News & Updates

REPORT: Workshop Performance Spring 2020

COVID ART June 2020

Unwilling to stop the flow of creative activity, we adjusted and explored, rehearsed on zoom, and taped on cell phones and created 40 minutes of Gilgamesh (Books 1-8), adapted to contemporary Southern California.

GILGAMESH  (in Irvine)

(first told circa 2750 BC) commonly known as “the oldest story.”

One thousand years before Homer wrote the Iliad, the fertile crescent of Mesopotamia produced the epic story of Gilgamesh. We planned to explore and present it in public workshop in the Grotowski Barn in Spring 2020 in preparation for full production Spring 2021. And our project, like so many others during the covid pandemic, was re-imagined:

Source Text- Gilgamesh, version by Stephen Mitchell

Adapter and Director- Annie Loui
Video Design- Merle de Witt 
Sound Design- Garrett Gagnon
Composer- Adib Ghorbani

Cultural Advisor- Adib Ghorbani

Performers:
Ninsun, Bard and many others- Hope Andrejack  
Ishtar and many others- Meg Evans
Anu and many others- Sophia Metcalf
Enkidu and many others Gio Munguia
Gilgamesh- Hunter Ringsmith
Shamhat and many others- Lilian Wouters

CounterBalance Theater’s “Gilgamesh” Trailer
Running Time 4:01

UPCOMING: Modjeska Foundation commission, September 2020

Mme. Modjeska, beloved Shakespearean actress of the 19th century, left her native Poland with husband Count Bozenta, and established her home “Arden” in rural Orange County. Designed by Stanford White and gardened by Thomas Payne in 1888, their house became a famed rural retreat for visiting friends and artists. The Modjeska Foundation and CounterBalance Theater are joining forces to create a new production based on Mme Modjeska’s illustrated fairy tales; fantastical stories of an imaginary Modjeska Canyon.

Watch for our initial construction the end of summer 2020-

UPDATE: Falling Girl

One Million Mark!
With over one million hits, we thought we should acknowledge the continuing life of Falling Girl.

Created by CounterBalance in collaboration with producer/animator Scott Snibbe, Falling Girl is an inter-active video installation based on a short story by Dino Buzzati about the briefness of life.

CounterBalance Theater’s Falling Girl Trailer
Running Time 3:43

RECENT RELEASE by Routledge Press

2nd Edition
The Physical Actor
Contact Improvisation from Studio to Stage

by Annie Loui, Artistic Director CounterBalance Theater

Forward by Steve Paxton and a new chapter on Devising using CounterBalance tools. See details under: TRAINING

The Physical Actor is a comprehensive book of exercises for actors. It is carefully designed for the development of a strong and flexible body able to move with ease through space and interact instinctively on-stage. Annie Loui draws on her training with Etienne Decroux, Carolyn Carlson, and Jerzy Grotowski to bring Contact Improvisation into the theatrical sphere. She explains how it can be used to develop alert and embodied listening skills in the actor, and how to apply it to working with texts on stage. New for this edition are additional partnering exercises, in-depth applications of contact improvisation to monologues andscenes, and a chapter on devising physical theatre performances.