In a basement, down a hall, behind a door that wasn't there, and endless parade of stunted reminiscences drifts through the bodies of three performers. One grasps for memories from strangers' photos. Another paints a white wall's history from scratch. The third gets lost with every turn. These bastards, these basement opportunists, struggle to inflate a memory in an empty space. All that's there is their bodies, the emptiness, and the satisfaction of placing themselves somewhere in it.
This piece is being performed in lieu of spaceplay.
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Bastard Piece is a meditation on doubling and tripling, dreams, and poor copies of other people's memories. Expect successful and unsuccessful unison, dissonance, dissociation, and a host of facsimiles, some good, some... other.
Bastard Piece marks the first time No Face Performance Group has collaborated with Magda San-Millan, a FringeArts Jumpstart 2013 featured artist. Also performing are longtime company members Jaime Maseda and Mark McCloughan, last seen on FringeArts stages as nearly-identical twin servants in Pig Iron's Twelfth Night. Direction by Eva Steinmetz.
No Face Performance Group was founded in 2007 to explore an actor-driven creation process. After five years working together, the company has created eleven original theatrical works. The company’s work is best characterized by an excitement for smashing together seemingly ill-matched genres, performance styles, texts, and ideologies into one performance. Their past work includes a demonic drag cabaret exploring the operatic nature of teenage angst (The Beautiful Refrigerator is Empty), a bildungsroman about misinformation and fear in the nuclear age (DIME), a comic misremembering of Colonial history (The Sam and John Adams Tour of Colonial America, or The Boat Show), a self-reflexive exploration of institutional arts support (installation), and, most recently, a Reagan-era fever dream (From the Swamp to the Stars, as part of PIFA 2013).
In addition to creating and producing their own work in and around Philadelphia, the company spent the summer of 2010 to the fall of 2011 apprenticing with Pig Iron Theatre Company, an OBIE-award-winning ensemble. Members of No Face have participated in Pig Iron Projects as actors, puppeteers, designers, and assistant directors.
No Face’s work has been presented at venues in Philadelphia including NOSPACE, The Painted Bride Art Center, Plays & Players Theater, Space 1026, and Vox Populi gallery. The group’s work has also been seen at venues outside Philadelphia, including The 4th Street Theater (Manhattan, NY), The Collapsible Hole (Brooklyn, NY), The Aquarium Gallery (New Orleans, LA), The Annex Theater (Baltimore, MD), the Bryant Lake Bowl (Minneapolis, MN), and the Den Theatre (Chicago, IL).
