Beauties Finale: Immersive Theatre

BEAUTIES BEHAVING BADLY EXHIBIT FINALE
IMMERSIVE THEATER IN RESPONSE TO VISUAL ART

Experience the Beauties come to life in a contemporary fairytale siphoned from the ether of love, addiction, Grimm and Disney. Created by Cody Baldwin, Sasha Inez, and cast. Accompanied by Chester Yourczek’s live score, three 30 min performances will spontaneously arise out of an evening of art, music and conversation. Join us, and the live reenactments of the beauties themselves, as we say farewell to the Kate Renee exhibit.

PERFORMERS //
Megan Koester
Jenna Frankenfield
Elizabeth Windnagel
Catherine Noble
Samirah Abu-Nasser
Ariel Donahue
Jamila Joiner
Helen Stanton
Nicole Kopfmann
Chester Yourczek

CREW //
Tierney Houdek (costume design)
Hannah Howard (installation art)
Jasmine Sueling (makeup)
MinJo Oehlke (hair styling)

PRODUCERS //
Cody Baldwin and Sasha Inez are writer-directors and actors who have performed nationally. They collaborated on an immersive stage sequel to the film Barbarella in 2013 and the Bardot Show in 2011. Both are 2011 theater arts graduates from the University of Minnesota, where they studied under Kari Margolis, Dominique Serrand, Barbra Berlovitz, Robert Rosen, and members of Theatre de la Jeune Lune. Baldwin has directed plays and youth acting workshops locally and Inez is a local musician.

Donation$ welcome at the door to support the performers and Gamut Gallery.

MINNEAPOLIS – Saturday, February 22, 2014, 7:00-10:00 p.m. Collaborative writer-directors Cody Baldwin and Sasha Inez, devise an immersive theater piece in response to the “Beauties Behaving Badly” exhibit. The couple has been creating theatrical works together throughout their three year relationship. Their work is also intensely collaborative for the cast, consisting of veterans to Baldwin and Inez’s interactive process. Each collaborator will be inspired by Kate Renee’s exhibit and by her inspirations of Disney, Grimm and a breadth of ageless stories reexamined under the current role of women in society. The ensemble will present their work in the new style of immersive theater that has taken Britain by storm and has recently emerged in the US in productions like Punchdrunk’s Sleep No More in New York, or Boxcar Theatre’s The Speakeasy in San Francisco.

Painter Kate Renee’s Beauties Behaving Badly exhibit opened to a full house, selling out a third of the show by the first night. Twelve new works of acrylic on birch, finished with resin, reflect growth spurred over the last year by a WARM mentorship and grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. Four works created before the 2013 endowments, illustrate her development in concept and materials. The original interpretations are inspired by Disney princesses revealing their naughty side, while the new pieces delve into archetypical stories, fairytales and rhyme. Each piece retells a beauty’s parable using real-world circumstances for a new generation.

Baldwin and Inez apply these concepts to the dissection of a contemporary American millennial woman, using original writing, improvisation, classic and modern texts. Live scoring by Chester Yourczek provides a human touch to the digital soundscape of our current-day, 20-something heroine. The spirit of collaboration continues as Baldwin and Inez direct Gamut Gallery volunteers with expertise in costume, installation art, hair and makeup to experiment with avant garde looks related to the theme.