International Performing Arts for Youth SHOWCASE 2011 will be held in Tampa, Florida from January 19 - 22, 2011.
Showcase 2011 Artists
(In alphabetical order)
Black Violin | Circa | Classical Theatre Project | Clown Action Productions | Corpus | David Gaines | DynamO Theatre | erth - visual & physical inc | Green Thumb Theatre | Handsome Little Devils | Marionetas de la Esquina | Monkey Baa Theatre | Rodisio | Step Afrika! | The Improvised Shakespeare Company | Youth dance company De Stilte | Windmill Theatre | Wise Fool New Mexico
1. Black Violin
Show Title: Black Violin with Drums
Running Time: 60 minutes
Age range: 8 and up
Suggested Audience size: 500 - 2000
Contact: Cheryle Hansen, cheryle@kidsentertainment.net
Kev Marcus and Wil b are Black Violin, two classically trained musicians who, along with their DJ TK, have created the ultimate synergy between classical and hip-hop music and with it an incredible opportunity to reach children. In 2005 the group was awarded the prestigious title of "Apollo Legends." Kev Marcus and Wil b, both graduates of Dillard Performing Arts High School, used their musical talents to earn full scholarships to college. Now Black Violin want to make sure that North America's young people get the same exposure to the arts, and therefore, the same opportunity that they did. Black Violin has committed themselves for the next few years to give back and teach children that classical music is cool!
2. Circa
Show Title: On Air
www.circa.org.au
Brisbane, Australia
Running Time: 45 minutes
Age Range: 3+
Suggested Audience Size: 100 -800
Contact: Collette Brennan, collette@circa.org.au
Experience 45 minutes of buoyant delight. In ON AIR, internationally acclaimed Circa brings its poetic, fresh and startlingly original vision of circus to young audiences. ON AIR is a celebration of challenging gravity, of flying and falling, of things that go up up up and then fall down. This creation combines aerial-infused circus with live music, light and fog to create a physical vision floating in a cloud of wonder.
3. Classical Theatre Project
Show Title: Romeo & Juliet
www.classicaltheatreproject.ca
Running Time:
Age Range:
Suggested Audience Size:
Toronto, Canada
Contact: Tanya Doroslovac, tanya@classicaltheatreproject.ca
Wandering players transform their unadorned Elizabethan surroundings into a playing space with a chalk circle, and the audience's imagination. This stunning production captures the youthful passion, and ultimate tragedy of Shakespeare's timeless story. This production of Romeo &Juliet has played to over 50,000 students in Canada, inspiring thousands of teens with their first theatre experience, and a new respect for Shakespeare's work.
4. Clown Action Productions, Inc. presents Aga-Boom
Show Title: Aga-Boom
http://www.agaboorn.com/
Las Vegas, USA
Running Time: 60 or 75 minutes
Age range: 5 and up
Suggested Audience Size: 300- 2,000
Contact: Barbara Simon, barbara@bsoinc.com
Outrageous zaniness and a blizzard of unrestrained laughter that never ends! The three former stars of Cirque du Soleil's "Alegria" juggle, stilt-walk and pratfall their way through paper pandemonium. Aga-Boom is rooted in a unique style of theatrical clowning that combines the unbridled silliness of slapstick and the humor of physical comedy with theatrical expressionism, poetry and the European avant-garde. The cataclysmic finale will.leave you breathless with toilet-paper streamers, confetti, inflated trash bags, bouncing balls, lights, alarms and enormous balloons that engulf and erupt throughout the audience. "Aga-Boom is closer to being literally riotous than any theatrical experience with-in memory!" -The Los Angeles Times
5. Corpus
Show Title: Les moutons
www.corpus.ca
Toronto,Canada
Running Time: 30 minutes
Age range: 4+
Audience Size: unlimited
Contact: Isorine Marc, info@corpus.ca
Reality meets fantasy in this unique live installation that recreates a bucolic country scene in a typical urban setting. Travel to a strange and hilarious universe as Corpus takes you through a carefully studied overview of sheep behavior.
6. David Gaines
Show Title: 7 ( x l ) Samurai
www.7xlsamurai.com
www.davidgainesperformance.com
Arlington, Virginia, United States
Running Time: 60 minutes
Age range: 12 and up
Suggested Audience size: 50 - 300
Contact: Susan Thompson-Gaines, david-gaines@hotmail.com
One man performs the epic story of 'Seven Samurai" - complete with victimized
peasants, marauding bandits, samurai warriors, and spectacular fight scene - retold
at comic breakneck pace. Unique, riveting, and very funny.
"Best Solo Show and Best of the Fest" in Orlando Fringe 2009!
"Critics Pick" and "Acclaim Award" in Cincinnati Fringe 2009!
7. DynamO Theatre
Show title: Mur-Mur (The Wall)
www.dynamotheatre.qc.ca
Montreal. Canada
Running Time: 55 minutes
Age Range: 7+
Suggested Audience Size: 800
Contact: Francois Sammarco, fsammarco@dynamotheatre.qc.ca
A wall, with its graffiti and its secrets, alternates as a playground and a refuge from the world for five characters. It echoes the whispers and murmurings of earlier times. Mur-Mur (The Wall) speaks of the friendships among two teenage couples and a pesky and incorrigible younger brother. With humor and sheer innocence, these five characters are swept up in an air-bound acrobatic ballet. Their flirting, teasing and fearlessness become a moving and scintillating reflection of a very special time in life, a world of young love and discovery. Dialogue is kept to bare minimum, leaving way to soaring and explosive gymnastics.
8. erth - visual & physical inc
www.erth.com.au
Show Title: erth's dinosaur petting zoo
Sydney, Australia
Running Time: 50 minutes
Age range: 5 and up
Audience size: 200-500
Contact: scott wright, scott@erth.com.au
A unique show that allows heaps of interaction for kids and adults while they travel with the erth performers on a journey through prehistoric Australia history via an amazing selection of dinosaurs and creatures that inhabited the landscape millions of years ago. Children will have the opportunity to help feed, water and care for the prehistoric marvels with simple lessons in animal husbandry.
9. Green Thumb Theatre
Title: The Shape of a Girl
www.greenthumb.bc.ca
Vancouver, Canada
Running Time: 55 Minutes
Age range: 13 and up
Audience size: Any Size
Contact: Cherlye Hansen, cheryle@kidsentertainment.net
Braidie is fascinated by a news story about a girl accused of a shocking act of violence, 'a monster in the shape of a girl". A different kind of girl from her and her friends ... or is she? Propelled by memories she can't forget, Braidie must confront the truth of her giddy, terrifying teenage world. Can she find the courage to break her friends' conspiracy of silence when their bullying of a classmate goes too far? Award winning and critically acclaimed, "The Shape of a Girl" looks at the realities of teenage relationships, aggression and codes of behavior.
10. Handsome Little Devils
Show Title: Squirm Burpee Circus: A Vaudevillian Melodrama
www.handsomelittledevils.com
Denver, Colorado, USA
Running time: 75 minutes
Age range: 4 and up
Suggested Audience size: 250
Contact: Simon Shaw, simon@shawentertainment.com
'Squirm Burpee' delivers 'a dazzling array of physical circus skills, killer dance moves, whip smart spontaneity and outrageous comedy!"This family-friendly show is a oneof- a-kind, Vaudeville Nouveau-meets-Wile E. Coyote, all-American, 1/4 European, contraption-riddled, quirky, character-driven, RISK-TAKING, expectation-breaking, object-manipulating, CIRCUS-infused, standing-ovation-inducing, THEATRICAL EXTRAVAGANZA featuring classic routines from slapstick to chainsaw juggling, serenading to swing dancing, the Ladder of Love, the Human Cannonball and more!
11. Marionetas de la Esquina
Show Title: Moon Between Two Houses
www.marionetas.com.mx
Mexico City, Mexico
Running Time: 55 minutes
Age range: 3+
Suggested audience size: 500
Contact: Robin Klinqer, robinklingerentertainment@gmail.com
One of the most important things that we need in life are friends, because feelings like fear or joy are better shared with others then faced alone. Feather is a very active and cheerful boy, Taciturn, on the other hand, is quiet and serious, two very different personalities, but they have one thing in common, they are both afraid of the dark ... what could happen if suddenly they came together on a rainy scary night?
12. Monkey Baa Theatre
Show Title: Hitler's Daughter
www.rnonkeybaa.com.au
Sydney, Australia
Running Time: 70 minutes
Age range: 10-16
Audience size: 150-500
Contact: Vicki Middleton, vicki@monkeybaa.com.au
As four children wait for the school bus one morning Anna begins to tell the tale of Heidi, daughter of the most hated man in history. The play switches between 1940's Nazi Germany and contemporary Australia as one of the friends, Mark, becomes engrossed in Anna's story. Could Heidi have stopped the atrocities of genocide, war and hate her father raged on the world during WWII? Would Mark have acted differently in her place? Heidi's story leads him to question his own identity and the world around him. A multi award winning show, including 2007 Heiprnann Award (Australia's equivalent of the Tony Awards) for Best Children's Presentation.)
13. Rodisio
Show Title: The Wolf and The Goat
Italy
Running Time: 50 minutes
Age Range: 5 - 10
Suggested Audience Size: 150
Contact: Cheryle Hansen, cheryle@kldsentertainment.net
This magical story is about a wolf and a goat that meet on a dark night far away from
home but don't recognize each other. Forgetting that they are usually enemies they
discover that they are closer than they imagined. Will the goat really be brave and the
wolf frightened? Or maybe nothing changes and the wolf will eat the goat? Or maybe
the frightened goat will escape? Like the wolf and the goat we don't know what is going to happen - do you?
14. Step Afrika!
www.stepafrika.org
Show Title: Step Afrika!
Washington, DC
United States
Running Time: 60 – 75 minutes
Age Range: 4 and up
Suggested Audience Size: 350-500
Contact: Nancy Christensen, nchristensen@mcmarts.com
Step Afrika! is the critically acclaimed company celebrated worldwide for its performance of stepping, an exciting dance form combining rhythmic footwork, body percussion, and spirited vocalizing. Cited by Washingtonian as 'a showstopper' and 'one of 20 groups in DC well worth a trip to the theater,' each artist in Step Afrika! functions as a one-person band without instruments, creating a veritable wall of sound through the syncopated interplay of hands, feet, and voice. Each season, Step Afrika! presents a range of works featuring world-class performers.
15. The Improvised Shakespeare Company
Title: TBD-Selected by the Audience
www.improvisedshakespeare.com
Chicago, USA
Contact: Kirsten Ames, kamesmp@aol.com
Running Time: 45 – 90 minutes
Age Range: 10+
Suggested Audience Size: 50+
The Improvised Shakespeare Company create a fully improvised comedic play, Elizabethan style based on one audience suggestion. Nothing has been planned, rehearsed or written, not even the layers know what is coming! Its Shakespearean improve at its best!
16. Youth dance company De Stilte
Show Title: Alice
www.destilte.com
Breda
the Netherlands
Running Time: 55 minutes
Age Range: 6+
Suggested Audience Size: 350-700
Contact: Betsy DuBois, betsy@betsydubois.com
An adventurous journey through Alice's dream world, with exciting pursuits and unexpected turns. Doors of all shapes and sizes offer a peek into the kitchen of our fantasy, where the strangest dishes are prepared. Alice transforms into different characters, growing and shrinking while chasing the rabbit, running into creatures she wishes she'd never met.
A dance about big and small, for the young and old.
17. Windmill Theatre
Show Title: Grug
www.windmill.org.au
ADELAIDE, AUSTRALIA
Running Time: 35-45 minutes
Age Range: 1 to 5
Suggested Audience Size: 200
Contact: Teena Munn
teena.munn@windmill.org.au
Grug began his life as the top of a Burrawong tree that fell to the ground. Resembling a small, striped haystack with feet and a nose, Grug is fascinated by the world around him and solves everyday problems creatively and without fuss. When dancing instructions are to difficult to understand, he invents his own dance and when a snail eats his cabbages, he plants more so there will be be enough for them both. Based on Ted Prior's hugely successful series of books and with 56,000 facebook fans, Grug is brought to life for this magical stage production for our very young theatre lovers.
18. Wise Fool New Mexico
Show Title: Flexion
Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA
www.wisefoolnewmexico.org
Running Time: 25 or 45 minutes
Age range: 5+
Audience Size: 200 – 2,000
Contact: Laura Colby, laura@elsieman.org
Flexion is an aerial, stilt, and movement spectacle balanced on the edge of physical possibility. Flexion combines the talents of internationally acclaimed director David Clarkson (Sydney, Stalker Theater) with Wise Fool New Mexico's four-legged, freestanding aerial rig. Five fantastical acrobats on stilts roll into a myriad of sculptural forms, stretching perceptions of the human body. Their pincer-like metal legs slice the air, spinning and swimming like fencers in a sea, fervently exploring their soaring metal home. Shedding layers of armor, they transform from superhuman warriors to fragile nymphs balancing and hanging precariously from the truss and one another.