Additional details from voice actor Phil Proctor follow this press release.
For Immediate Release:
THE FIRESIGN THEATRE WILL PERFORM AT THE KIRKLAND PERFORMANCE CENTER
Friday, Jan 22 & Saturday, Jan 23 – 7:30PM
AND AT TACOMA’S THEATRE ON THE SQUARE
Sunday, January 24th – 3:00PM AND 7:30 PM
The Firesign Theatre, comedy’s legendary quartet, will appear at the Kirkland Performance Center on January 22nd & 23rd and Tacoma’s Theatre On The Square [in Kirkland and Tacoma, WA, respectively] as part of a series of 2010 performances designed for more intimate theaters.
The Firesign writing partners and voice artists, now in their forty-second year of working together, are Phil Austin, Peter Bergman, David Ossman and Phil Proctor. They have collaborated on more than twenty “movies for the mind,” introducing listeners to surrealistic adventures including Nick Danger, Porgie and Mudhead, “Beat The Reaper,” “I Think We’re All Bozos on This Bus,” and “Everything You Know Is Wrong.”
Their 21st century CD Trilogy, “We’re Doomed,” received Grammy nominations for “Give Me Immortality or Give Me Death” and “Bride of Firesign.” The Library of Congress added “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” to their highly selective recorded archives. Firesign’s many hours of live radio broadcasts and rare movies are now carefully restored collector’s items. The group has recently been profiled in two coffee-table books on The Sixties when, according to LIFE magazine, Firesign were “The favorite comics of the Rock Age.”
They are, in fact, creators of what Stereo Review’s critic Eric Salzman called “contemporary, relevant, multi-level non-linear theater – a kind of verbal electronic opera.” The quartet presents the work in the authentic voice of its author-improvisers of whom Rolling Stone said, “The very least they should get is an Academy Award.”
Working for the first time on a simple stage with no props or costumes and utilizing only their unlimited character voices, Firesign is now able to give their classic scripts a brand-new performance.
The first act weaves together two favorites, “Waiting For The Electrician” and “Don’t Crush That Dwarf” – existential tales of border-crossing, channel-switching and selling-out. The second act allows the “Nick Danger” cast (Rocky, Bradshaw, Catherwood and Nancy) to riff, improvise and spoof the ageless radio dick, Nick Danger, Third Eye.
Also on the bill are Ben Bland’s Movie Matinee, local School Lunch Menus, Ralph Spoilsport, All-Star Crowley and Shakespeare’s Lost Comedie, “Anythynge You Want To.” The Firesign’s full-length iambic farce, in development for forty years, will get a cruelly shortened reading, in styles ranging from pure coarse acting to sincere imitations of ancient movie stars and starlets.
Proctor, who appeared on Whidbey in George Tirebiter’s “Radio Follies,” has been recently heard as The Drunken Money in five “Dr. Doolittle” movies, as Harold in the “Rugrats” films and TV series and in Disney’s “The Princess and the Frog”. He will also tour this year reading “Don Quixote” with the Grammy-winning L.A. Guitar Quartet.
Ossman will be co-directing “Agatha Christie’s The BBC Murders” at Tacoma’s Theatre NorthWest, opening April 30, 2010, with his wife Judith Walcutt. The upcoming NW production will be a further development of the show, which made its debut at the 2009 International Mystery Writers Festival in Owensboro, Kentucky, and is preparing for national tour.
Bergman is creator of Los Angeles’ Radio Club, a writing and performance workshop aimed at under-served kids. He’s is also a Castaneda-inspired voice coach and occasional comic monologist, now getting laughs with “2020 Vision.”
Austin writes and develops his gardens at the South end of Puget Sound. A literary blogger, he’ll have a book, “Long Stories and Short Stories,” out in 2010.
The Kirkland Performance Center is located at 350 Kirkland Avenue. Tickets are $35 are available by visiting www.firesigntheatre.com.
Tacoma’s Theatre On The Square is located at 901 Broadway. Tickets are $29 & $39 are available by calling 253-591-5894 or by visiting www.firesigntheatre.com.
* Special thanks to Phil Proctor (planetproctor.com) for the press release. Phil just launched his Twitter page (@philproctor) and I’m sure he’d appreciate the followers.
And on a related note, Phil says via Facebook that a Firesign Theatre national US tour is a possibility:
Our schedules are such at present that any major US touring would have to happen after our West coast appearances which will probably occupy most of this year, but hang in there! We will only get better with age – like worms out of a hot cheese log.
Phil adds via email:
I will be going into rehearsals for a world-premiere comedy called “The Psyhic” at Garry Marshall’s Falcon Theatre in Burbank on Feb. 18th. [The show runs March 26th through April 18th, 2010.]
Upcoming west coast [Firesign Theatre] dates are also being discussed, and I’ll be appearing in Austin, TX with the LA Guitar Quartet reading “Don Quixote” again on June 23rd.
