Undergroundzero Festival at Collective: Unconscious

Collective: Unconscious will present the 2nd Annual Undergroundzero Festival from 8 Jul - 2 Aug 2008. The festival will present over a dozen works by both established and emerging artists.

Curated by Paul Bargetto, the artists in the festival have been hand-selected based on their reputation in the community. Invited artists are free to bring a project of their own choosing -- a revival of a previous work, a world premiere, or a workshop production of a work-in-progress. All performances are presented at the Collective: Unconscious.

The complete performance schedule for the UNDERGROUNDZERO FESTIVAL is as follows:

• Charlie Victor Romeo (Cvr)
  Playwright: Collective: Unconscious
  Synopsis: A live performance documentary derived entirely from the 'Black Box' transcripts of real-life airline emergencies. Allowing the audience into the tension-filled cockpits of actual flights in distress, CVR is a portrait of the psychology of crisis and a testimony to the ability to live to the last second of life.
  Date: 8 - 11 Jul 2008.
  
• Nigromantia: A Slight Return
  Playwright: Don Nigro
  Director: John Clancy & Nancy Wals
  Cast: John Clancy & Nancy Wals
  Synopsis: Nigromantia (medieval Latin for 'speaking with the dead') pairs two monologues: Golgotha and Genesis. Golgatha is either the story of the resurrected Christ or the ramblings of a crazy man in Pittsburgh. In Genesis, Eve, the mother of us all, tells us her side of the Story.
  Date: 12 - 13 Jul 2008.
  
• Infanta: User's Guide
  Playwright: Saviana Stanescu
  Director: Vasile Nedelcu
  Cast: Erika Blaxland-de Lange
  Synopsis: Mirrors the ups and the downs of our current intellectual and egocentric ineptitude for self-expression. This play encourages us to stop and think about our own faults and prejudices in connection with race, culture and individuality.
  Date: 12 - 13 Jul 2008.
  
• Feeder: A Love Story
  Playwright: James Carter
  Director: David Anzuelo
  Cast: Jennifer Conley Darling
  Synopsis: Jesse is a 703-pound Gainer who consumes 15,000 calories per day. Noel is her Feeder. Both share in a world of passion, obsession and desserts.
  Date: 16 - 30 Jul 2008.
  
• The Event
  Playwright: John Clancy
  Director: John Clancy
  Cast: Matt Oberg
  Synopsis: What starts as a straightforward dismantling of the 'one-man show' transforms into an honest attempt at communion with those gathered. Dealing directly and bluntly with the technician, the stage manager, the playwright, director and critics, the actor moves quickly into dangerous and slippery territory. Armed only with his memorized words, can an actor say something else?
  Date: 17 - 19 Jul 2008.
  
• The Terrible Temptation To Do Good: A Berchtian Lounge - Adapted from Bertolt Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle
  Synopsis: This rebuttal to the Broadway musical interweaves found text, original music and inspirations from Brecht.
  Date: 18 - 20 Jul 2008.
  
• Binchbottom Declares War! (Or, Full Frontal Jacket)
  Cast: Nasty Canasta, Jonny Porkpie, Amber Ray, Anita Cookie, Bastard Keith, Clams Casino, Dirty Martini, Doctor Lukki, Naughtia Nice, Pookie Patootie, Scott Rayow, and Tigger.
  Synopsis: When beleaguered President Porkpie learns that the Pinchbottom Burlesque Organization are stockpiling 'Weapons of Ass Destruction', he orders an immediate invasion. In response, the burlesque stars forswear their beloved bump & grind in favor of military maneuvers. When the two armies clash, who will emerge victorious?
  Date: 18 - 20 Jul 2008.
  
• The Proposal, Based On An Old Farce
  Synopsis: Downtown director Daniel Irizarry has a proposal. Anton Chekhov, deceased, cannot refuse. Daniel is down on one knee, and Anton, giggling like a schoolgirl.
  Date: 24 - 26 Jul 2008.
  
• Pray, Mantid
  Director: Onur Karaoglu
  Cast: Meera Kumbhani and Jason Martin
  Synopsis: About a man and a woman dealing with love, violence and death. The entire course of a relationship is boiled down to the fulfillment of a contractual agreement.
  Date: 24 - 27 Jul 2008.
  
• The Apocalypse Of John The Rabbit
  Playwright: Freddi Price
  Director: Freddi Price
  Cast: Meera Kumbhani and Jason Martin
  Synopsis: Far in the desert in the depths of his cave, John, a drug crazed, sex starved rabbit and harbinger of doom lapses into a hallucination. An albino blues guitar wizard and a talking lamb lead him into a world of harlots and beasts, horned monsters and monstrous men. In this intricate shadow puppet show, the sky really is falling, and it's going to take more than a paranoid bunny to save the world from total destruction.
  Date: 26 - 27 Jul 2008.
  
• (Double Bill)
  Clown Axioms
  Synopsis: Kendall Cornell and her troupe of women clowns take a cold, hard clown look at gothic romance and gory fairy tales.

  The Bitter Poet
  Synopsis: The Bitter Poet goes searching for love in all the wrong black box performance spaces, basement bars, Portland strip clubs, naked-in-public anxiety dreams, impulsive road trips to hook-up with ex-lovers and fantasies of poetry publishing stardom.
  Date: 31 Jul - 2 Aug 2008.

  
  
• Tales From Bordertown (Vol. II)
  Playwright: Eric Dean Scott
  Synopsis: Follows a trail of dreams, beat poetry, jazz recollection and tales from true life through South American border towns, Peruvian mountain villages, the Amazon River and on past the Strait of Magellan. It is a mysterious journey into the silent heart of the existential question.
  Date: 31 Jul - 2 Aug 2008.
  

  Undergroundzero Festival was founded by Paul Bargetto, the artistic director of East River Commedia and Collective:Unconscious. Seeking to create new opportunities outside the traditional curatorial venue system, this festival was created to promote new theatrical work in progress chosen by and for artists. The goal is to create an ongoing series of festivals that will establish an alternative system of presentation for Independent Theater.

  The mission of Collective: Unconscious is to foster an inclusive, creative community in Lower Manhattan that serves as an incubator and launching pad for emerging artists. Founded in 1995 by a group of multi-disciplined artists, Collective: Unconscious was conceived both to perform unique experimental theater and to administer a space that would serve as a community resource and laboratory for the performing arts.