HAVE YOU EVER BEEN ASSASSINATED?

World Premiere Production: October 26 – November 18, 2006 at The Off Center (Austin, TX)

“absurdist fun…[an] acid-trip vision of American history” – The Austin Chronicle

THE TEAM

writing: Rebecca Beegle | direction: Carlos Treviño | music: Graham Reynolds

featuring: Katie Bender, Thomas Graves, Heather Hanna, Joey Hood, Margaret Hoard, Michael Mergen, and Doug Taylor.

design: Laura Cannon (costume), Natalie George (lighting), Buzz Moran (sound), Graham Reynolds (original music), and Leilah Stewart (scenic)

ABOUT THE PLAY

This world-premiere production is an old-fashioned/new-fangled song-and-dance on the death of vaudevills, featuring the ethnic machine and Abe Lincoln Cohan and his petite mishpocheh. Are those wrinkles on your face, or are you pretending to care? The moon is fake, but your heart stops when the stagehands take it down. Death comes on tap shoes, or maybe that’s just Mister Cagney calling?   Have you ever been assassinated?  We have.  Vaudeville in its death throes is the new Rude Mechs experiment. Is your shtick up to snuff?  America says “Entertain or die” and you oblige.  You’ve worked all your life to perfect your twelve minutes of material.  Maybe tonight’s the night you finally bring down the house.

REVIEWS

“Top 10 Pratfalls of 2006” Elizabeth Cobbe, Austin Chronicle, January 2007

“absurdist fun…[an] acid-trip vision of American history” – The Austin Chronicle

“an attention-grabbing 80-minute production that whips along through an imagined last day of vaudeville in Austin…muscular acting, impressive physicality, an innovative set, Buzz Moran’s usual good sound effects and a spot-on score” – The Austin American-Statesman

“intellectually-rigorous…boisterous-while-intricate, convention-bending staging by director Carlos Treviño coupled with the sharp dialogue and big-ideas-in-small-packages text by playwright Rebecca Beegle…exceptionally witty and delightfully clever” – Austinist.com