SubOrbital photo by Maria Baranova-Suzuki
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PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT
THE ACCOUNTANT Created and performed by Trey Lyford The Accountant is a a collaboratively created visual theatre piece inspired by my recent personal experiences with death and Samuel Beckett’s iconic play Krapp’s Last Tape. The new work blends physical theatre, vaudeville routines, illusion, origami and kinetically engineered set elements to create a dreamscape of memory and loss. The show is set in the forgotten workplace of a middle aged, middle managed office clerk. As he waits on hold, his mind slips from the tedium of work into a comical and haunting world of futility, remembrance and regret. UNTITLED kid's musical adapted and composed by Trey Lyford in collaboration with hip-hop artist Kuf Knotz I can't tell you much about this one as the rights are still being figured out, but I have been working on adapting a much loved children's book into a hip-hop musical for kids. Full of surreal turns and the transformative power of a child's imagination, the new work will take an ensemble of dancers, actors and musicians and create a world where surprises are around every corner. SUBORBITAL Created and performed by Trey Lyford, Geoff Sobelle and Steve Cuiffo. Directed by Paul Lazar With a commission from Center Theatre Group, the trio & director team that created Elephant Room brings their unique theatre/magic brains to the world of outer space. Following a work-in-progress residency at St. Ann's Warehouse, SubOrbital continues to be developed. Inspired by the DIY space movement, the show combines simple everyday objects and light to manifest life in the void. |
Elephant Room photo by Greg Costanzo
"I must have done something bad, sometime in my life."
- Daryl Hannah & George Jones |
PAST PRODUCTIONS
ELEPHANT ROOM Created and performed by Trey Lyford, Geoff Sobelle and Steve Cuiffo. Directed by Paul Lazar ELEPHANT ROOM is an absurd performance-art piece that takes the form of an evening-length magic show to embrace and expose the currency of deception in contemporary American culture. In true Rainpan 43 fashion, this is an actor-driven show that is both hilarious and though-provoking, ridiculous and poetic, shameless and sincere. In that order. ELEPHANT ROOM combines the contemporary clowning of Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford with the advanced magic skills of illusionist/actor Steve Cuiffo. It is an evening of phenomenal spectacle and wonder, dance numbers and then more dance numbers. At the heart of the show are three world-class jackasses: Dennis Diamond, Louie Magic and Darryl Hannah. While the magic functions and will fool the audience, the magicians begin to fall apart. The more the characters posture, front and hide behind their “smoke/mirrors,” the more they reveal their vulnerability. Click here to listen to a podcast about the piece on HowlRound. “delightfully daft…their lovable-loser shtick as well as their nifty skills help turn ELEPHANT ROOM into one of the coolest places in town.” – The New York Times “..a beautiful meeting of the theatricality of magic, physical theater and comedy…a great demonstration of what you get with fearless commitment.” – Wall Street Journal “Enchantingly goofy.” – Village Voice “A pastiche of prestidigatory delights and vaudevillian antics.” – Culturebot “…walks that well neigh perforated line between humorous and disturbing that marks all good magicians.” – Staged |
machines machines machines machines machines machines machines photo by JJ Tiziou
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machines machines machines machines machines machines machines
Created and performed by Trey Lyford, Geoff Sobelle and Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel, directed by Aleksandra Wolska and Charlotte Ford In a unique blend of clowning and engineering, MACHINES MACHINES MACHINES MACHINES MACHINES MACHINES MACHINES reveals the claustrophobic bunker of three paranoid brothers so fixated on protecting themselves from the outside world that they themselves become the objects of suspicion. In an attempt to simplify their lives, they bury themselves in a cacophonous landslide of ingenious – if poorly made – machines. At the heart of the play are the ridiculously complex machines, based on cartoonist Rube Goldberg’s vision of technology and the equation: the most amount of effort to achieve the least amount of gain. “The show’s loopy ethos is founded on a celebration of pointlessness, and for most of the running time it is a ticklish pleasure simply to watch these men bicker and pose and play, like kids in a junk-filled garage who’ve consumed too much sugar and haven’t yet discovered the more enervating pleasures of video games.” – The New York Times |
"Got it in one!" - Phineas
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Amnesia Curiosa Created and Performed by Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle Directed by Andrew Dawson Inside the nation's oldest surgical amphitheatre, physical theater artists Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford unearth a museum of absence and artifact where the paranormal is normal and the line between docent and exhibit becomes increasingly blurred. Drawing from the esoteric worlds of the 19th century pseudoscience, medical anomoly, spiritualism, and the occult, Amnesia Curiosa is a surgical seance, exhuming a repository of familial ghosts, memory, and wonder. This contemporary cabinet of curiosities features a unique collaboration between award-winning UK physical theater artist Andrew Dawson and rainpain 43. The show premiered at Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia and was a part of the rainpan 43 Festival at DC's Studio Theatre. “I keep inside myself, in my private museum, everything I have seen and loved in my life.” – Andre Malraux “We, amnesiacs all, condemned to live in an eternally fleeting present, have created the most elaborate of human constructions, memory, to buffer ourselves against the intolerable knowledge of the irreversible passage of time…” – Geoffrey Sonnabend |
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ALL WEAR BOWLERS
Created and performed by Trey Lyford and Geoff Sobelle, directed by Aleksandra Wolska ALL WEAR BOWLERS draws from the world of 1930s-era physical comedy to tell the story of two silent film stars who fall off of the screen to find themselves trapped in a clown show. Without a thought in their heads, the duo persists in trying to make sense of their situation, only to succeed in deepening their disorientation until they lose all sense of time, place and self. ALL WEAR BOWLERS is a two-man absurdist play that combines physical comedy routines with visual metaphor, stage magic, filmed images and vaudevillian patter in an exploration of identity and memory, nostalgia and amnesia. The pathos of Laurel and Hardy, the desolate humor of Samuel Beckett, and the quiet poetry of René Magritte collide to create a surreal world of venomous ventriloquists and belligerent bowlers. “Indeed, it’s hard to imagine the kind of daring and ingenuity in ALL WEAR BOWLERS in the commercial theater. It’s one more reason to feel foolish about spending money on a Broadway show.” – The New York Times “The play’s absurdist veneer lends … familiar illusions fresh charm, and the perfectly choreographed slapstick coalesces into something delightfully darker. Rubber-faced, lithe-limbed and sleight-handed, Lyford and Sobelle are surreal vaudevillians who ply their craft in an alternative dimension.” — Los Angeles Times “Existential vaudeville. Waiting for the Marx Brothers. It’s fall-off-your-chair funny and it’s catch-your-breath moving, full of imagination, split-second timing, classic magic tricks, ventriloquism and astonishingly skilled clowning around. The brilliantly talented Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford created and perform this homage to Beckett, Laurel and Hardy, and the painter Rene Magritte. Don’t miss it!” — Philadelphia CityPaper |
"Nothing to be done."
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