Shake on the Lake / Josh Rice CONTACT Josh Rice PO Box 57 Silver Lake NY 14549 Project Budget Grant Request $7,000 $3,000 NA PAST GRANTS AWARDED 501-350-6340 joshrice0730@gmail.com shakeonthelake.org 501 (c)(3): Shake on the Lake Andre Andre is a puppet theatre piece about the life and size of the sports entertainer, Andre the Giant. Known as one of the world s greatest professional wrestling stars, a beloved Hollywood actor, and from getting rides to school from Samuel Beckett, Andre investigates being an outcast, the price of fame, alcoholism, and abandonment. VIDEO SAMPLE Title: Amarillo Slim in a World Full of Fat People (May 2014) Artists: Josh Rice, director and designer Description: This is an excerpt about the life and times of legendary poker player, proposition gambler, Thomas Amarillo Slim Preston who challenged tennis legend, Bobby Riggs, to a game of ping-pong, so long as he got to choose the paddles--cast iron skillets. WORKSHOP
PROJECT DESCRIPTION: Andre Andre is a puppet theatre piece about the life and size of the sports entertainer, Andre the Giant. Known as one of the world s greatest professional wrestling stars, a beloved Hollywood actor, and from getting rides to school from Samuel Beckett, Andre investigates being an outcast, the price of fame, alcoholism, and abandonment. Using toy theatre, shadow, bunraku-style, and kuruma ningyo-style puppetry, live-feed video and projection, as well as the physical spectacle and violence of professional wrestling, I want experiment with scale to explore Andre's isolation as "The Eighth Wonder of the World." How can someone so large feel so small? What did Beckett and young Andre discuss in those rides to school? And why did Andre yearn for intimacy, yet estrange himself from his own daughter? These are just a few of the questions I will be exploring in the piece. My hope is to use the narrator/wwe-style announcer as the traditional Bunraku-style position of the tayu, or narrator. I will also be using traditional oneperson kuruma ningyo forms to explore the strong-style wrestling technique used in Japan, where Andre was a frequent performer. I also want to explore the framework of Samuel Beckett's piece, Act Without Words I, and through toy theatre and live-feed video projection, explore Andre's journey being "thrown" into the absurd world of wrestling. I also hope to live-feed the audience into the piece, and use them as a double image of the "audience" that attends live wrestling events. If we all know it's "fake" (wrestling AND theatre) going into it, why do we continue to participate in the rules of the event? I grew up watching wrestling, and it continues to influence the work I make. It is as absurd and theatrical as Beckett's plays, and this connection between Andre, Beckett, and pro wrestling is endlessly fascinating to me. In Roland Barthes essay, The World of Wrestling, he says, "The function of the wrestler is not to win; it is to go exactly through the motions which are expected of him." I find this similarity between puppetry and wrestling intriguing. Wrestlers consider themselves artists. So how can the "art" of wrestling be elevated through puppetry? My goal with this Workshop Grant is to use the resources toward developing the first 30 minutes of this piece. 1
PROJECT BUDGET: Andre (the first 20 minutes of material) PERSONNEL EXPENSES: $4,000 Artists--$4,000 -$500 for Chris Carcione, Projection Designer/Operator (1 week) -$500 for Sam Gold, Puppeteer (1 week) -$500 for Rowan Magee, Puppeteer (1 week) -$500 for CB Goodman, Puppeteer (1 week) -$500 for Jennifer Kidwell, Performer/Puppeteer (1 week) -$500 for Jesse Heffler, Sound Designer (1 week) -$500 for Tom Lee, Puppet Design Consultant -$500 for Nikki Webster, Puppet Costume Design NON-PERSONNEL EXPENSES: $1,500 Travel/Transportation--$500 (An estimate for reimbursement for train travel to/from rehearsal) Rehearsal Space Rental--$1,000 (for 1 week at Clinton Cameo Studios) REMAINING OPERATING EXPENSES: $1,500 Supplies & Materials--$1,000 (puppet/set building) Other--$500 (Misc. emergency funds) TOTAL EXPENSES: $7,000.00 IN-KIND BUDGET: Andre PERSONNEL EXPENSES: $5,000 Artists--$5,000 Time donated by Josh Rice, as director and designer of the piece at $50/hr over the course of 100 hours (October 2016 to May 2017) NON-PERSONNEL EXPENSES: $1,500 Rehearsal Space Rental--$1,000 (for 12 hours at Culturehub studios) Marketing--$500 (for graphic design and posters for workshop showing--tba) REMAINING OPERATING EXPENSES: $1,800 Supplies & Materials--$800 (borrowed/donated puppet/set building materials) Equipment Rental--$1,000 (donated use of Josh Rice's own projector and HD camera) IN-KIND TOTAL: $8,300.00 INCOME: $0 (this is an in-development workshop to make the first 20 minutes of material/puppets) 2
ARTIST BIO 9/12/16 JOSH RICE is a New York City-based theatre artist specializing in puppetry, physical performance, and improvisation. He is the co-founder and Producing Artistic Director of Shake on the Lake, a summer theatre festival in Silver Lake, NY. Josh directed SOTL's 2015 puppetinfused production of The Tempest, which also was produced as part of the 2015 Fall season at Sarah Lawrence College, which he also directed. Most recently, Josh was a puppeteer in the world premiere of Dan Hurlin's Demolishing Everything With Amazing Speed at Bard Summerscape. He also performed in Japan for an international tour of Tom Lee's Shank's Mare, on which Josh was the head puppeteer, assistant director, co-collaborator, and builder. Original work includes: (Almost Definitely) Questionable Acts at the NYC Clown Theatre Festival, the New Orleans Fringe Festival, and the Physical Festival (Chicago, IL); The Vaudevillains at the first annual La MaMa Puppet Slam. Puppetry credits: Petrushka with the NY Philharmonic Orchestra (London tour); Shank's Mare at La MaMa, ETC and the Ringling International Arts Festival; The Scarlet Ibis at HERE Arts Center; Jewel Casket and AO II at Dixon Place; and Janie Geiser s Reptile Under the Flowers at St. Ann s Warehouse. Josh has collaborated on projects with David Neumann, Geoff Sobelle, Tom Lee, and Kristin Marting. He is Adjunct Theatre Faculty with Pace University and Sarah Lawrence College, and a Teaching Artist with the New Victory Theater and CultureHub NYC/La Mama. Josh and SOTL have been the recipient(s) of numerous grants from the NYSCA (2012-2016). Josh was also a part of Tom Lee's 2015 TCG/Andrew W. Mellon In the Lab Grant to travel/collaborate in Japan with fifthgeneration puppet master, Koryu Nishikawa V; he was a 2015 Artist In Residency with Sagafest in Iceland where he developed his puppetry installation, Tiny Vikings; he was a 2015 Celebration Barn Theater Arts Incubator Residency; a 2015 Regional Economic Development Council Grant for SOTL; a 2015 Seniors Partnering with Artists Citywide (SPARC) Grant from the NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs for his puppet project, Suspicious Shadows; and was awarded a 2014 Creative Community Fellowship with National Arts Strategies for his work as Founder and Director of the Mnemonic Theatre Project, his puppetry program with seniors living with Alzheimer s and Dementia, that was featured on the PBS documentary series, Visionaries. COMPANY BIO: Shake on the Lake Shake on the Lake is an outdoor summer theatre festival specializing in accessible Shakespearean plays with small casts, doubling and tripling in roles, resulting in a fast-paced, physical, spectacle-driven improvisational stagings of Shakespeare's works that tour throughout the rural areas of Western New York State. Established in 2012, the mission of Shake on the Lake is to entertain, engage, and enrich the community through the theatrical arts and inspire audiences to envision new creative placemaking opportunities in their rural communities. In doing so, we seek to serve the community by mounting professional theatre productions, touring our productions to rural parts of the state, educational outreach, artistic accessibility, community collaboration, and sustainable business practices concerning our natural environment. 3
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