Created and Performed by Billy Schultz
Music by Rima Fand
Lighting by Andy Dickerson
Johann Wilson, the very simple and longtime janitor of the Center Theater arrives to work one morning to find the theater abandoned. His job and his life has always been to be there for everyone else. Now everyone is gone. Through a series of fantastical reckonings and memories, he attempts to reconcile himself to a life without the expression of the actors, the applause of the audience, and the stories of the stage. Tonight he will lock the doors one final time. What remains inside when everything outside disappears?
Lighting by Andy Dickerson
Johann Wilson, the very simple and longtime janitor of the Center Theater arrives to work one morning to find the theater abandoned. His job and his life has always been to be there for everyone else. Now everyone is gone. Through a series of fantastical reckonings and memories, he attempts to reconcile himself to a life without the expression of the actors, the applause of the audience, and the stories of the stage. Tonight he will lock the doors one final time. What remains inside when everything outside disappears?
Special thanks to Tanya Solomon, Audrey Crabtree, John Towsen, Jeff Wirth, Carlo D'Amore, Genevieve Leloup, Patrick Farrell, Woody Dalrymple and to Triskelion Arts Space Subsidy Program made possible with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Behind the Curtain © 2013
Thanks to everyone that came out for the opening weekend!
Audience members are saying:
"Hauntingly beautiful."
"Magically fills the stage with his imaginative world, and you're immediately drawn into the story it reveals."
"... unique, sensitive, creative and imaginative."
"Schultz is no ordinary performer. With a high level of commitment and his finely honed skill as a physical performer, he tells the story with crystal clarity..."
"He possesses something that most performers do not. There is something else. It is a simple charm and charisma that fills the space and wraps a warm and affable arm around the audience's shoulders and gently but inexorably draws us to follow his character through his simple experience. We laugh with him and we cry with him, entranced and beguiled by his open, honest face, his sweet and simple befuddlement, the frankness of his smile and the pathos that gleams in his moist and modest eyes... (he) lights up the stage and warms our hearts, and I hope that I will see him perform again and again."
Audience members are saying:
"Hauntingly beautiful."
"Magically fills the stage with his imaginative world, and you're immediately drawn into the story it reveals."
"... unique, sensitive, creative and imaginative."
"Schultz is no ordinary performer. With a high level of commitment and his finely honed skill as a physical performer, he tells the story with crystal clarity..."
"He possesses something that most performers do not. There is something else. It is a simple charm and charisma that fills the space and wraps a warm and affable arm around the audience's shoulders and gently but inexorably draws us to follow his character through his simple experience. We laugh with him and we cry with him, entranced and beguiled by his open, honest face, his sweet and simple befuddlement, the frankness of his smile and the pathos that gleams in his moist and modest eyes... (he) lights up the stage and warms our hearts, and I hope that I will see him perform again and again."
in other news...
Read what Summer Shapiro and I had to say on the New Victory Theater's blog concerning being a clown.
