Kickstarter!

It's been a while since I posted to this blog! I am posting to help get the word out about a Kickstarter project that I launched recently. In February, I’ll tour to New Zealand and Australia with “The 7-Person Chair Pyramid High-Wire Act," and we are trying to raise funds to make that happen. Please consider donating/sharing the project page here:

http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1047901876/patrick-tours-to-new-zealand-with-der-vorfuhreffek 

PROJECT DETAILS:
Der Vorfuhreffekt Theatre is taking The 7-Person Chair Pyramid High-Wire Act (a play) to Australia and New Zealand, and I need your help to raise my part of the $10,000 we need to do it. There are three of us on the tour: Donna Oblongata, myself, and Carly Wicks, who will open for us with her beloved solo clown show, “Tragic Tonalities.” So I need to raise at least $3,333.33 for my part of the tour. I have set up some great rewards as a thank you for your support: limited-edition screenprinted posters designed and printed by yours truly, a special printing of the script from the show, postcards from far off places, and even a fully functioning replica of Batticus, the bat puppet from the play! Also, for a limited number of folks, Donna and I can come to your town and lead a workshop or do a performance of the show.

In Australia, we have booked a week-long residency in Melbourne, hosted by the Suitcase Royale at their theater, Warehouse 25a. In New Zealand, we will be performing our show as part of A Low Hum, a grassroots music and arts festival at Camp Wainui in Wainuiomata, New Zealand. After that, we’ll perform at the Wellington Fringe Festival. 

A LITTLE ABOUT THE PLAY:
In the wilds of Siberia, Charles Darwin goes off in search of the Yeti. The Yeti (if she exists) enters a radio station’s dance contest, hoping to win an all-expenses-paid vacation to a place that doesn’t exist yet. Darwin’s research companion—a little brown bat—falls in love with the radio station’s electromagnetic emissions—but how could that ever end happily? Meanwhile, Siberia’s caves are home to a secretive tribe of ropemakers—but their disintegrating family structure may cause their ancient craft to be lost forever. Through the lens of the real life allegory of the Flying Wallendas’ famous high-wire act, two performers on a tiny stage unfold Darwin’s laboratory, unfurl anatomic diagrams of the yeti, and try to tease out the difference between miracles and non-miracles.

Donna Oblongata wrote the play in the winter of 2012, and we built and rehearsed it in February of this year. We have toured the play extensively since March. On our travels, we’ve performed in a bedroom in Alabama, standing-room-only warehouse spaces in New York, In the Heart of the Beast Theater in Minneapolis, and ended the last tour performing at the venerable Eugene O’Neill Theater Center in Connecticut.