Port Out, Starboard Home

We are currently developing a new play in collaboration with acclaimed (and just plain rad) NYC playwright, Sheila Callaghan, and the Playwright’s Foundation. And we’re thrilled to announce that we recently received an NEA grant to support the project.

What is it, and how did it happen? We’ve long admired Shiela’s work, and knew eventually we’d have to find a way to create together. When we were in New York in 2007 touring The Devil on All Sides, the ensemble and Sheila spent two days playing at the New Dramatists studio in Midtown Manhattan. We all agreed we should make something together, something big, ambitious, whimsical and scary. Sheila’s only requirement – that it be set on a cruise ship.

So foolsFURY went on a cruise. Really. And spent three pina colada-soaked days interviewing vacationers, and putting on secret pieces of theater amidst the tanning bodies on the 11th deck pool of the Monarch of the Seas…..

Port Out, Starboard Home is being created as an ensemble piece, plumbing the strengths of the company in creating narrative through movement, and giving Sheila the freedom to throw her text against our bodies, and see what evolves. Some themes:

• the fine line between luxury and decadence in contemporary American consumer culture,
• the relationship between public persona and private self that must be navigated in both the rarified space of the cruise vacation and in our daily lives,
• the establishment of temporary community,
• questions of how we deal with others when we are thrown together into such community.

Coming to a port near you in Fall 2010. (And please note that we are looking for presenters/co-producing partners, if you’d like to bring P.O.S.H. to your theater.)