About
Founded in 2009 as a multi-disciplinary ensemble, The Mad Ones create visceral, immersive and highly detailed theatrical experiences that investigate cultural memory and nostalgia. The Mad Ones generate work through automatic writing, in-depth dramaturgical research, and structured improvisation. Their productions incorporate live music, appropriate popular American genres and playfully re-imagine world history. The collaboration of a core creative team, including actors, designers, and director, plays an integral role in what a piece ultimately becomes.
The Mad Ones have created two original, full-length productions and one 10-minute play. Their first full-length piece, Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War (The New Ohio Theatre, The Brick, Ars Nova), combines 1950s radio drama, vintage country music, and Soviet Science as a team of Russian radio hosts, warmed to the lost culture of 1950s Americana, broadcasts a story of brothers’ love drawn straight from the American heartland. Samuel & Alasdair received multiple New York Innovative Theater Awards, including Outstanding Sound Design, Outstanding Ensemble and Outstanding Production of a Play. Helen Shaw of Time Out New York called Samuel & Alasdair, “unbreakably deft – and delightful to its minutest detail,” and New York Magazine’s Scott Brown raved, “This is one of the most smoothly functional theatrical metaphors you’ll have seen in a while, a great small play about decline and denial and the subtler, unspoken bonds of devotion. Without a crumb of optimism, Samuel & Alasdair is still a spot of warmth in a cold world.”
Their second full-length production, The Tremendous Tremendous (The Brick), pulls back the curtain on a tremendous moment in American History – closing night of the 1939 World’s Fair – revealing an unsettling secret of the Tremendous Traveling Abbotts. The Tremendous Tremendous was nominated for Outstanding Ensemble at the NYIT Awards and was selected by L Magazine as one of the Top Ten Shows of 2011.
Their 10-minute ode to Sherlock Holmes, Inspector Pennywhistle and the Nefarious Case of the Sweet Shop Murder, was commissioned for Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks 2010 Hot Dish.
The Mad Ones are Co-Artistic Directors Marc Bovino (performer/writer), Joe Curnutte (performer/writer), Lila Neugebauer (director/writer), Stephanie Wright Thompson (performer/writer); Company Members Michael Dalto (performer/music director), Stowe Nelson (sound designer); and Affiliated Artists Mike Inwood (lighting designer), Laura Jellinek (set designer) and Sarah Lunnie (dramaturg).
Contact us at themadonesemail@gmail.com
