··· Brief
POWDERBURN is an original play, currently in development, that follows one man from an old world to a new world to an underground otherworld. The piece pits itself against themes of masculinity, violence, and immigration. Text veers from prose to broken translations of Barrio Spanish, Hebrew and Arabic slang, Russian mat and other mother tongues. Physicality is confrontational, culled from sport and street-fights of Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Latin America. Drawing from a number of disparate social and societal influences, POWDERBURN presents a clusterfuck of culture clashes, deathmatches, and old-world machismo set against the corruption and pop of the début de siècle; the blood and fire filled streets of somewhere East versus the broken neon promises of somewhere West.
Selected as part of the Artist-in-Residence program at Robert Wilson’s Watermill Center, POWDERBURN was first workshopped in Fall 2009. Throughout the residency, work included delving into both the slang/languages and physicality of the material. Research ranged from ethnic exogroups to exoticism; cockfight culture to post-colonialism. Daily strength and duration exercises led to the practice and performance of one individual act of aggression, drawn and isolated from within the text, per night. Those acts included, among others: Jumpen, youth-driven European form of street dance; Military drills influenced by Krav Maga, the IDF’s hand-to-hand combat fighting technique, Speczna, the Soviet Army training system, and the US Army Cross-Fit approach; Fireplay; Turkish Oil Wrestling; Backyard Deathmatches; and finally, Intros of each character to an invited audience. Throughout the POWDERBURN residency, the physical demand made upon each participant was continually increased as each act further defined the characters being developed, creating the opportunity to examine the larger questions of spectacle and shifting identity in the piece. Listen to POWDERBURN interview on NPR.
POWDERBURN workshop reading held with New York Theatre Workshop, December 2010.
powderburning@gmail.com | facebook.com/powderburn