#thaddeus phillips

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Painting of the Mojave Phone Booth by Steven Dufala for ZOO MOTEL. www.zoomotel.org

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(via Projects On Tour: Pati Hill Exhibition, Thaddeus Phillips, Silvana Cardell Bring Work to New Venues | The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage)

Thaddeus Phillips, A Billion Nights on Earth, 2017. Photo by Johanna Austin.

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Alias Ellis Mackenzie at the Philly Fringe

Alias Ellis Mackenzie at the Philly Fringe

Alias Ellis Mackenzie was one of the shows I was most looking forward to this Fringe. I had never seen anything by Thaddeus Phillips and his company Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental before, but his work has been featured as some of the community’s favorite Fringe pieces for years. This particular piece–a high-octane 80s-inspired tale of notorious drug smuggler Barry Seal, framed within a…

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17 Border Crossings for Armchair Travelers

 Thaddeus Phillips

Photos by Mark Simpson

They say write what you know. Thaddeus Phillips, suitcase in hand and worlds in his head, knows from traveling across borders. Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental has always been travel based. With co-creators Tatiana Mallarino and Patrick Nealy, and director Rebecca Wright, Phillips has concocted something special with 17 BORDER CROSSINGS.

“Let’s assume you’re traveling, he says,” placing the audience as the sojourner, And he whisks us off.

But in the opening moments, noting the solo actor sitting at a table, there’s a passing thought of other story-telling presentations. Mike Daisey comes to mind. However, any similarity to desk-bound narration is short-lived as Phillips walks, tap dances, and rolls around, acting out all the parts, absorbing accents, and doing dead-on impersonations of petty officials. 

Another possible initial misconception: It looks like this might be fairly low-tech, what with the wooden chair and table. But anyone who knows Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental is not fooled. I believe I’ve caught all Lucidity’s stuff performed here since FLAMINGO/WINNEBAGO in ’07 — all massive coordination jobs. Some in the room will have seen Phillips’s LOST SOLES  way before I picked up on him.

Imagination? There’s oodles as the performance delves into remembered or constructed incidents and imagined territory, with shifts in perspective you wouldn’t have thought of.  As the tales being told and the design merge together, the few items onstage will be turned every which way, performing close service to the narrative. A long, hanging, sometimes slightly waving, light-bank tricked out with multiple lighting contraptions (and some sound) provides practical backup and illusion. The sound design features all kinds of transportation noises, music, and incidental sounds. Working with Phillips, lighting designer Maria Shaplin and sound designer Robert Kaplowitz have created a constellation of evocative atmospheres.

As we move from border crossing to border crossing, it’s fascinating to wonder what’s next in this adventure and education.  Easy-going, but extremely efficient, Phillips dispenses lots of information through fragments of individual situations, along with a twist of sardonic flourishes. Engaged with the content, and never losing sight of the whimsical, he keeps the focus on the story. I’d caught part of the show the night before and was surprised to see that all the details aren’t necessarily done exactly the same way each time. Little differences fit into the always-moving agenda. He never neglects the details, like remembering to turn on and off a “horrific green Communist fluorescent light” when it’s called for. And it’s surprising that such an experienced traveler can so minutely describe flight anxiety.

In the FringeArts theater’s comfortable seats, we armchair travelers participate in the discoveries that virtual travel affords.  Even as Phillips’s fancy footwork throughout his rich space-and-time travel extravaganza entertains, we may learn something too, beyond the abuses of officialdom and the acquisition of some foreign words. (“You mysteriously begin to understand Portuguese.”) Elusive things hang in the air – like finding meaning in life by living authentically within the confusion of human experience, and like gaining empathy with desperate people, and reaffirming the importance of compassion. At the end I have a smile on my face —along with virtual jet lag.    

 Thaddeus Phillips

Kathryn Osenlund for Phindie.com

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WHaLE OPTICS review

This year’s feat of coordination by Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental ties together whales, a research library, Carl Sagan, Voyager, space, diving, ice & tropics, and the internet (among numerous other concerns). The sprawling performance, while video-laced, owes more to an antecedent, The Melting Bridge (Live Arts ’08) than it does to last year’s ultra precise exercise in actor /video projection interaction, !El Conquistador! Whale Optics concerns a music composer’s quest and the interests of an employee at a fiber optics station at the Jersey shore. An underlying link is the sad fact that under-ocean fiber optic communications have disrupted whale communication, and whales have migrated to another part of the ocean. In Avalon, NJ, the attendant takes routine readings on two under-ocean fiber optic lines, watches TV episodes of Carl Sagan, and fields calls from his mom. In an inspired moment a subtle encounter between this lonely guy and the UPS delivery woman illustrates humpback whale mating rituals. The composer, meanwhile, with librarian assistance, seeks whale music for his musical score. Having reluctantly agreed to attend a project meeting in Columbia, he embarks on a trip. Let’s just say complications ensue. In a Thaddeus Phillips play you can pretty much count on an amazing journey of discovery laced with humor, multiple twists, and accidents of fate. The totally remarkable, multi-taskforce cast includes Brian Osborne, Makoto Hirano, Lee Ann Etzold, James Ijames, and Emily Letts. The whizzes who aided Phillips and company include: Juan Gabriel Turbay (original score), Drew Billiau (lighting), Spencer Sheridan (video) Kevin Francis (sound). Just one note —the seats are hard and the show is long! It could stand judicious compression as the elements of this music-laced meditation pull together. Audiences look forward to Lucidity Suitcase every year, and the latest adventure is not to be missed, with its lively adventure and cameo of chain restaurant, Red Lobster. See whaleoptics.tumblr.com. At Prince Music Theater. 2 hours, 45 minutes with two intermissions. Philadelphia Live Arts.

For CurtainUp.com