This June, foolsFURY is proud to bring to the Bay Area a dazzling sampler of electrifying ensemble theater. The 2009 FURY Factory is right around the corner, and this year the festival goes international. Our third biennial festival of cutting-edge theater includes fascinating productions from Afghanistan and the UK, in addition to a stellar US line-up from around the country.

Name of company:
Dandelion Dance Theater (San Francisco)

Name of piece:
We Love You to the End of the World

World and Mutt 49 Crosses the Line
We Love You…is a fairytale-like collision of dance and theater that explores the ways we process images. Told from the point of view of a child watching television, it unfolds through the surreal landscape of the American media machine.

Swaying amid genders, sexual orientations, life and death, and knowledge and mystery, Mutt 49 Crosses the Line explores what it is to be “in between” through quasi-fictional indie rock band Mutt 49, a conglomeration of drag queens, Buddhist spirits, punk rockers and more.

Name of company:
Witness Relocation (NY)

Name of piece:
Vicious Dogs on Premises

“Magnificent” (The New Yorker) dance theater ensemble Witness Relocation brings us the disturbing, chaotic, and painfully hilarious Vicious Dogs on Premises. An explosion of theater, fight-dog training, post-modern dance, scenes from a play by award winning Romanian author Saviana Stanescu, rock and roll, the show order is changed nightly, with performers unaware which roles they are playing until the curtain rises. All this on a Pepto-Bismol pink set that looks like it was ripped out of Barbarella.

Name of company:
Bond Street Theater (New York) and Exile Theatre of Afghanistan (Kabul, Afghanistan)

Name of piece: Beyond The Mirror

A journey through three decades of war and occupation, Beyond the Mirror is the first collaboration between Afghan and American theater companies. Referencing the past 20 years of Afghan history, it is told through myths and memories, family histories and first-hand accounts, traditional dances and live music, story-telling and filmed montages, Beyond the Mirror weaves an intricate tapestry of events, both desperate and hopeful.

Name of company:
Hand2Mouth (Portland)

Name of piece: Repeat After Me

Mining popular American music from the last hundred years, Repeat After Me samples Karaoke, outlandish theatricality, exhaustive dances, and absurdist humor in this imaginative work that questions what it means to be a true American. Celebrated Portland ensemble Hand2Mouth pushes boundaries, creating surprising theater that is bold and accessible.

Name of company:
Fools Proof Theatre (Liverpool, UK)

Name of piece:
Je Suis Dead

Three strangers’ lives collide after a train accident. As daily life crumbles around them, strange ancestral figures start breaking through the cracks. Stories tangle into an increasingly confused knot, while three ordinary people desperately cling to what they believed was reality. Who, when, where? What the hell is going on and whose story is it anyway? The latest from this brilliant international physical theater ensemble.

Name of company:
Butchlalis de Panochtitlan (Los Angeles)

Name of piece:
The Barber of East LA

The Barber of East L.A. is about queer Latinos living in Eastside LA neighborhoods. They live precarious lives and they know it – dreaming about leaving while resisting impulses to flee. It is a multi-generational look at estrangement between family, community and institutions as well as the attempt to create these communities. A collaboration with acclaimed playwright, director and MacArthur Genius Fellow Luis Alfaro, Barber explores gender identity and its consequences as this company of brown, female masculine bodies perform themselves, each other, and imagined characters.

Name of company:
Theatre of Yugen (San Francisco)

Name of piece:
Shuron and Pretty

In Shuron two priests agree to travel together as they return home from religious retreats. Flush with pride for their own sect’s teaching, each attempts to show the other the enlightened path. When a religious debate turns into a duel, the prayers fly fast and furious.

In Pretty a young girl is abducted and eventually murdered, leaving her father not only to grieve for her memory but to see her transfigured in the limelight of the press. A demon play in the Noh tradition, Pretty is hectic, piercing, and thrilling.

Name of company:
Under the Table (Brooklyn)

Name of piece:
The Only Friends We Have

A dark and physical comedy about three eccentric friends each trying to wrestle the world into submission. Plagued by social dysfunction as well as an actual plague, the trio declares war first on the resident bug population, and then on each other. Featuring slapstick, puppetry, improvisation, and confessions worthy of reality television, The Only Friend We Have marks the return of UTT to San Francisco, where foolsFURY has been thrilled to host their works Fever Pitch and SOLO: A Two Person Show.

Name of company:
David Szlasa (Berkeley)

Name of piece: Gadget

David Szlasa’s hit interactive media installation about the making and after effects of the atomic bomb returns to the stage. Intended to simultaneously bring humanity and humanness to the collaborators of the Manhattan Project through original and archival interviews, while provoking the audience to question their own understanding and opinions of the creation of the atomic bomb and its effect on society, Gadget is brilliant experiential and experimental piece, hailed as “a fierce, tightly focused work that puts viewers squarely in the hot spot” by the SF Chronicle.