Category:

Match-Play

Adapted from Deborah Hay’s Bessie award-winning dance, The Match

Created by Rude Mechs

“a profound 75-minute theater-movement-language-visual spectacle that captivatingly plumbs the human experience…smart, humane, beautiful theater” – The Austin American-Statesman, read the whole review

“The Rude Mechs have pulled off the impossible with their characteristic aplomb…engaging and funny…Match-Play strikes home, igniting the intellect” – The Austin Chronicle, read the whole review

About The Show

“Match-Play” is a big-stakes play adapted from Deborah Hay Dance Company’s Bessie award-winning dance, “The Match,” which premiered at Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church in New York City in 2004. “Match-Play” is the next step in Rude Mechs’ tradition of taking on seemingly impossible theatrical challenges as we tackle the overarching frame for Ms. Hay’s dance: “What if every cell in the body has the potential to perceive all time and space as unique and original. And it’s no big deal.”

Match-Play was originally performed by Robert S. Fisher, Lana Lesley, Kirk Lynn, Shawn Sides and Barney O’Hanlon along with Tina Van Winkle as Cow.

A haunting, sometimes hysterical, yet sincere meditation on consciousness, “Match-Play” collages liminal texts from the notebooks of preeminent theatre artist Richard Foreman with Ms. Hay’s written score and original text by Kirk Lynn. With our trademark penchant for slapstick and innovative staging, we’ve created a piece that hovers between hallucination and insight. The result is a tragic-comic coaster ride exploring our cultural need for spectacle, our preoccupation with novelty, and our ability (or inability) to connect the ordinary moments of life with the extraordinariness of living. Don’t miss Rude Mechs’ quirky and meditative exploration of the depths (and shallows) of the human mind.

Creation Support: The original production of “Match-Play” was made possible by generous support from The Rockefeller MAP Fund.

For more information about Deborah Hay and ‘The Match’ visit http://www.deborahhay.com and http://www.thematch.info.

Press

Awards/Citations:

Outstanding Comedy – 2006 Austin Critics Table Awards

Outstanding Director – 2006 Austin Critics Table Awards

Outstanding Original Adaptation – 2006 Austin Critics Table Awards

Top 10 Theatrical Treasures & Pleasures of 2005 by Robert Faires, Austin Chronicle, January 2006

Top 10 Spontaneous Catharses and Other Performance… 2005 by Heather Barfield Cole, Austin Chronicle, January 2006

“a profound 75-minute theater-movement-language-visual spectacle that captivatingly plumbs the human experience…smart, humane, beautiful theater” – The Austin American-Statesman, read the whole review

“The Rude Mechs have pulled off the impossible with their characteristic aplomb…engaging and funny…Match-Play strikes home, igniting the intellect” – The Austin Chronicle, read the whole review

Production History

October 7 – October 10, 2015 at New York Live Arts (NY, NY)

**THE ENSEMBLE (in alphabetical order)

  • Robert S. Fisher
  • Thomas Graves
  • Heather Hanna
  • Lana Lesley
  • Barney O’Hanlon

PRODUCTION TEAM

  • Costume Designer – Costumes by Ensemble and based on The Match
  • Lighting Designer – Brian H Scott
  • Sound Designer – Robert S. Fisher
  • Set Designer – Leilah Stewart
  • Original Music – Peter Stopschinski
  • Technical Director – Thomas Graves, Robert S. Fisher
  • Assistant Technical Director – Noah Goldstein
  • Production Stage Manager – Elizabeth Moreau
  • Original text – Kirk Lynn. This play also includes re-arranged material taken from the notebooks of Richard Foreman.
  • Direction for 2010 remount by Shawn Sides.

**Match-Play was originally performed by Robert S. Fisher, Lana Lesley, Kirk Lynn, Barney O’Hanlon, and Shawn Sides.

Rude Mechs creates new works collaboratively. The work wouldn’t exist without the generative contribution of every artist in the room. Match-Play was originally created by lead artists Lana Lesley, Kirk Lynn, Barney O’Hanlon, and Shawn Sides, along with Elizabeth Moreau, Brian H Scott, Robert S. Fisher, Madge Darlington, Thomas Graves, Laura Cannon, Leilah Stewart, Erin Meyer, Michael Mergen, Lowell Bartholomee, Tina Van Winkle, and Amy Miley.

Our deepest gratitude to Ms. Deborah Hay for sharing her practice and her work with us.

September 15 – October 15, 2005 at The Off Center (Austin, TX)

‘Match-Play’ was originally created and performed by Lana Lesley, Kirk Lynn, Shawn Sides and guest artist Barney O’Hanlon.

The design team included Brian Scott (Lights), Leilah Stewart (Scenic), Robert S. Fisher (Sound), and Laura Cannon (Costumes).

Creation History

Our creation and development process shifts from production to production. The origin story for this production starts in May 2004 with an invitation from Ms. Deborah Hay make a theatrical “match” for her dance, The Match. The idea was to treat her written choreography as stage directions around which we would build a play. In the following months, Deborah shared her practice with us, teaching us that her choreography has as much to do with the performers’ consciousness as their movement. The central challenge is to overcome the tyranny of having to create unique and original movement by challenging the performers to use every cell in their bodies to perceive the uniqueness and originality of time and space. It’s a tall order that Ms. Hay often amends with the phrase, “and remember that it’s no big deal.”

And so our adaptation focuses on consciousness. We began with writings of autistic abattoir designer Temple Grandin, and the father of artificial intelligence Alan Turing. At around the eighth draft of the script, those sources began to fall away and a simple plot began to take shape. From that point on we began relying on texts from Richard Foreman and Kirk Lynn. Like a good cigar, it’s meant to be savored and sucked on. We want to offer you a dream about consciousness, about our cultural need for spectacle, our preoccupation with novelty, and our ability (or inability) to connect the ordinary moments of life with the extraordinary miracle of living.

For those interested in exactly what we’ve done with Ms. Hay’s dance, we’ve included her original choreographic score, and included markers you can follow throughout the play as a guide. The names Frank, Cathy, Charles and Fiona are made up by Ms. Hay and are used only to distinguish the four dancers.

Video

Videos

Video is available upon request

Available for Tour

Rude Mechs Exclusive Worldwide Tour Representation
Thomas O. Kriegsmann, President of ArKtype
Phone: (917) 386-5468  |  Email: tommy@arktype.org

Support Rude Mechs

Promo Video by On The Boards

Video of 2015 production not available because, well, we were tricked, we guess.

Production Stills

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