The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium presents The Empire Builders by French playwright, poet and musician Boris Vian
Wednesday, February 9 through Sunday, February 27, 2011 at The Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium, whose mission is to present absurdist theater to audiences in the Philadelphia region, will present Boris Vian’s darkly farcical essay on the culture of fear, The Empire Builders, Wednesday, February 9 at 7:30 pm through Sunday, February 27, 2010 at The Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5. There will be two preview performances -- Wednesday, February 9 and Thursday, February 10 at 7:30 pm; opening night is Friday, February 11, 2011. Curtain will be 7:30 pm Wednesday through Saturday; 2:30 pm Sunday.
The Empire Builders (1959) was written by one of France's most gifted poets, playwrights, critics, and musicians. Les Bâtisseurs d'Empire ou le Schmurz follows the antics of a respectable family and their maid as they attempt to flee a strange and terrifying noise within the confines of their home. Like the villagers in Eugene Ionesco’s Rhinoceros, they struggle to make the best of the growing menace while their internal world crumbles.
The Empire Builders will feature Bob Schmidt, Kirsten Quinn, Kate Black-Regan, Sonja Robson, Tomas Dura and Michael Dura. IRC Producing Artistic Director Tina Brock will direct. The designers on The Empire Builders include Meghan Jones, set design; Maggie Baker, costume design; Maria Shaplin, lighting design; Kevin Francis, sound design, and Dave Mason, fight choreographer.
Born in 1920, Vian died thirty-nine years later in a fit of apoplexy while watching the film version of his first novel, I Spit on Your Graves. Published under the pen name Vernon Sullivan, the novel came about as a bet between Vian and his friend and publisher Jean d'Halluin of Editions du Scorpions. D'Halluin needed a bestseller; Vian believed he could write it. I Spit on Your Graves subsequently became a runaway success - and landed Vian a 100,000 franc fine for an "affront to public morals.” Vian died before The Empire Builders would be produced and scrutinized.
The circumstances surrounding his death are part of the mystery of Vian, known less for his work than for his role as the presiding spirit of the intellectual café society and a close friend of Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir. It has been written that without the Sartre of Nausea (La Nausée) and the Camus of The Stranger (L'Etranger), without the jazz of Duke Ellington and Charlie Parker, without Eugene Ionesco and Samuel Beckett's absurdism, and without the American noir of McCoy, Cain and Goodis, that Vian wouldn't be the writer he was.
The Empire Builders will be the IRC’s thirteenth production since the company’s formation in 2006. The IRC celebrated the 100th anniversary of Eugene Ionesco’s birth in 2009 by staging well-received productions of his classic plays The Lesson and The Chairs, and has earned critical attention by tackling difficult and rarely-produced works by fellow absurdist authors Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Christopher Durang. The IRC recently completed a critically-acclaimed sold out run of Jean Giraudoux’s The Madwoman of Chaillot in September 2010.
The Empire Builders will have two preview performances on Wednesday, February 9 and Thursday, February 10 at 7:30 pm, and will open Friday, February 11 at 7:30 pm, running Wednesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm, Sunday at 2:30 pm through February 27, 2011 at The Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5 in Philadelphia. Tickets are $20.00 ($15.00 previews) and may be purchased by visiting the IRC website at www.idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org or by calling 215.285.0472.
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