Upcoming-- Tuesday, 18 Dec 07, 8pm

A reminder, friends and lovers of truly experimental theater and text:

Julia Lee Barclay is coming to town next week to present a reading of a new work, Besides, you lose your soul or the History of Western Civilization. Julia wrote Word to Your Mama, which I performed in London and New York back in 2003. Nearly everyone from that show, plus a couple of others who worked on the early stages of Julia's work will be involved in the reading.

I'm excited to get back together with everyone. And if Julia's work in London has continued down the same path, I imagine that Tuesday will offer a lot of surprises. Please join us if you can-- 8pm at The Brick. Here's the official invite:

You are cordially invited to attend a
performative-response to

Besides, you lose your soul or the History of Western Civilization
a new stage text
written and directed by
Julia Lee Barclay

performed by:
Bill Aitchison, Fred Backus, Maggie Cino, Nicole Higgins, Daniel O'Brien, Robin Reed, Julie Shavers and Eva van Dok.

December 18, 2007 at 8:00pm at The Brick 575 Metropolitan Ave. in Williamsburg
(between Union Ave and Lorimer St.) – take the L to Lorimer Street or G to Metropolitan.
For detailed directions, go to The Brick’s website www.bricktheater.com.

This event, the first manifestation of this new text and the first time Barclay has shown her work in New York since 2003, features an extremely talented veteran cast who have worked with Barclay over the years in NYC and London. They have experience with her style of working improvisationally with text, gesture and theatrical space, so this event will be more a performative response to Barclay's new text than a traditional reading - more jazz jam than chamber recital.

“Besides, you lose your soul” is the last line of an interview of a U.S. Army officer from a New Yorker article about the inefficiencies of the use of torture for gathering accurate information. Besides, you lose your soul attempts (with the humor that results from certain failure) to search through the remnants of Western Civilization in order to find out who's to blame for the creation of the individual soul (that can apparently be lost or recovered) which can lead to those we do not recognize being branded soul-less. It's a bumbling cut-up detective story searching for clues as to how to get out of this mess. ‘This mess’ meaning the use of God v. Godless (soul v. soul-less) to justify the ruthless realpolitik of all the unholy Holy Wars (on Terror, on the Godless Infidels, on the Axis of Evil, on women’s bodies, etc.). We will fail of course, but perhaps we will stumble onto something in the course of our struggling that can open up a door to...not sure where really.

Julia Lee Barclay is a self-exiled New Yorker living in London in full flight from the Bush administration. She accidentally started a theatre company in 2004 from a month-long lab, which has been called Apocryphal Theatre (www.flyingoutofsequence.org). Apocryphal (meaning "of dubious authorship or authenticity") has since produced plays and experimental lab showings in theatres, art galleries and music venues internationally. Work created in collaboration with Bill Aitchison under the name AB has been commissioned and produced in Finland, Germany and Portugal. Before fleeing to London in 2003, she lived in NYC where her work was awarded, published (Plays and Playwrights 2001) and produced in many venues and festivals, such as The Present Company, HERE (American Living Room), Mabou Mines, Ohio Theatre (Soho Think Tank) and FringeNYC.

After the performance, we would be happy if you stayed to give us your feedback.