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Frankly, Theatre not smelling of yesterday’s garbage. A Theatre that doesn’t require an energy drink, double espresso or a nice buzz to enjoy. Further, we look to offer explorations that keep our audience wide-awake, indeed invigorated and acutely interested. We are committed to innovation, making props/set/costumes out of things we have or find, embracing poverty and demanding imagination. As a group of collaborators we stand behind our fallibilities and shortcomings as our greatest strengths.
Crudely, a “fuck you” feel. We rebel against that which infuriates us. Ours is a theatre confronting the sores of society head on, rubbing, agitating and probing those social sores till they redden and pop. We hope to encourage irritation and hold back soothing irrigation. Miscreants look to plant seeds in unfertile soil, by embracing every artist’s impulse, each artist’s explorations and all of our accumulated mistakes. Humans must make mistakes; we’re a messy bunch. Therefore Miscreant doesn’t use erasures or white out to cover up our mistakes given that “getting there” is a crucial part of what our audience sees. We look to unzip our sternums and let our guts and mess spill out onto the boards of the floor.
Life is full of sweat, tears, filth, hope, lust, desperation, compassion, etc., and so are Miscreant productions. Ours is a theatre of finger nails on chalkboards, mosquitos at night and gnashing, grinding teeth. We explore sex with a hooker in August in Arizona in the desert with a bucket of talcum powder dumped on our genitals. Miscreants stubbornly bite off more than we can chew and exploit it. To us, absence is an asset. We believe in creating worlds in the mind and nurturing the imagination. We look forward to tackling uncomfortable topics, using current events and the climate of the globe to inform our work. Life is chalked full of attacks, murders, revenge, salvation, mortality, dashed hopes and misery; so is Miscreant Theatre Company.
Miscreant strives to rip away the lifejacket of what is accepted as truth and drop our audiences into the deep end of life… a bottomless pool with no pregnant solutions to grasp onto as floatation devices. We investigate what happens when you find yourself sympathetic to the prosecution and the defense. Testing whether right is indeed right and if, perhaps, wrong is itself too. As a group, we set our sights on taking away common beliefs and filling this void with “what is there left to ask”. We look to operate as a collective of artists inspiring in our audience independent minds.
There is a blemished safety in our accepted knowledge. Having science, theology or TV answering all the questions that makes one fret is a pernicious cocoon spoon-feeding mankind flawed solutions. Miscreant Theatre Company believes old thoughts and tired processes are a salve to the dying mind. The preservationist thinks “If I’m slowing at least I can try to slow the world as well so, when I die, I won’t be too far behind. When I die, I wont be too old. Money and power will keep me young. Achievements will keep me young”. Miscreant purports these to be old thoughts and the great irony here is that in the end one will die of precisely these three: pursuit of money, pursuit of youth, and the pursuit of achievement. We will die of exactly that which made us. Theatre must needs couple with philosophy to keep new ideas and independent thinking overflowing. Conserving what you have, protecting what you have is an end in itself. We deem spending your resources for the experience of chance, of life, to be of utmost importance. In the end, all that has worth is how one gets to the end. It’s never too early to pass the baton to the next generations in order to keep mankind moving forward. Theatre and philosophies must progress to avoid stagnant complacency. We as theatre artists have an obligation to shove mankind in the right direction before we, ourselves, pass the baton. We must stand on the shoulders of our forefathers, peering ahead to the possibilities awaiting our successors.
If I want to see a helicopter I’ll find a heliport. If I want to see an investigation on the experience of being human I’ll go to the theatre. Cinematizing the stage with high tech ostentation breeds imagination deprivation, breeds lazy minds, breeds bourgeois thought, breeds contented accepting. Everything is so easily at our fingertips, we must turn off our Lap Tops and look each other in the eye. Our brains are bigger than our technology; let’s not let technology enslave us. Theatre was born of poverty, of “let’s use our minds”; let’s take it back. Film is not theatre…there is no human exchange. TV is not theatre…there is no human exchange. Before we confine ourselves to an eternity of rooms, of boxes, of laughable sameness, let’s rebel; let’s meet as people in a place together and ask, “what else is there?” Love is stronger then hatred and imagination is stronger then technology.
A carpenter doesn’t use a hammer solely for every task, the screwdriver and level, etc. are of equal value in building. The same holds true for theatre in Miscreant’s ideology. By using all tools i.e., Shakespeare, Brecht, Improvisation, Movement, Shepard, Honesty, Chekov (the list is infinite) affords us unimaginable choices and a myriad of opportunities. With every color available, we arm ourselves with abundance. We prepare ourselves with opposite philosophies, selecting that which suits each variable of artist, to, in turn, supply American theater with a company of eclectics, of “melting pots”, tirelessly exploring new ideas and forever dispelling tired myths. Anarchy breeds survival, survival breeds inspiration and inspiration breeds un-thought of notions. Notions to be, either refuted or accepted. We believe in using different methods of acting and types of plays to increase opportunities, allowing us to run away from the prescribed ways things have, in the past, been done.
A single director implies a single vision. A collective is much, much more collaborative. Every voice and every artist is invaluable to the whole without shared creation we believe we risk crippling possibility. Theatre may provide a voice for the mute and eyes for the blind if it operates as a group and focuses on generosity of spirit. If it does not, the best it can hope is to provide sweets to the fat and satiation to the provided for. Human beings seek out society and sympathy and humor and freedoms and health and a multitude of things in order to actualize existence. In this spirit of multitudes Miscreant Theatre Company is constantly experimenting with the idea of leadership and of singular vision. We sometimes have no director. We sometimes have two, or three, or however many we feel is right for each exploration of our human-ness. We look for ways to bend the line into a circle constantly hoping to change ever so slightly. We look forward to anarchy and encourage chaos. We understand sameness to be a coffin. Thus, in order to progress, we risk catastrophe, we re-create the definition of director, we challenge the definition of progression and seek out the definition of the art of theatre. In this effort, we encourage ensemble and collective and utilize all modes of nurturing this process.
We believe among poverty and squalor there remains the human spirit re-creating itself. We seek to commune with and learn from this idea of ‘human spirit’. Therefore it is crucial to Miscreants vitality to open ours door to anyone regardless of their socio-economic bracket. In this spirit, Miscreant Theatre Company will always offer a percentage of its seats for each production at no cost. If one shows up early enough to a Miscreant show, one should be able to see it for free. We assert it is our job to make a theatre that draws in an audience rich with poor, colored with every hue and as aged as it is young. Theatre ought to transcend differences slowly uniting opposites through words and movement; silence and action. Would Miscreant rather play to a house of homeless drunks than to a house of money market professionals? Not necessarily. But we do believe in their equality and understand that money sometimes blinds us to latent idiocy hidden in many minds regardless of financial security. Art is an investigation of human experience and this investigation ought to be available to those who cannot pay. We desire a “melting pot” audience.
Miscreant Theatre Company has been created to break apart the common train of thought and received wisdom that good theatre is only done in theatres with big budgets and high ticket prices appealing only to the wealthy offering only entertainment. Miscreant Theatre Company will challenge the current standard of highly polished lifeless acting by creating productions in which the acting is full of pain and soul; explosion and poignancy. Miscreant Theatre Company is dangerous, politically incorrect and more than happy to drag the dregs of humanity, the dirty little secrets and the burning passions out on to the stage. As an audience member, Miscreant Theatre Company will not pat you on the back and tell you that you are perfect and that life is great; we will kick you in the gut, demand you wake up, open your eyes and examine what it means to be a human being.
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