STEM Femmes
Broad Street Review /// By Mina Reinckens /// Dec 10th, 2019
Rebecca Wright, director and cofounder of Applied Mechanics and director of STEM FEMMES, is particularly keen to combine STEM and art. “Using the medium of theater to communicate complex ideas from other fields was one of the things we’re really excited about,” she said.
Participants are invited to engage with interlocking scenes about Jeanne Baret, Ada Lovelace, Marie Von Britten Brown, Rosalind Franklin, Helen Yee Chow Ling, Judith Resnik, Nalini Nadkarni, and Emmanuelle Charpentier. As to why this content is important to showcase right now, Wright notes that it’s not suddenly time to shine a spotlight on the women history has forgotten. “Why not before is more the question,” she says. “History is full of uncelebrated heroes and those heroes are usually not men. We’ve spent a lot of time excavating unsung heroes and celebrating them.”
This Is On Record
Broad Street Review /// By Cara Blouin /// June 23, 2018
In its devised work This Is on Record, Applied Mechanics creates a gorgeously curated living museum of grassroots American expression and the media that make that expression possible. Characters speak across the decades from 1968, 1988, and 2014, tying our present suffering to those who have come before. It is a vital work and a triumph of craft.
So much of the magic of this piece is invisible; it’s a precisely engineered freedom that winks at its subject. The topic of media and who controls it is about attention, and the attention of patrons is necessarily divided. Each time we choose to listen to her and not him, look at this rather than that, we participate in the play’s reflection on who is heard and how. Unseen forces contrive to push us towards conflict or charisma or beauty.
This masterpiece of moving parts comes together under the skilled hand of director Rebecca Wright. Each meticulously crafted piece fits together with unerring precision. Not one moment, not one inch is uncared for. Stories overlap at just the right interval to create a sense of cohesive movement and, at any point in the show, each element feeds back to the larger whole. This movement between the big and small makes room for deep emotional reflection.
FEED
Fringearts.com /// By Jason Rosenberg /// September 16, 2016
It might not always be considered as such, but food is a profoundly historical, political topic. The way we eat deeply informs the way we interact with our community and planet, the way we pass down traditions and recorded history, and of course, our own quality of life. Presented with the challenge of making a piece of theater that revolves around food, there are few companies in Philadelphia as well equipped as Applied Mechanics to tackle the job. Since their premiere in 2009, they’ve done much to solidify their reputation as an innovative, masterful creator of immersive theater that is as much an intricately crafted story as a lesson in civic engagement.
Their newest work, FEED, premieres in the 2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, and is a brilliant example of their ability to finely weave multiple narratives together to create an entire world for their audiences to explore. Set in the Independence Foundation Gallery for Visual Art at the Painted Bride, it takes its audience on a journey through the past, present, and future of a society that seems pretty similar to our own, from the point of view of 3 people living at different points on the same timeline, uniting in the gallery’s second level, where the audience and characters come together several times throughout the show to eat together.
Phindie.com /// By Olivia Jia /// September 11, 2016
the sensorial experience of a crisp wafer, or the cool tartness of a pickled radish weaves the audience member into the very fabric of the performance. Here, narrative, fiction, performance, and reality collide through the breaking of bread.
FEED, directed by Rebecca Wright, follows the stories of three characters defined by their relationships to food. Leif (Thomas Choinacky) hails from approximately 1400-1700 CE—he is perhaps a spice trader, and is wonderfully humorous and earnest in his pursuit of delicious tastes and smells, punctuated by constant gestures and onomatopoeia. The brilliant, but neurotic Krs (MK Tuomanen)—circa 2010-2020 CE—is consumed by her research to produce an infinitely sustainable food source. Bestby (Brett Ashley Robinson) presents us with a vision of the future in a thousand years or two—she is to be exiled from her community for refusing to adapt to the resurgence of farming and fresh foods due to her belief that the earth is poisoned. Her plot is bleak, yet indicates a brighter future for all mankind.
AUDIENCE (R)EVOLUTION /// Theater Communications Group
Activating Audience: Theater of Radical Inclusion /// By Applied Mechanics
People talk a lot about how to reach new audiences. They talk about what makes an engaged audience, and how to make audiences feel like they’re a part of the work. But we take it as a given that audience members are participants in the art event, and maybe we shouldn’t. Maybe audiences don’t know how important their participation is. After all, more often than not they’re told to “sit back, relax, and enjoy the show”—not a very big ask as far as engagement goes. And, since there’s no way that going to the theater could ever be as reclining or relaxing as lying on your couch at home and watching TV, perhaps this is the wrong ask. And perhaps audience members who show up to theater don’t want to be told to sit back and passively receive something, but rather to step up and actively encounter something. Applied Mechanics has been developing new forms of audience engagement over the last six years and we’ve come to see a different kind of audience: people who grew up on video games and internet want art they can walk through and not just watch. In Applied Mechanics’ work, many stories unfold simultaneously…
Audience (R)evolution: Dispatches from the Field is available for purchase through the TCG Publications: http://www.tcg.org/Store/ProductDetail/3675
We Are Bandits
Phindie.com ///By Julius Ferraro /// July 21st, 2014
At its heart, WE ARE BANDITS is an ambitious exploration of the naïveté, experience, and ramifications of radicalism, idealism, and punk.
The historical figures whose work is shared, and on whose passion and intellects this play is founded, are all female—reinforcing the dramatic impact women have had on two centuries of radical thought in art, politics and philosophy. The present-day characters who drive the story are mostly women, plus a couple of homosexual men, thus turning the norm on its head.
…WE ARE BANDITS is an inspired, intellectually stimulating theater piece. It point out gaps in our understanding of the world around us and inspires us to learn more, while also providing a surprising experience of new possibilities in the medium. What’s more, keeping with its concept of radical idea-sharing, the crowd-funded WE ARE BANDITS is absolutely free to the public, so if there’s something you don’t get, feel free to see it a second time.
Philadelphia Citypaper /// By Maggie Grabmeier /// July 25th, 2014
Inspired by the Pussy Riot arrests of 2012, director Rebecca Wright and production designer Maria Shaplin seek to create a fully functional (and believably dysfunctional) story of a society where, just like in real life, everything happens all at once.
Shaplin describes this style of performance as a kind of LARP (live action role play) in which the audience is sometimes asked to take part. “It’s as though our director and designers are the dungeon masters,” Shaplin says. “The actors are experienced players who have created characters with complex histories and trajectories, and the audience is like the kid that is new to this campaign, and has to learn the rules of the world by observing and discovering how it works.”
Newsworks /// By Howard Shapiro /// July 22nd, 2014
“We Are Bandits” is the innovative creation, free to the public and with original music, of the theater group called Applied Mechanics — smart, young local artists who seek ways to involve audiences in unconventional theater devised by the entire creative team.
I delighted in the edginess of “We Are Bandits” – the way the stories of the people who live and come to this park are told simultaneously; you catch these tales in snatches while walking around the large playing area during the entire performance.
Applied Mechanics never lets “We Are Bandits” stick more than a couple of toes into didactic polemics. It jumps unabashedly, instead, into a bubbling theatricality that allows a single story to be told – and understood – in many ways.
The Inquirer /// By Toby Zinman /// July 20th, 2014
We Are Bandits is impressive and provocative theater.
Vainglorious
The Inquirer /// By Toby Zinman /// Tuesday, April 9, 2013
If you’re interested in experimental theatre, don’t miss this one.
Rebecca Wright directs this high-precision “movement opera” where many things happen at once (as they do in history). You suddenly see Napoleon exiled to the room’s high balcony, and if you blink you’ll miss the palindrome on the banner (“Able was I ere I saw Elba”). The guillotine is created by a balletic entrechat, and the cast thrillingly transforms into a silent orchestra frantically conducted by Beethoven.
The costumes (designed by Katherine Fritz and Maria Shaplin) are superb, and the sound design (Maria Shaplin and Team Beethoven) eventually becomes a little folkloric song as all the legendary characters run off, history melts away into the past, and we’re left on the bare stage of the present. And all this in an hour.
Philly Weekly /// Nicole Finkbiner /// April 10, 2013
Pro: Every single member of the show’s whopping 26-actor ensemble is spectacular. With this having been my second or third time seeing several of the performers, I’m convinced they don’t get nearly as much praise as they deserve. Seriously, a bomb could have gone off and not a single one would have broke character.
Con: You may leave with a headache. There’s a lot happening around you and between trying to process all of it, making sure you’re not in a performer’s way and occasionally referring to the provided program/map/guide, it can be quite overwhelming.
Pro: For better or worse, you’re going to be enthralled. And for $15 bucks, I think it’s worth finding out yourself.
Broadway World /// Marakay Rogers /// April 11, 2013
VAINGLORIOUS (in full, VAINGLORIOUS: THE EPIC FEATS OF NOTABLE PERSONS IN EUROPE AFTER THE REVOLUTION) is Les Mis on steroids.
You’ll get the most out of the show by walking right up to the cast and listening in on the conversations, or by saying hello to characters strolling past you. It’s impossible to absorb everything happening, just as it would have been impossible to follow every single thing happening at the time, so choose your interest at any moment – is it Mme. De Stael’s salon? One of Josephine’s parties? Beethoven showing a new musical composition to a patron? Napoleon’s machinations? Do not miss the Congress of Vienna, at which smaller areas of Europe are carved up like a roast by the diplomats of the alliance against Napoleon, or Beethoven’s occasional difficulties conducting once his hearing loss begins affecting his balance. No one viewing spot will give you all of these things, so follow the map to see what’s happening at each location.
Overseers
The Inquirer /// Wendy Rosenfield /// Monday, September 5, 2011
The ensemble’s performers, stationed on platforms, stairs, in a trunk, inhabit a dystopian future in which those external forces stage a battle royal for humanity’s health and well-being. Think Margaret Atwood meets The Prisoner (though the show’s text draws on writers ranging from Emily Dickinson to Sun Tzu to Don DeLillo), and you’re headed in the right direction.
While the actors — as a doctor, priest, bureaucratic functionary, revolutionary and artist (all excellent, all co-creators of the piece, and all willing to have some fun while delivering their message) — respond to the growing threat of a disease infiltrating their “Sector,” the audience must also respond.
Sometimes you’re invited to eat cake and drink gin, you move to another station as the action shifts, or occasionally, you simply need to get out of the way fast enough to avoid being stepped on by two-foot high stilts supporting Kristen Bailey’s Pater B.
You choose your own adventure, with deft guidance by director Rebecca Wright, who brings up the volume of a discussion in one corner while softening another. Some clues slip past, but there’s enough repetition and overlap to avoid frustration and thread together a coherent narrative.
Maria Shaplin’s design contributes mightily to Overseers’ unified otherworldliness: The cast wear cultish cream-colored raw linen jumpers; MK Tuomanen’s scientist sports elongated fingers and bustles with the no-nonsense, head-down demeanor of a woodland creature, analyzing slides from atop a wooden perch. There’s a bit of style over substance here, but that style and the creative means by which it’s delivered make this a Fringe pick well worth viewing and, of course, exploring.
Portmanteau
The Austinist /// Fontera Fest Bring-Your-Own-Venue 2011 Review
Five strangers have come to town, each with his or her own purpose, each removing belongings from a backpack, a suitcase. They explore, interact, form alliances, become rivals. Their behavior, their manner of speaking, even their very words may seem familiar to the audience. This is Portmanteau, created by Applied Mechanics, at the Vortex Cafe for FronteraFest 2011. The ensemble hails from Philadelphia, and frankly, the 1,600 mile trip was worth it. This “invasion play” strikes a rare balance in unconventional, interactive-ish theater: by using a relatively small space, and sticking to a pretty straightforward narrative built on familiar found texts, this hour-ish piece allows the audience member to get into the action without being forced to get too close (hear that, Ben Brantley?)
The Inquirer /// Howard Shapiro
The subtitle of Portmanteau is “An Invasion Play,” and the audience is as invasive as the characters in the situation that develops. In fact, Portmanteau has more the feel of watching a movie than a play, because we’re within feet of the action watching close-ups, which sometimes in a minor way include us.
The text is from snippets of many well-known writers and by the talented ensemble. Rebecca Wright kept her direction sharply focused, so that the timing of conversations and the logistics involved in delivering them reveal the storyline, no matter where you roam or what you witness. Portmanteau is meaty and curious – and as close to a piece of installation art as theater gets.
City Paper /// K. Ross Hoffman
Portmanteau unfolds fluidly through simultaneous, interconnecting scenes performed promenade-style (with performers and audience moving freely about the same space), with all five characters — all newcomers to an unnamed small town, each with a different agenda — continuously active for its hour-plus length. That it works at all is a considerable feat; that it’s consistently engaging without being overwhelming, that it creates a taut, cohesive, and compelling socio-political drama, and that it’s also very funny (Mary Tuomanen is particularly hilarious and spot-on as the documentarian “Verna Werzog”) and frequently moving all speak to some serious ingenuity. Truly delightful.
Broad Street Review /// Jim Rutter /// September 10, 2010
How does a theater company produce a play without a playwright? The two co-creators of Applied Mechanics’ fascinating, intelligent Fringe production Portmanteau select a theme and a setting, then build a plot around a collage of dialogue lifted from other writers, including Tennessee Williams, Upton Sinclair, filmmakers Luc Besson, Gus Van Sant, and Paul Thomas Anderson, and The Bible.
By themselves, the careful selection of dialogue and the fine acting create a compelling, innovative piece of theater. But Wright and Shaplin build another layer of innovation into Portmanteau with their “choose your own adventure” approach to the staging.
Ses Voyage Sauvages
City Paper /// Emily Currier /// Friday, March 26th, 2010
With its commentary on ideas about home, Ses Voyages Sauvages is fittingly, and cleverly, staged in the interior of an apartment. Around 7:45 p.m., a group of people gathered on the porch of the West Philly row house, making small talk while waiting for the doors to open.
The living room was transformed into the Arctic with cardboard boxes painted white and plastic tarps, the kitchen became a mountain range of elaborate papier-mâché, and other locales were constructed with fabric and converted furniture. While the scenery was convincingly portrayed, the found materials reminded the audience of the constant presence of home wherever you go.
The cast of six young actors agilely interacted with the set and each other in meandering plot lines revolving around their own personal quests.
It’s Hard Times at the Camera Blanca
Broad Street Review /// First published in Edge Philadelphia /// Friday, September 18, 2009
Applied Mechanics “It’s Hard Times at the Camera Blanca” presented the inescapable nature of the global economy, that other thing artists hate most about the intersection of art and economics. Here, eight circus characters (trapeze artists, clowns, a lion tamer) downed drinks at the Camera Blanca bar as they struggled with the economic uncertainty of a travelling show on the verge of financial failure. The audience moved between tables, chairs, and barstools, eavesdropping on conversations between a brother and sister as their relationship fragments over an uncertain economic future, listening to the outpourings of clowns who fear irrelevancy, and throughout, witnessing a Ringmaster ruling over all of them with a unyielding iron fist.
…unlike the two monologues Mike Daisey showcased at this year’s festival, Wright at least doesn’t dip into fantastical solutions to fix economic woes, but instead presents the valid, real concerns felt particularly by artists during an economic recession that makes the production of art a luxury and further drives the existence of artists to the margins.
Wright and her designer Maria Shaplin didn’t manufacture a sure-seller for the Fringe, but instead pushed at the boundaries of theatre as an art form. “Hard Times” dropped the proscenium, linear narrative, and fixed directorial focus, and forced the audience to follow characters about an awkward landscape, catching only part of the conversations at a time to piece together the evening by themselves.