My Barbarian: Post-Living Ante-Action Theater April 14, 2012

“An astute cabaret of insight and satire…worthy of Voltaire.” LA Weekly

With knowing humor and carefully considered allusion, My Barbarian's ongoing interdisciplinary Post-Living Ante-Action Theater (PoLAAT) project interrogates counterculture theatrical forms and translates them into slyly subversive music-theater of the moment. The irreverent Los Angeles trio of Malik Gaines, Jade Gordon and Alexandro Segade collaborates with a team of local performers to workshop and stage a new production using the five principles they have established for PoLAAT: Estrangement, Indistinction, Suspension of Beliefs, a Mandate to Participate, and Inspirational Critique. The resulting new performance, Post-Paradise, Aren't You Sorry Now?, is part happening and part variety show, employing improvisation, audience participation and the staging of social taboo with reference to both the Living Theater's utopian Paradise Now (1968) and Rainer Werner Fassbinder's nihilistic critical response Pre-Paradise, Sorry Now (1969).

Using PoLAAT as a pedagogical model for working with a large group of artists to create theater that is as much about the process of collaboration as it is about grappling with a history of radical leftist theatrical and artistic production, My Barbarian has developed projects in Egypt, Italy, Lithuania, Spain and elsewhere in the U.S. In Los Angeles, with scripted and improvised theatrical scenes woven through a series of songs, games and actions, Post-Paradise, Aren't You Sorry Now? explores a range of contemporary and historical issues, including reproductive rights, health care and President Obama's life story, with segues through the Spanish Civil War, Communist China and the fall of Troy.

Official Website: http://www.redcat.org/event/my-barbarian