Thank you to everyone who helped make A Lovely Picnic at NOFringe such a beautiful experience. As usual, it took a small army. I’mma call you out:
Jennifer Zeyl, my inspiring friend and outside eye, for your direction, vision, attention to detail, time, and moral support. You’re a true theatre cowgirl. Thank you.
Dan Baumfeld, partner in crime, for ridiculous pet names and all other things fun. Thanks for making this possible.
Bruce Salmon and Austin Smith, for being unbelievably talented, totally game, and ridiculously magical. Thank you.
Keely Isaac-Meehan, for help with choreography and all the cheerleading. It’s no small thing. Thank you.
Bernard Hazen, for being my juggling guru and all-around darling. Thank you. I miss you.
K.d. Schill, for altering my costume and busting out with the wig-making skillZ on a moment’s notice. So fierce. Thank you.
MLE at WhiskeyDogPrintShop for the aerial costume! Rufflebutt FTW. Thank you.
Kristen Evans, for not taking no for an answer. And Swamp Deville, for being such a good chef. Your dinners are downright persuasive. Cheers, darlins’.
Erica Amrine at Clouet Gardens, for knowing that it was going to be perfect. Thank you.
Ben Harwood, for giving us a home in New Orleans. You are the most. The MOST. Thank you.
Will Coviello, for writing me up in the Gambit and making the buzz happen. Thank you.
Jian, Judith, and Andrea, for being the best little street team ever. Thank you.
Everyone who came… and the New Orleans Fringe community. Thank you. I’ll be back soon.
Please join us Nov.14-18 at The Clouet Gardens, 710 Clouet in the Bywater, at 4pm each day for “A Lovely Picnic, or almost serious, totally magical, rose-colored teatime” at the New Orleans Fringe Festival.
After selling out houses with “domestic variations” at last year’s Fringe, ticktock artistic director Liza Rose is excited to return to New Orleans to present this charming half-hour site-specific contemporary physical exploration. Backed by two musicians and a tree with a swing, Ms. Rose delicately investigates the challenges of self-sufficiency, the revelations of simplicity, and the small joys of solitude that surface while preparing a picnic in the garden. With a generous helping of aerial antics and gorgeous dancing, a side of spontaneous singing, and a whimsical rococo ambience, this playful ritual makes the mundane into magnificent in true ticktock style. Matthew Echert of The SunBreak says to watch Liza perform is to witness “An incredible display of agility, strength, and grace.”
A Lovely Picnic was conceived by ticktock Artistic Director Elizabeth Rose and created with director Jennifer Zeyl while in residence at the Smoke Farm in Arlington, WA, a secluded 350-acre former dairy farm on the Stillaguamish River, cradled in the foothills of the Cascade Mountains. The piece was inspired in large part by their experiences, conversations, and meditations on the Farm. It is directed by Ms. Zeyl (The Itiman Theatre, Washington Ensemble Theatre, On the Boards), and features music composed and performed live by New Orleans native Bruce Salmon (The Inheritance, THAT Damned Band). Violin virtuoso Austin Smith joins the picnic as well, to round out the live music component. ticktock, in its third year as a company, has brought new depth and possibility to its formerly self-directed ensemble of circus performers by reaching out to include new collaborators of a directorial and musical focus. The results have already been heralded as “magical” by local audiences.
We are beyond excited to bring this piece to what is quite possibly the most magical city on earth. Come join us in the garden! A Lovely Picnic waits.
We’d like to welcome the littlest ticktocker, Miss Violet Rae. She is cute as a button, and now almost 5 months old! Jilly is the most beautiful mama ever.
She even made a cameo in August at Smoke Farm with Mama’s company, Storm Warning. Gorgeous!
I performed as well, on my swing. Here’s a pic by the awesome Melanie Masson:
I’ll be taking my piece to New Orleans to perform in the Fringe again in… Eep! 10 days!
I will post a press release and more info in the next day or so. I need to update our teaching schedules as well; the bunch of us are teaching away over here…
Here’s the short answer to what has been happening: Things have exploded in ticktockland.
Starting where we left off…
New Orleans was amazing. Our show was very well received, and they told us that we drew the largest audiences in the history of the NOFringe. Here is a little video of what that looked like… the NOLA vid starts about 30 seconds in:
Thank you to everyone who helped us get there and back. Thank you to Jennifer Zeyl, Wes Hurley, Keri Kellerman, John Boylan, Nikolai Lesnikov, and every single person who donated to our fundraising campaign. Thank you the the amazing people at NOFringe: Kristen, Emilie, Phil, and Damon, as well as Adam (volunteer manual labor), Jeff (lighting), Ray (incredible host at the Den). Artists, if you want to, and if you can… DO THIS FESTIVAL. Do it.
Here we are backstage at the Den of Muses with Denny, the house cat:
We returned from New Orleans and launched ourselves full force into the Holiday season, which included a bunch of parties and random gigs for everyone. Things were busy.
Last month, our friend and ticktock superfan Goldie Jones at Subversionz Media released a mini documentary she did of us while we were working on the Alley-Up show last September. Check it:
As for this year, the company is officially on hiatus until September.
We are all still very much in love with each other and the work, but we have all been pursuing various other equally exciting personal and professional projects. I asked each of the girls for something to put up here for all our peeps to see, and here’s what they sent me:
Rachel just debuted a new act using a 180 gallon tank full of salt water – this here is it:
She’s “headed to europe for the summer to do a lil work, and a lil travel, working with Fidget Feet, a company based out of Ireland.”
Rachel. You are so beautiful. I can’t wait to squeeze you.
Sage is off and traveling the world kicking ass at circus! She sent me a little list of where she’s been and who she’s seen:
-Personal intensive with the cast and director of C!RCA, Montreal, CA
-Personal training with Irina Naumenko, Montreal, CA
-Workshop with Firenza Guidi and NoFit State, Cardiff, Wales
-Workshop with Maksim Komaro and NoFit State, Cardiff, Wales
-Traveled through Bristol and London to check out the circus/performing scene for a week
That’s a sweet list!
Bridget is back to rocking out after taking 3 months off to heal. She recently returned from a tour in Germany where she took a fall. She spent her healing time rolling on the floor and finding her dance again. She has returned to her aerial training and to performing at The Pink Door and teaching at Emerald City Trapeze Arts.
Bridget… I love the sh*t out of you. Just saying.
Jill just finished dancing with our amazing sister company Manifold Motion in their new show, “Compos Mentis”. Her last performance for a while was March 25th, in which several feather pillows met their maker.
She is currently in production, creating…A HUMAN BEING!!!! Really!!! This work-in-progress will premier around June 7th. Until then she will remain “grounded”, but stay tuned for her post-partum aerial adventures late summer/early fall 2012. Jill is still available for private lessons (verbal feedback only!)
Jilly, we can’t wait to meet your baby girl. Congratulations and welcome to the Mommy club. 🙂
And as for me…
I have been performing here and there. I returned to New Orleans in February and will be back in May. I am collaborating with New Orleans-based sculptor and theatre maker Adam Tourek of New Noise to create a new site-specific performance installation, which we will debut in August in Seattle and November in NOLA. I can’t release all the details yet, but it is VERY cool. I’m beyond excited about working down there, and about this collaboration with Adam.
I also just returned from Austin, where I performed a piece commissioned by choreographer Sharon Marroquin at the Long Center.
2 days after I returned I began performing the Bathtub Solo in the Moisture Festival, which closed 2 weeks ago. Here’s a pic:
I’ll be doing the Bathtub again as part of SEAF in June, as well as choreographing a new ensemble piece commissioned by the Festival on a giant spider web. You should really come see it.
I’ve also been teaching at Versatile Arts, and loving every minute of it! Teaching is beyond inspiring and my students are wonderful! Click the link to check out the current session’s schedule and register for classes. I’ll be teaching Advanced Trap, Doubles, and my infamous Choreography class again, all beginning May 7.
As for the company and when you’ll see us together again… we have a few things coming up in the Fall, but nothing is set in stone just yet. We will definitely be performing excerpts from domestic variations as part of The Next Fifty at Seattle Center, and have received a request to produce dv in its entirety again at the Capitol Theatre in Olympia. All details are still forthcoming.
So there you have it, folks. The long-awaited blog update. Give us a shout. Say “hi”. We’re doin’ good, but we miss you tons. Hope to see you soon.
I’m still processing the experience of producing domestic variations. It was a difficult journey. While the three of us were able to work together in a positive, cohesive, and ultimately rewarding way, there were so many external or technical factors involved in the show that for three months, it seemed like everything might fall apart at any moment. I don’t know if I have the energy to do it like that ever again. We learned a lot about what to delegate and what to do ourselves, what and what not to pay for, who will and who will not show up, and how to just keep going — and be easy on ourselves.
I am profoundly grateful to my collaborators and to every single audience member who had enough faith in us to put their evening on the line by coming to our show.
What’s this show about anyway? Well, here’s a handy description right from our press release:
Seattle’s favorite aerial trio is at it again, fusing theatre, dance, and circus to intrigue and astonish you! Casting themselves as three women who live in the same house at different times, the ticktock trifecta explores the idea of “home” and where we find it, make it, or imagine it in “domestic variations”, running Friday-Sunday, June 17-26 at FRED Wildlife Refuge. Performed entirely on invented apparatus, ticktock puts their heavily acrobatic and circus infused dance into the literal landscape of an apartment, using furniture, human-sized picture frames, and the occasional household appliance instead of trapezes and silks to create a genre-defying work that challenges the mundane, the hyperreal, and all the day-to-day moments in between.
Tickets are $15 through brownpapertickets.com. Friday/Saturday showtimes are 7;30pm. Sundays are 7pm. ticktock is an associated program of the Shunpike.
We have a limited number of seats for each show, and we have to pack every night. We need your help. Share, re-post, tweet, send psychic brainwaves, bottle some messages, or activate the phone tree. TELL YOUR FRIENDS.
We are gearing up for a characteristically chaotic spring and summer and would love to see your faces TOMORROW night at Art Attack!, the Georgetown Art Walk, in Shelly’s loft, 4810 Airport Way S.
We will be quite literally swinging from the rafters on cloud swing, trapeze, rope, and hoop– all for your general wonderment!
Come on down and we’ll see you there!
Also, we would love to see you over at the Triple Door March 24-26 for Viva Oz Vegas, starring ticktock as the Lollipop Guild, Jill and Liza as the Flying Monkeys, and Bridget as the Scarecrow! We have had so much fun ticktocking it up with these campy characters and are pretty excited about the results. It’s always a fun night out at the Triple Door– the food from Wild Ginger is so delish! Get the Mandarin Chicken– known amongst us performers as “candy crack chicken”. I think Ben de la Creme is responsible for that…
In May, ticktock will be joined by our awesome friend and cohort, Jenn Elder, to grace the mainstage at Seattle Erotic Art Festival. More on that awesomeness as the show draws nearer.
And… drumroll please… we are slated to debut a new full-length work in June! Yes. It’s true. It’s happening. And you will hear about it.
So keep checking in…
Right now it’s back to work for us, see you all very soon!
My girls are gone! With Jill in Spain and Liza in Austin I sit her ticking but not tocking. I look forward to the days when we are all back together again. Liza and I will begin work on duet material when she returns home. She and I had a few gigs together last week. It really changes the dynamic not having Jill around. This time is important for E and I to further develop our artistry as a duet. I am excited to dive in with E and perhaps try rehearsing at a time that is not 7:30 AM. 🙂 I crave more work on fabric; photo shoots, yoga! Miss you girls!!
toil and trouble 