Date/Time:
09/10/2014 - 09/14/2014 | Wednesday | 7:30 pm - 9:30 pm
Location:
Oscar G. Brockett Theatre
300 East 23rd St.
Austin,TX
78712
Categories
Presented by the Department of Theatre & Dance
The Method Gun
Written by Kirk Lynn
Directed by Shawn Sides
Created by Rude Mechs
“charming… gorgeously rendered… both stunning and haunting.” – American Theatre Magazine
“The Rudes craft compelling theater… The Method Gun packs more intensity and more poignancy… And the final scene… emerges as one of the most polished, gorgeous, breathtaking and riveting moments on an Austin stage.” -Jeanne Claire van Ryzin, Austin American-Statesman
A play about the ecstasy and excesses of performing, the dangers of public intimacy and the incompatibility of truth on stage and sanity in real life, Rude Mechs’ widely acclaimed work returns to Austin.
The Method Gun explores the life and techniques of Stella Burden, actor-training guru of the 1960s and 70s, whose sudden emigration to South America still haunts her most fervent followers. Burden’s training technique, The Approach (often referred to as “the most dangerous acting technique in the world”), fused Western acting methods with risk-based rituals in order to infuse even the smallest role with sex, death and violence.
Using found text from the journals and performance reports of Stella Burden’s company, The Method Gun re-enacts the final months of her company’s rehearsals for their nine-years-in-the-making production of A Streetcar Named Desire. Burden left the company under mysterious circumstances in 1972. Diaries and letters from actors in the company express a sense of desperation, inadequacy, and frustration inherent to the process of creating meaningful work for the stage and in everyday life. The Method Gun bounces between interior monologues, rehearsal sequences of Streetcar, and group interactions – all gleaned from historical documents – to express a longing for the return of inspiration and a more believable presentation of self in everyday life.
The Method Gun contains adult content, including full frontal male nudity.
