Monday, October 29, 2007

You Know, For the Kids!


After finishing up work on Isabella, we thought we'd do a quick survey to learn a little bit more about our audience, thus enabling us to better tend to your experimental theatre needs. We learned a lot of interesting stuff, not least of which was this:

3. In which one of these age ranges do you fall?
Under 18 0.9%
18-24 15.3%
25-35 52.5%
36-44 12.7%
45-59 10.2%
60+ 8.5%

Now, we won't lie - we make a lot of claims about ourselves having a youngish audience, but up until now, these have been primarily based on anecdotal evidence. As it turns out, over 2/3 of the folks who came to see Isabella were under 36 years old - a rarity in the ever-aging performing-arts world.

There's been a lot of talk recently about brain-drain and the role of culture in stopping it - to be less wonky about it, the question is: how do we keep the tens of thousands of college kids in the Philadelphia area from leaving after they graduate? Isn't culture - rock shows, contemporary art, and yes, cutting-edge, affordable theatre - one of the things that keeps the young folks around?

And - if that's true, which we think it is - can we humbly suggest that Pig Iron's model seems to be working? One of our favorite quotes from the open-response section of the survey was "I didn't like theater until I saw Pig Iron stuff"; we like the idea that experimental theater isn't just for the hard-core theater specialists - it works, too, for younger audience members who value the idea that theater doesn't have to rely on second-hand stagings and plotlines to tell its stories.

Thursday, October 18, 2007

Pig Iron in NYC and Philly (This Time With 75% More Elk!)

Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is a heckuva postcard.

What it says is that Pig Iron's about to uncork an astounding "mini-project," a collaboration with the ridiculously talented Cynthia Hopkins on the Public Theater-curated 365 Days/365 Plays, the NYC branch of the largest collaborative theatre project in the history of our planet. And then we're bringing it to Philly! And it's 100% free!!!!*

OK. Let's rewind a little. In 2002 and 2003, Suzan-Lori Parks ("Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright (Topdog/Underdog) " - our press release) wrote one play per day for an entire year. The writing became a daily meditation, a prayer, celebrating the rich and strange process of an artistic life. This past year, an international festival has sprung up devoted to staging the plays everywhere from Westport, CT, to Nashville to Austin to Boulder, CO to San Francisco. It's the low-fi theatrical version of "Hands Across America."

Companies are allowed an exceptional degree of latitude in interpreting their 7 short plays, and Pig Iron's in the midst of creatings a cabaret of rites and wrongs, a mash-up of movement and music featuring original music and songs by Cynthia Hopkins ("imagine Lotte Lenya's kid sister shacking up in a cheap Atlanta hotel with Tom Waits," says Time Out New York), the creator of Accidental Nostalgia and Must Don't Whip 'Um.

WHERE:
BROOKLYN: Brick Theatre, 575 Metropolitan Ave, PHILADELPHIA: The Latvian Society, 7th and Spring Garden.

WHEN:
Brooklyn: November 2, 7 p.m.
Brooklyn: November 3, 7 p.m. and 9:30 p.m.
Philadelphia: November 4, 7 p.m.
Philadelphia: November 5, 7 p.m.

WHO: Sarah Sanford/James Sugg/Dito van Reigersberg/Alex Torra/Hinako Arao/Cynthia Hopkins

TICKETS: (215) 627 1883 or at www.pigiron.org

*Pig Iron's Director of Development will now try to dampen your excitement by reminding you that it is NOT free to put this production together, and that you should definitely consider the suggested donation of $10 - you can donate here if you're not the sort that carries cash around. (But still, FREE!)