LOUP GAROU
August 6 – 8, Fri – Sun at 6:30 p.m.
Note time, which coordinates with the sun!
Created by ArtSpot Productions & Mondo Bizarro
Written by Raymond “Moose” Jackson
Directed by Kathy Randels
Performed by Nick Slie
Live Cajun Music by Whit & Barbara Connah
Set Design by Jeff Becker
Costumes by Susan Gisleson
From New Orleans, and far more timely than we could ever have guessed — a howl to the world about the precarious state of Louisiana’s wetlands & the interconnectedness of land, family legacy & culture.
Every half hour, Louisiana loses nearly a football field’s worth of coastal marshes to the Gulf of Mexico. Land loss is ubiquitous, occurring even in interior areas. Six major hurricanes in the last four years have exacerbated an already dire situation. In Louisiana, so many of our cultural traditions and industries derive directly from our relationship with the rich waters and swamps that surround us. What will become of those traditions as the land that nurtures them disappears?
Designed to be performed outside in a natural setting, LOUP GAROU is part performance, part ritual, part howl to the world about southeast Louisiana’s plight. We invite you to join us as we sing a song of love and hope for our precarious homeland.
Performed on the Amherst College Observatory Lawn off of Snell Street in Amherst. Bring blankets, lawn chairs (we will have some additional folding chairs available) and insect repellent, but leave the dogs at home! There is plenty of free parking nearby and handicapped people may drive up the hill to the site.
Tickets are $20 for Adults and $16 for Students & Seniors. We also save a VERY limited number of $8 tickets which cannot be reserved. They are given to the first 10 people in line who request them at EXACTLY 5:30 p.m, one hour before the performance. Cash or check only. NO CREDIT CARDS.
“This is a great creative work of anger, caution and imagination.”
— David Cuthbert, Steppin’ Out
NICK SLIE
lives and works on the disappearing wetlands of coastal Louisiana. He is Co-Founder and Co-Artistic Director of the New Orleans based performance collective Mondo Bizarro. He is an actor, director, writer, educator and community activist. Nick’s performance work ranges from physical theater to multi-disciplinary solo work, from digital storytelling to collaborative ensemble productions. He creates original works of performance that are rooted in a particular sense-of-place reflecting the needs, desires, memories and possibilities of the community from which it is born. In the last two years, he has collaborated on a vast array of local and national performance projects that include: co-creator/performer for Mondo Bizarro’s FLIGHT and Catching Him In Pieces; co-creator/performer for the national tour of UPROOTED: The Katrina Project; dramaturge for olive Dance Theater’s Brotherly Love; co-producer of The State of the National Art and Performance Festival and co-creative director of Mondo Bizarro’s post-Katrina story project The I-10 Witness Project (www.i10witness.org). He serves on the Executive Committee for Alternate ROOTS and is the Board Chair for the Network of Ensemble Theaters.
KATHY RANDELS
is ArtSpot’s founding artistic director. She has written, performed in, and directed numerous original solo and ensemble works for professional, prison and student ensembles throughout the world. She has received OBIE, Big Easy and Storer Boone awards, as well as Louisiana and NEA/TCG Theatre Fellowships. She was last seen at the Ko Festival in 2005 in NITA & ZITA, and before that in 2002 she performed RAGE WITHIN/WITHOUT – a solo theater piece about women who refused to turn the other cheek. She has alos taught two workshops at Ko – “THEATRE AND SOCIAL CHANGE: Theatre in Community” and BIOGRAPHICAL THEATER”
JEFF BECKER
is a sculptor and set designer and a 2009 recipient of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program for Theatre Designers. He was a founding member of the performance group Crisus, which specialized in site-specific performances that utilized innovative kinetic sets, sculpture, film, machines, and live performance. He is a member of ArtSpot Productions. ArtSpot Productions is an ensemble of artists dedicated to creating meticulously LIVE theater in New Orleans. Our productions are a sincere blend of disciplines developed through ensemble authorship, physically rigorous training, original music, interactive sculptural environments, and extended research and rehearsal. We practice social justice and shared power in our creative and organizational processes, and we strive to incite positive change in our community with visually stunning performances and empowering educational programs.
ARTSPOT PRODUCTIONS
Founded in New Orleans in 1995 by Kathy Randels to produce her solo performance work, ArtSpot was incorporated in December 2000 and received its 501(c)3 status in October 2002. ArtSpot fosters the work of two primary projects: the ensemble — a physically-based performance company that trains together regularly — and The LCIW Drama Club, a theatre company comprised of inmates at The Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel, Louisiana, that was founded by Kathy Randels in 1996 and is co-directed by Ausettua Amor Amenkum. In addition to creating performances in New Orleans that tour nationally and internationally, ArtSpot is dedicated to bringing nationally and internationally acclaimed performance work to New Orleans and the U.S., and to fostering opportunities for collaboration with those artists. They believe that all stories and voices within a community need to be expressed, and that performance is an essential element of collective healing for all communities, especially those whose voices are not often heard. ArtSpot is trying to revive and foster this belief through an emphasis on the process of creation, and through the celebration of the moment of performance when artists and audience come together to witness and share their collective dreams, sorrows, joys and lives.
MONDO BIZARRO
has been creating original, multidisciplinary art and fostering partnerships in local, national and international communities for the last six years. Based in New Orleans, we are a group of artists that have committed to labor as an ensemble over several years with the goal of establishing a body of work inspired by a particular set of commonly shared aesthetic and civic values. We are a collective of individuals that create, present and produce a wide array of imaginative projects aimed at utilizing art as a tool for understanding what makes us commonly human and individually unique. Our work is intentionally multidisciplinary, ranging from physical theater to large-scale community festivals; from social media to site-specific productions. Everything we do is fueled by the desire to develop brave new works of art that illuminate the beauty and travails of the human condition.
“A powerful statement that anyone who loves New Orleans and south Louisiana should see.” — Molly Reid, The Times-Picayune
“A perfect storm of vivid writing [and] spirited acting.” — Will Coviello, Gambit