With an acting company of 12, audience participation, and a mandate to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes, the free-wheeling Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind will have its SUNY Brockport premiere on Thursday, October 5, at 7:30 pm in the Tower Fine Arts Center Black Box Theatre, 180 Holley Street. Tickets are $17/general, $12/senior citizens, Brockport alumni, faculty, and staff, and $9/students. They are available at http://www.fineartstix.brockport.edu, at the Tower Box Office, or by phone at 585-395-2787.
Written by Greg Allen and his fellow theatre artists at the New Futurists, Too Much Light… is an evening that takes the basics of an improv show and turns it slightly askew. Instead of audience members calling out a word on which the actors riff, the audience will instead call out numbers. The numbers, strung across the stage, correspond to a play – a very short play – that will be performed. The aim is to perform 30 of these plays within the constraints of a 60-minute timeframe. The minutes will be counted down on a clock that will hover over the playing area in the more intimate Black Box space.
Director Ruth Childs feels that “the spirit of the play is authenticity and creating a world in the theatre that is representative of who the actors are as people. We are striving to achieve this in rehearsals and performance.” But we are also “creating an energetic, collaborative, and fun environment” not only for the actors, but for the audiences, as well. In fact, audiences may be excited to learn that if a performance sells out, the audience will be treated to some post-performance pizza.
Calling out the numbers for the plays they will see performed – and hopefully eating some pizza – is not the only way in which the audience will interact with the production. At the end of the show, the audience at that performance will help determine which shows – from the total of 115 in the entire Too Much Light… collection – will be performed at the following performance.
Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind will be performed on October 5, 6, 7, 19, 20, and 21, at 7:30 p.m. There are also matinee performances on Sunday, October 8 (ASL interpreted) and 22, at 2 p.m.
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