featuring: Lana Lesley, Jason Liebrecht, Kirk Lynn / Ron Berry, Robert Pierson / Chad Nichols / Lowell Bartholomee, and Amy Miley / Elizabeth Wakehouse / Sarah Richardson

design: Robert S. Fisher (sound/composition), Brian H Scott (lighting), Leilah Stewart et al (scenic), Ensemble (costumes)

direction: Shawn Sides et al

adaptation: Kirk Lynn et al

David Rees was working a crummy magazine job when Operation: Enduring Freedom inspired him to make his cartoon “Get Your War On.” The satire about the war on terrorism became an internet phenomenon. “Get Your War On” now appears in every issue of Rolling Stone. Sales of the two GYWO books have raised almost $100,000 for land mine removal in western Afghanistan. David’s other comics include “My New Fighting Technique is Unstoppable” and “My New Filing Technique is Unstoppable,” which appears every Thursday in the Guardian. For more information about David Rees and the original “Get Your War On” visit http://www.getyourwaron.com.

Arts Writing

Reviews

Reviews of Rude Mechs Production

“A history lesson that sprays scorn liberally (in both senses)…a slick production…devilishly deadpan actors…in the vein of of the slacker comedies of Mike Judge [and] the satire of Jon Stewart” – 2007 New York Times Review

“One of the smartest and funniest plays I’ve seen in a long time. Go out and buy a ticket right now.” – 2007 CurtainUp Review

“contains some of the funniest ridicule of a president and his policies I’ve ever heard on a stage…a hilarious grasp of absurdity…both retro and devilishly au courant…the live-theater equivalent of a wildfire” – 2006 Washington Post Review

“Rarely has political theatre so enmeshed the sardonic and the sincere…Rees’ comics, faultlessly realized by the cast and director Shawn Sides, are antic, paranoiac, and trenchant.” – 2007 Villlage Voice Review

“a gleeful retrospective of Rees’s work…with a wry humor that manages to feel both fresh and pointed.” – 2007 The New Yorker Review

“delivers some of the most cogent and hilarious criticism of six years of the war on terror available in any entertainment medium today” – Show Business Weekly

“Get Your War On is in the motherfucking house, and it is glorious. I laughed my ass off, but maybe only to keep from crying and tearing chunks of my hair out.” – 2006 Philadelphia Weekly Review

“The show was fucking hilarious, but five years and two days after 9/11 and nearly four years into Iraq, I kind of cried, too.” – 2006 Philadelphia City Paper Review

“fast-paced and ingeniously choreographed laugh-a-second romp…a healthy release of nearly incessant laughter. (There’s just one word to express the audience response on the night I saw the play: howling.) – 2007 Gothamist.com

“Director Shawn Sides choreographs the interplay among the projected images — important dates, bits of clip art, silly graphics — with a giddy precision that would make Busby Berkeley proud. This frenetic, faux-primitive approach is both a plausible equivalent to and a sly continuation of Mr. Rees’s clenched-jaw minimalism.” – 2007 The New York Sun

“fiercely literate…satirical, ironic, and generally pissed-off” – 2006 Washington City Paper Review

“Inspired…quick-witted…no-holds-barred, genuinely pissed-off theater” – 2006 DCist.com

” a 70-minute brilliant and sardonic blitz” – 2006 Austin American-Statesman Review

“a liberation of one’s political soul in a cleansing explosion of laughter” – 2006 Austin Chronicle Review

“A performance not to be missed!” – 2006 Daily Texan Review

“a tightly wound, high-precision performance of political-comic-strip hilarity!” – Austinist.com

“it strikes sparks to ignite the beaten-down, dark and dormant liberal-radical left that has been licking its paws too fucking long!” – 2005 Austin Chronicle Review

“Liberals are such immature, repugnant people…The Taxpayers probably got boned again…Oh, these whacko liberal theatre groups and their hateful hijnks!” – choice comments from NewsBusters (Exposing and Combating Liberal Media Bias) sounds off!

Reviews of David Rees’ strip

“GYWO is the most original cartoon to emerge since…well, ever. Raw, enraged, sardonic, hilarious, despairing and impossible to pigeonhole.” – ROLLING STONE

“GYWO conveys a hilariously deadpan fatalism while managing to provide a surprisingly articulate expression of our anxieties.” – NEWSWEEK

“While other humorists were pussyfooting around the subject of 9/11 and its aftermath, Rees went right for the throat.” – THE BOSTON PHOENIX


”From the morass of Hollywood sentimentality, flag-emblazoned newscasts, and the music industry’s recycled clichés…one voice rang clear after 9/11: David Rees’s…GYWO became ground zero for the most incisive commentary on the events of the day.” – THE VILLAGE VOICE

“Brilliant.” – USA TODAY

Touring

• Kiasma Festival , Espoo City Theatre (Finland): October 11 – 13, 2007
• Bumbershoot Festival (Seattle, WA) September 1 -2, 2007
• Edinburgh Fringe Festival Aurora Nova/Assembly Room (Scotland): August 2 – 27, 2007
• Galway Arts Festival (Ireland) July 25 – 28, 2007
• 59E59 Theatres in NYC (Under The Radar Festival) January 0 – 28, 2007
• Live Arts Festival in Philadelphia: September 13 – 16, 2006
• DiverseWorks in Houston, TX: September 21 – 30, 2006
• Woolly Mammoth Theater (Washington, DC): October 5 – 14, 2006
• Ballroom Marfa (Marfa, TX): October 20 – 21, 2006

• The Off Center (Austin, TX) September 6 – 22, 2007
• Original Mainstage production in Austin, TX: January 19 – February 11, 2006
• Original Workshop production in Austin, TX: April 28 – May 14, 2005