Tickets Available Here / or tickets@lida.org / or 720.938.0466

Rounding out a year-long exploration of expressionist work, The LIDA Project presents Eugene O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape the story of a simple laborer trapped in a world controlled by the rich. This classic expressionist work is re-imagined as a one-man / hyper-media performance. This new bi-lingual translation and interpretation brings to the front the issues of immigration, class structure, and industrialism. First produced in 1922, the LIDA Project modernizes O’Neill’s text to address the modern themes themes of alienation in our stratified world.

Direction: Brian Freeland
Assistant Direction: Laura Lounge

Featuring: Lorenzo Sariñana & Hart DeRose

Scenic Design: David Lafont
Lighting Design: Kenrick Fischer
Sound Design: Dustin Lacy
Projection Design: Brian Freeland
Property & Costume Design: Laura Lounge

Media Coverage

The LIDA Project takes on barriers of class and language in O’Neill’s The Hairy Ape

Part text. Part noise. Part sound. Part image. All Robot.

R.U.R./lol, an original work loosely based on the 1920 Czech science-fiction play Rossum’s Universal Robots. At the end of humanity four robots remain. Through their controllers they work to protect what remains of the planet from a catastrophic event. The process leads them to question how we came to this end.

Direction by Lorenzo Sariñana
Production Design by Steven J. Deidel

Ensemble: Rhea Amos / Hart DeRose / Laura Lounge / Heidi Pachner
Controllers: Kenrick Fisher / Brian Freeland / Dustin Lacy / David Lafont / Tommy Sheridan

Media Coverage

Westword: LIDA Project’s R.U.R./lol uses robots to examine what it means to be human

Culture West’s Photo Essay: My Night at LIDA Project’s ‘R.U.R./lol’ 

Images

Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful. I only aim at the powerful. When satire is aimed at the powerless, it is not only cruel — it’s vulgar.”
- Molly Ivins

A very special thank you to our Denver sponsors.

Presenting Sponsor
C. Richard and Marianne Reinisch Foundation in conjunction with Red Mango, Denver

Sponsors
ACLU of Colorado
Brett Family Foundation
In memory of Joel Ehrlich
Caroline Lapp and Phil Barber
John P. Oppenheim, PC, Attorney at Law

Beloveds
Caroline Lapp & Phil Barber
Bob Drake
Bruce & Jaren Ducker
Dr. Bob & Marilyn Fried
Paul & Jean Kottke
Elaine Selberg & Dan Recht
Jane & Stan Thalman
Jan Temple

The Company

Molly Ivins
Rhonda Brown

The Helper
Rhea Amos**

Producer
A. Zeik Saidman

Associate Producer
Alana Smart

Direction
Brian Freeland*

Stage Management
Tommy Sheridan*

Lighting Design
Jacob Welch

Scenic Design
David Lafont**

Sound Design
Max Peterson

Costume Design
Sharon McClaury

Publicity
Gloria Shanstrom

Photography
Ryan Gaddis

About Molly Ivins

Molly Ivins began her career in journalism in the complaint department of the Houston Chronicle.  In 1970, she became the co-editor of The Texas Observer, which afforded her frequent fits of hysterical laughter while covering the Texas Legislature.  In 1976, she joined The New York Times.  The next year, she was named Rocky Mountain Bureau Chief (and only employee) and roamed the West, covering nine mountain states by herself.  In 1982, she returned home to Texas—first as a columnist for the Dallas Times Herald, and then the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.  Her column was syndicated to more than 300 newspapers.

Her first book—Molly Ivins Can’t Say That, Can She?—spent more than a year on The New York Times bestseller list.  Her books with Lou Dubose on George W. Bush—Shrub: The Short But Happy Political Life of George W. Bush and Bushwhacked:  Life in George W. Bush’s America —were also national bestsellers.

A three-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, she counted as her two greatest honors that the Minneapolis police force named its mascot pig after her and that she was once banned from the campus of Texas A&M University.  Molly’s enduring message is, “Raise more hell.”

About the Playwrights

Margaret Engel (playwright) is the director of the Alicia Patterson Journalism Foundation and is a former reporter for the Washington Post, Des Moines Register and Lorain (OH) Journal. Engel, a past Nieman Fellow at Harvard, is the former managing editor of the Newseum and chairs the Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Awards board.

Allison Engel (playwright) has been a reporter for the Des Moines Tribune, San Jose Mercury and Pacific News Service and was a Knight Journalism Fellow at Stanford University. She is associate director of the Los Angeles Institute for the Humanities at the University of Southern California, where she recently received an MA in screenwriting.

About the Play 

RED HOT PATROIT: THE KICK-ASS WIT OF MOLLY IVINS was nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in 2011.  It premiered in Philadelphia in 2010 with Kathleen Turner performing the role.  It has played to sold-out audiences in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, Austin, Texas (Molly’s home town) and now Washington D.C.

In the Playwright’s Words

As newspaper journalists, Allison and I were avid consumers of Molly’s writing, which we caught up with due to her syndication in more than 350 newspapers. She had immense talent, as a skilled reporter, writer and humorist, a rare combination. I had met Molly a few times at journalism conventions and was looking forward to serving on panels with her at the Conference on World Affairs in 2007. Devastatingly, she died on the last day in January of that year.  That very day, I called my twin and said we had to write a play about her.  We realized that she was an American icon, a smart and plain-talking patriot who threw everything she had into making this world a better place.  Allison had just finished a master’s degree in screenwriting and both of us had longtime associations with theater, so we felt Molly’s larger-than-life persona would speak to stage audiences.

It took about ten months to write the play, with a lot of help from Molly’s words and from many friends in the theater.  Allison used to work for Meredith Publications in Des Moines and a friend of hers there is on the board of People for the American Way with Kathleen Turner.  She was our immediate first choice to play Molly and fortunately, we were able to get the script to her through Allison’s friend. One of my former colleagues at the Newseum asked to give the script to his father, who it turned out was on the board of Arena Stage.  Its artistic director, Molly Smith, brought in Kathleen Turner for a staged reading in Washington, D.C. in 2009 and productions have just flowed from there.  What really elevated the script into a play was our profoundly talented director, David Esbjornson, who has been at the helm through its productions in Philadelphia, Austin, Los Angeles and Washington, D.C. There has been a special circle of karma surrounding “Red Hot Patriot” from its inception, including its title, which was revised from the original by former Iowa congressman Jim Leach, who is now chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities. He’s a friend and at a picnic gathering of former Iowans who live in Washington, he added the perfect word for Molly, “patriot,” to the title.

- Margaret Engel, September 2012

* Notates LIDA Project Company Member
** Notates LIDA Project Associate Company Member

An original interpretation by The LIDA Project inspired by the work of Elmer Rice’s 1924 drama, The Adding Machine.

* Add It Up is a remix of the 1924 Elmer Rice play The Adding Machine as interpreted by six sound, video, and performance artists from The LIDA Project.

It is sound. It is light. It is music. It is words. It is images. It is machines. It is humans. It is about love. And hate. And murder. And death. And rebirth. And dancing. And eggs.

Press

Everything adds up as the LIDA Project embarks on its 18th season

The Company

Ensemble
Hart DeRose: Zero
Michelle Hurtubise: Elmer Rice
Heidi Pachner: The Boss
Lorenzo Sariñana: Daisy
Matthew Schultz: Mrs. Zero

Producer
Steven J. Deidel

Direction
Brian Freeland

Assistant Direction
Rhea Amos

Lighting Design
Steven J. Deidel / The LIDA Project

Sound Design
Lorenzo Sariñana / The LIDA Project

Costumes
Hart Derose / The LIDA Project

Projection Design
Brian Freeland / The LIDA Project

An original adaptation of the book by Elias Canetti by Rebecca Gorman O’Neill. Directed by Brian Freeland.

A twisted creation developed by The LIDA Project ensemble, playwright Rebecca Gorman, and director Brian Freeland. Manipulations of darkness and light and juxtapositions of ghastly imagery help to re-imagine Canetti’s breakthrough 1935 work about a lone recluse and his infinite library of books.

“A warning against the idea that ‘rigid, dissociated intellectualism and detached, dogmatic scholarship can prevail over evil, chaos, and destruction‘.” – Lisa Hill

Auto da Fé

Please e-mail kenny.storms@lida.org for more information.

“A weigh station is a checkpoint along a highway to inspect vehicular weights. Usually, trucks and commercial vehicles are subject to the inspection”

“Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations.”

The LIDA Project is at an exciting time and we need the help of our members. As you know we’ve moved into our new space at The Laundry on Lawrence. We interrupted the peace with a bombastic, abstruse, distraction, Justin Bieber Meets Al Qaeda followed with a vertical intimate inward drop delving into health, care, and death, dying with Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep, which is moving into an extended run later this month.

The company is in the midst of a rebirth.

“When mutations occur, they can either have no effect, alter the product of a gene, or prevent the gene from functioning.”

For the last couple of years we began to engineer ways to re-focus resources, time, and structure for a healthier more sustained model for The LIDA Project and its community.

Metaphorically we now find ourselves speeding past the weigh station or as the truckers call it “the coop” waiting for inspection while in motion. Traveling at 90 with the back door open smoking a badly rolled cigarette jettisoning dead weight, extra baggage, empty boxes, happy meals, cheap electronics, blockbuster hits, cheap clothing and plague ridden cargo, smashing over the interstate. And in the midst of this purge we are finding the things we forgot about, blowing off the dust of old 45s, storing the antiques, protecting the rare authentic valuable items and the collectors items. Keeping the meaningful, tossing the garbage, and adding the things we need.

Now we need your participation because someone still has to drive this monster and currently Brian still has a valid drivers license.

I am reaching out to you because you have expressed a desire to help, you believe in the work. We currently have the brain space and time to delegate the back-end work efficiently and productively while simultaneously keeping the creative LIDA front-end rig hauling ass down the highway, with the wisdom that the speed limit signs are merely suggestions.

“The generation of new genes can also involve small parts of several genes being duplicated, with these fragments then recombining to form new combinations with new functions. When new genes are assembled from shuffling pre-existing parts, domains act as modules with simple independent functions, which can be mixed together to produce new combinations with new and complex functions.”

Please share your time with us. Even an hour of your time will help to generate the fiscal means and community relations that we need to raise production quality, audience base, publicity materials, operating cost, and payroll to strengthen the LIDA community.

Please contact Kenny Storms if you would like to help in the growth of The LIDA Project.

This is the experiment.

Kenny Storms, Volunteer Coordinator
kenny.storms@lida.org
720-210-8184

Devised by The LIDA Project with directors Robin Davies, Brian Freeland, Josh Hartwell, Jaime Lujan, Brenda Cook Ritenour, Kate Roselle, Tommy Sheridan, and Kenny Storms.

The LIDA Project’s 6-part award winning epic on health, care, mortality and dying in the United States originally premiered in December of 2011 in a unique collaboration between the LIDA Project and a group of guest directors and community leaders. The work was environmentally designed and performed in private residences.

Media Coverage

LIDA health-care epic: Home theater for what ails us – The Denver Post

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep tackles health, care, death and dying in the USA – Westword

Awards:
Special Achievement – Denver Post Ovation Award

The Works

The Soldier
The Soldier maneuvers through a recent Iraq War veterans struggles to care for herself and her relationships while her PTSD and grief from the war spin into a sadistic health insurance game show. Directed by Tommy Sheridan with performances by Rhea Amos, Hart DeRose, Nancy Flanagan, Michelle Hurtubise, Madeleine Joyce, Heidi Pachner, Stefin Woolever, and Ryan Wuestewald.

The Addict
The Addict is a cyclical spiral of losing control and asking for help. It grapples with both tangible and systemic addictions and whether or not we have the agency to choose our own paths. Directed by Kate Roselle and Kenny Storms with performances by Nancy Flanagan, Madeleine Joyce, Deanna Lowman, Heidi Pachner, Lorenzo Sariñana, and Stefin Woolever.

The Survivor
An exploration of how we grapple with death–both losing those we love and dealing with the knowledge of our own. Directed by Jaime Lujan with performances by Rhea Amos, Hart DeRose, Michelle Hurtubise, Madeleine Joyce, Lorenzo Sariñana, and Ryan Wuestewald.

The Middleman
An examination of the difficult choices that individuals have to make on health + care in a world of 7 billion people. Directed by Robin Davies with performances by Rhea Amos, Hart DeRose, Michelle Hurtubise, Heidi Pachner, and Ryan Wuestewald.

The Immigrant
An exploration of alternative medicine, cultural assimilation, and the red tape beaurocrtic hoops we have to jump through. Directed by Brenda Cook Ritenour with performances by Hart DeRose, Michelle Hurtubise, Deanna Lowman, and Lorenzo Sariñana.

The Patient
The Patient is a poetic and lyrical exploration of the ins outs ups downs of a person’s final moments and how hospice and its workers provide support to that person and their relatives. “What’s more important than our final moment,” one patient asks. Death responds, “Them.” Directed by Josh Hartwell with performances by Nancy Flanagan, Madeleine Joyce, Deanna Lowman, Heidi Pachner, and Stefin Woolever.

The Company

Direction
Robin Davies
Brian Freeland
Josh Hartwell
Jaime Lujan
Brenda Cook Ritenour
Kate Roselle
Tommy Sheridan
Kenny Storms

Artistic Director
Brian Freeland

Dramaturgy
Rebecca Gorman O’Neill

Movement
Tonya Malik-Carson

Scenic Design
Amelia Charter

Production Assistant
Laura Lounge

Ensemble
Rhea Amos
Meg Chamberlain
Hart DeRose
Nancy Flanagan
Michelle Hurtubise
Madeleine Joyce
Sonia Justl
Deanna Lowman
Heidi Pachner
Lorenzo Sariñana
Stefin Woolever
Ryan Wuestewald

This original LIDA collaborative work inspired by Max Fritch’s The Firebugs and Albert Camus’s The Just, focuses on American pop culture and attitudes a decade after the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. This theatrical editorial promises to be one of the most irreverent, bombastic, and controversial examinations of American politics and culture to hit Denver audiences in years.

Awards

Best Multimedia Integration (Steven J. Deidel) -Denver Post Ovation Award

Best Lighting (Steven J. Deidel) – Denver Post Ovation Award Nomination

Best Sound (Kenny Storms & Max Peterson)– Denver Post Ovation Award Nomination

Press

Art from the ashes: A decade later, great art inspired by 9/11 is rare

Photo call: Opening night for new LIDA Project

The Terror, the Terror!

The Denver Post Fall Arts Preview

The Company
Produced by Brian Freeland, Steven J. Deidel & The LIDA Project

Direction
Brian Freeland

Dramaturgy
Rebecca Gorman O’Neill

Lighting / Projection Design
Steven J. Deidel

Sound Design
Max Peterson & Kenny Storms

Costumes
Annette Westerby

Associate Lighting Design
Anna R. Kaltenbach

Associate Lighting Design / Lighting Programmer
G. Austin Allen

Projection Associate / Content Creation
Ryan Gaddis

Pixel Twister
Joe Deats

Camera Operators / Video Technicians
Thomas Sheridan & Alex Polzin

LIVE Sand Artist
Amelia Charter

Ensemble
Patrick Balai: Homeland Security / George W. Bush
Robin Davies: White
Hart DeRose: Anna Lucia
Dan O’Neill: Osama Bin Ladin
Safa Samiezade-Yazd: The Chorus
Matt Schultz: Sadam Hussain / Bieber
Ryan Wuestawald: Wilson

Images

Justin Bieber Meets Al Qaeda
09 September – 08 October 2011

A collaborative devised work directed by Brian Freeland.

This original LIDA collaborative work inspired by Max Fritch’s The Firebugs and Albert Camus’s The Just, focuses on American pop culture and attitudes a decade after the Al Qaeda attacks on the United States. This theatrical editorial promises to be one of the most irreverent, bombastic, and controversial examinations of American politics and culture to hit Denver audiences in years.

Now I Lay Me Down To Sleep
2 December – 17 December 2011

A collaborative devised work with directors Brian Freeland, Josh Hartwell, Jaime Lujan, Brenda Cook Ritenour, Thomas Sheridan & Kenny Storms.

A 6-part meditation on health, care, mortality and dying in the United States. This epic will be created in a unique collaboration between the LIDA Project and a group of guest directors providing a broad and diverse theatrical voice. The work is environmentally designed and will be performed in private residences with limited seating for an intimate audience. The piece will be performed over separate evenings.

Auto-da-Fé
4 May – 2 June 2012

An original adaptation of the book by Elis Canetti by The LIDA Project & Rebecca Gorman. Directed by Brian Freeland.

A twisted creation developed by The LIDA Project ensemble, playwright Rebecca Gorman, and director Brian Freeland. Manipulations of darkness and light and juxtapositions of ghastly imagery help to re-imagine Canetti’s breakthrough 1935 work about a lone recluse and his infinite library of books.

“A warning against the idea that ‘rigid, dissociated intellectualism and detached, dogmatic scholarship can prevail over evil, chaos, and destruction‘.” – Lisa Hill

The Dream of the Circumcised Brain
July 2012

A collaborative devised work by The LIDA Project.

The LIDA Project launches the first iPhone/Android interactive smart phone app/play. This app/play will be in the vein of the traditional radio drama as played and executed through smart phone technology. The drama will utilize GPS technology, audio playback, and recording capabilities to allow the audience to have a self or group guided experience within the streets of Denver.

A live performance blend of the Icarus story from Greek mythology, the 2009 economic crisis and 1980′s 8-bit video games. Princess Toadstool figures prominently, as does the boy whose wings melted in the sun. Joe Knossos, the head of the troubled financial products division, dodges the Minotaur as meat falls from the sky. The piece is highly-interactive with opportunities for witnesses to play old-school video games and manipulate the direction of the story.

HOT+WAX = flying too close to the sun.
HOT+WAX = getting all the coins.
HOT+WAX = finance porno.
HOT+WAX = 8 bits vs. naughty bits.

The Company

Direction
Julie Rada

Scenic Design
Erin Ramsey

Lighting Design
Jacob Welch

Sound / Video Design
Ryan McRyhew

Music Composition
Ryan McRyhew
Neil Ewing

Costume Design 
Annette Westerby

Properties
Annette Westerby

Choreography
Kelleen Shadow

Ensemble

Ploughman
Terry Burnsed

Mr. Joseph C. Knossos
Todd Webster

Daedalus
Leroy Leonard

Uncle Sam
Mike Marlow

Cellist
Elizabeth A. Nodich

Pasiphae / Your Mom
Elizabeth Parks

Icarus
Lorenzo Sariñana

Princess
Kelleen Shadow

Bull / Minotaur
Kenny Storms

* Development collaborators: Leroy Leonard, Elizabeth Parks, Julie Rada, Lorenzo Sariñana, Matthew Schultz, Kelleen Shadow, Kenny Storms, & Annette Westerby

Images