser has made a significant contribution to the field of contemporary puppet theater for two decades through her innovative multi-media performances. Geiser's films have been screened at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and at numerous festivals including the New York Film Festival, Toronto Film Festival and the Rotterdam International Film Festival. Geiser's performance works have been presented at Arts at St Ann's, The Public Theater, The Walker Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, PS 122, MOCA, Redcat, the Museum of Jurassic Technology and the Velaslavasay Panorama. She has been recognized with an Obie and a Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as funding from the NEA, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Henson Foundation, Creative Capital, Pew/TCG and others. She is a recipient of a Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship for her film Magnetic Sleep, which will premiere in Los Angeles in early 2008. She is a Co-Director Automata, a Los Angeles nonprofit.
Susan Simpson (co-director, designer) is an experimental theater artist and filmmaker. Her work often involves intricate marionettes and unusual film projection. Simpson's puppet plays have been presented in New York, Seattle and Los Angeles including numerous times at The Museum of Jurassic Technology and The Velaslavasay Panorama. She is on the faculty of the Cal Arts School of Theater and a Co-Director of Automata. Simpson is also a founding member of a performance collective known as The Little Fakers, creators of the marionette serial, Sunset Chronicles, which has appeared at venues across Los Angeles for the past four years. Her most recent film Boll Weevil Days was shown at film festivals nationally and internationally including The Rotterdam International Film Festival. She has received grants from the Durfee Foundation, The California Community Foundation, Creative Capital, Multi-Arts Production Fund and is the 2002 recipient Center Theater Group's Richard E. Sherwood Award. In 2007, under the auspices of Automata, Simpson opened The Manual Archives, a micro marionette theater and exhibition space devoted to the presentation of newly discovered and invented folklore of Los Angeles.
Erik Ehn (script) is the author of numerous plays including The Saint Plays, No Time Like the Present, Wolf at the Door, Tailings, Beginner, Ideas of Good and Evil, Winterland, Pretty, and from the Genocycle: Heavenly Shades of Night are Falling, Maria Kizito and Drunk, Still Drinking. A Graduate of New Dramatists, Ehn is co-founder, alongside Lisa Bielawa, of the Tenderloin Opera Company in San Francisco and also an artistic associate of San Francisco's Theatre of Yugen. He is a co-founder of the RAT movement, an international network of alternative theaters. Ehn was a recipient of the Alpert Award in the Arts in 2002 and the Whiting Writers Award in 1997. He is also currently Dean of the Cal Arts School of Theater.
Severin Behnen (score) takes an eclectic approach to music making, from composing and performing for theatrical productions to working with jazz, folk, and bluegrass groups, as well as classical and new music ensembles. Between 1990 and 2000 he was a composer, musical director and performer at In the Heart of the Beast Puppet and Mask Theatre in Minneapolis, and toured with them to South Korea. His 2003 compositions Make the Center Glow and Brilliant Leaves were selected for the opening of the Redcat Theater in Disney Hall in Los Angeles. In 2004 he composed and performed in Bari Gongju, a Korean mask and puppet play which premiered in Los Angeles. He was the composer and performer with Automota for the screening of Magical Projections: A Screening of Early Trick Films. Behnen regularly performs with and composes for Tango Nuevo, a quartet that he co-founded in 2003 and is currently the recipient of a Dissertation Year Fellowship from UCLA focusing on the development and testing of various types of musical notation in an interactive motion graphics environment.
Automata is a Los Angeles nonprofit organization committed to the creation, presentation and preservation of puppet and object theater, experimental film, pre-cinematic attractions and other lost or neglected forms. Formed in 2004 by Susan Simpson and Janie Geiser, Automata presents intimate performances of original work, screenings of contemporary and historical films, lectures, installations and exhibitions in a variety of public and private spaces in the Los Angeles area.
Frankenstein (Mortal Toys) was developed through HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program led by Basil Twist. The Dream Music Puppetry Program is part of HERE's Artist Residency Program (HARP) which provides development, commissions and full production support. Since 1993, the OBIE-winning HERE Arts Center has been a premier arts organization in NYC and a leader in the field of new, hybrid performance work. Under the artistic leadership of Kristin Marting and the executive leadership of Marting and Producing Director Kim Whitener, HERE has served over 11,000 emerging to mid-career artists developing work that does not fit a conventional programming agenda. Work presented at HERE has garnered 11 OBIE awards, an OBIE grant for artistic achievement, three Drama Desk nominations, two Berrilla Kerr Awards, two NY Innovative Theatre Awards, an Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. HERE proudly supports artists at all stages in their careers through full productions, artist residency programs, festivals and subsidized performance and rehearsal space. Work at HERE is curated based on the strength and uniqueness of the artist’s vision. In 2005, with the support of FJC, a foundation of donor advised funds, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the City of New York, HERE purchased its long-time home as part of a five-year "Secure HERE"s Future" campaign and is working toward completing exciting renovations by June 2008. When finished, HERE will continue to offer audiences and artists a comfortable, eclectic and artistic haven for the finest of emerging art in its new and improved café/gallery and two performance spaces.
Frankenstein will play January 8 - January 19 at HERE Arts Center (145 Sixth Avenue, one block below Spring Street) as follows: January 8 -14, Tuesday - Monday @ 7pm with matinee performances on Saturday and Sunday at 2pm. January 16-19, Wednesday - Saturday at 7pm with a matinee performance on Saturday 2pm. Tickets are $20.00/Student tickets are $15. Purchases can be made online at www.here.org , or by calling (212) 352-3101, or at the HERE Box Office (4pm until curtain on performance days). For more info, visit http://www.here.org/.
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