Sabooge Theatre's FATHOM
When a traveling naturalist discovers the colony's incredible secret, a convict mother and her extraordinary son break their silence, taking on the local gentry, its fundamentalist bigots, and the naturalist's earth shattering claim, in an attempt to save the lives they have worked so hard to keep hidden.
Fathom is a mesmerizing and engrossing tale of expectation and tragedy set in colonial Tasmania, a god-forsaken land that time and progress have long forgotten.
With minimal props, a "strikingly evocative" design (Philadelphia Inquirer) and unflagging ingenuity, SaBooge transports us beyond the seas to the sun-parched tedium of Hobart Town, an infant colony farther from civilization than the moon. Visually astounding, with live music and a remarkable sound design, Fathom is "a mind-altering piece" (Variety) of "theatrical magic" (NOW Toronto) that weaves its way through history and fantasy, the mapped and the unmapped, to end up where it all began; back in the water.
"Playful and inventive...as entertaining as it is intelligent" (The Irish Times), SaBooge Theatre conceives compelling and highly visual narratives that seek the revelation of an unexpected humanity in the extraordinary and the grotesque. Brought together by their training at Ecole Jacques Lecoq in Paris, SaBooge is an international ensemble based in Montreal and Brooklyn whose filmic, image-based performances define its reputation as "a can't miss company" (New York Sun) whose "haunting work has to be seen to be believed." (Montreal Mirror) Artists have joined SaBooge from the Czech Republic, Britain, Ireland, America, Canada, Spain and France.
The present ensemble is comprised of award-winning performers, writers and designers: Attila Clemman, Patrick Costello (Best Actor nomination ESB Dublin Fringe 2004), Jodi Essery, Kayla Fell, Adrienne Kapstein, Andrew Shaver and sound designer Jeff Lorenz (2005 Drama Desk Award nominee), with the directorial collaboration of Richard Crawford of New York's celebrated The Flying Machine (Frankenstein, Signals of Distress) together with lighting and set design by Simon Harding, Swarthmore Class of '99 (Best Lighting Design 2004 "Hamlet: In/Sites" - Philadelphia Weekly).
Fathom was created by the ensemble from a short story by Jodi Essery, with initial workshop presentations at Queens University, Kingston Ontario and at the Calixa Lavallee Theatre, Montreal. Fathom received its Canadian Premiere as part of Gravy Bath's New Classical Theatre Festival 2004 in Montreal. Fathom has further performed at the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, in association with Project Arts Centre for the ESB Dublin Fringe Festival, the Bank of Ireland Theatre (National University of Ireland in Galway), Off-Broadway at the Ohio Theatre's 2005 Ice Factory Festival in NYC, Toronto's Tarragon Extra Space and at Theatre Centaur's Wildside Festival 2006 in Montreal.
Fathom was developed in part with the support of the Swarthmore Project in Theater at Swarthmore College. SaBooge's performance and residency at Swarthmore is made possible by the support of the Department of Theater, the President's Office, the Department of English Literature, the Dance Program, and the Lang Performing Arts Center Staff Office.
Link: www.sabooge.org
Location: Frear Ensemble Theatre
Date: January 28, 2006
Times: Saturday, January 28, 2006, 8PM
