The Conspirators is readying its next production—"The Conspirators `125th Anniversary Jubilee, Featuring the Ineptidemic"—opening Friday November 4 at the Otherworld Theatre 3914 N. Clark and running through Saturday November 19.
True to the company’s inimitable, off-beat approach, it promises to be loaded with laughs yet packed with the incisive social commentary associated with this high energy troupe. This show features an 1898 one-act play by Octave Mirbeau, a French commentator, author and playwright who used the stage as a platform to send-up the social foibles of his time.
While Mirbeau modeled some of his work after Moliere’s comedy of manners style, this work was among a half-dozen one-acts published as Farces et moralités in 1904, among them being L'Épidémie (Epidemics, 1898). Mirbeau said to anticipate greats like Bertolt Brecht, Harold Pinter, and Eugène Ionesco.
That centerpiece is bracketed with a series of the high-powered skits for which The Conspirators are known. In the same vain, the company also produced a longer work in 2019, Italian Nobel laureate Dario Fo’s absurdist "Death of an Anarchist," reframing it as "Accidental Death of a Black Motorist."
The Conspirators deliver their shows in a technique called “The Style,” which they describe as a distilled amalgam of the 16th century Italian Commedia dell'Arte. It also carries “influences like Kabuki, Kathakali, Bugs Bunny, and a high-energy punk-rock aesthetic,” according to Sid Feldman, and is like “a coke-fueled clown nightmare.” Feldman, who takes script credits, and Wm. Bullion, who directs, are the driving forces behind the company.
Abandoning any semblance of naturalism, the actors are done up in grotesque makeup, with stylized movements punctuated by very expressive percussion as commentary. Footlights illuminate the stage in a stark glare, perhaps off-putting at first, but mesmerizing soon enough.
This is must-see theater of a different sort, and the window is short, with just 10 performances. Find out more at https://www.conspirewithus.org
