Life and Times – Episodes 3&4

A performance based on the life story of one of their own company members, Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life and Times uses a verbatim transcript of over 16 hours of recorded telephone interviews as found material to construct an extremely ambitious genre-bending spectacle – the tale generated from one simple question, asked of a friend: “can you tell me your life story?”

Far from resembling the traditional arching narrative with dramatic structure and tension, Life and Times resembles instead a patchwork quilt or spider’s web – the wanderings and digressions of a single person considering the entirety of their whole life.  Filled with simple moments of insight, flashes of half-forgotten friends, the subject of this musical saga stops her life to consider all the moments that made her who she is.  Since her life is quite normal and unexceptional, her story inevitably contains many bits of our own.  You remember your first crush, the boy you met on vacation, the friend with whom you secretly started smoking…

It is a portrait of an unremarkable life, an epic narrative along the lines of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Pastor George Perec’s Je Me Souviens, a deep map of memory, which takes us on a subterranean plunge into the layers of our own forgotten history.

Episodes 3 & 4 encompass the high school years (age 14-18) of young adulthood and its consequent desire for freedom and independence from the seeming prison of home and family life.  Experimentation, rebellion, and drug use collide with religion and metaphysics -- we encounter both first love and first cigarettes.  In order to unlock the considerable drama associated with this particular age, the company applies the dramatic conventions of a quintessential “locked-room” mystery play. A Production of Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Burgtheater Wien in coproduction with Internationales Sommerfestival Hamburg, Kaaitheater Brussel, Internationale Keuze Festival Rotterdamse Schouwburg, and Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main GmbH. Conceived and Directed by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper Featuring Ilan Bachrach, Gabel Eiben, Anne Gridley, Robert M. Johanson, Matthew Korahais, Julie La Mendola, Alison Weisgall, and Kristin Worrall Music Robert M. Johanson and Daniel Gower Design Peter Nigrini Dramaturg Florian Malzacher Prompter Elisabeth Conner Audio Engineer Daniel Gower Production Manager Dany Naierman

---

Production Chronology

November 2013 Spielart, Munich, Germany (w/ Episodes 1&2)

November 2013 Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil, France (w/ Episodes 1&2)

October 2013 Melbourne Festival, Australia (w/ Episodes 1&2)

September 2013 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia, PA (w/ all Episodes 1-5)

June/July 2103 Berliner Festspiele/Foreign Affairs, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Germany (w/ all Episodes 1-5)

May 2013 Norfolk & Norwich Festival, United Kingdom (w/ all Episodes 1-5)

May 2013 Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival, Sweden (w/ Episodes 1&2)

January/February 2013 Public Theater/UTR Festival/Soho Rep, New York (w/ Episodes 1&2)

November 2012 Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany (w/ Episodes 1&2)

October 2012 deSingel, Antwerp, Belgium

September 2012 Kaaitheater Brussels, Belgium

September 2012 (Internationale) Keuze, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, The Netherlands (w/ Episodes 1&2)

August 2012 Kampnagel Summerfestival, Hamburg, Germany

January 2012 Burgtheater Kasino, Vienna, Austria (premiere)