
Ivona, Princess of Burgundia
by Witold Gombrowicz, translated from Polish by Catherine Robins and Krystyna Griffith-Jones
The Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5
September 5 - 23, 2012
Directed by Tina Brock

Director
Tina Brock
Costume Design
Erica Hoelscher
Lighting Design
Maria Shaplin
Scenic Design
Lisi Stoessel
Technical Director
Rajiv Shaw
Production Manager
Bob Schmidt
Sound Design
Tina Brock
Assistant Stage Manager/Light and Sound Operator
Mary Rossiter
Assistant Costumer
Jessica Barksdale
Scenic Painter
Brooke Murray
Set Construction/Painting
Bill Brock, Liam Brock, Tina Brock, Brooke Murray, Bob Schmidt, Rajiv Shah & Lisi Stoessel
Photography
Johanna Austin / AustinArt.org
Dramaturgical Consultant: Allen Kuharski
Produced by arrangement with Rita Gombrowicz
This production is made possible in part by generous grants from:
Wyncote Foundation
The Samuel S. Fels Fund
The Philadelphia Cultural Fund
The Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, through Pennsylvania Partners in the Arts (PPA), administered by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance with additional support from PECO.
Charlotte Cushman Foundation
Doris Duke Charitable Foundation
FirstTrust Financial, Alan T. Sherman, CEO
Playing time is approximately 100 minutes; there will be no intermission.
MUSIC
Checkers’ Pre Show Music Play List
The Royal Scam/Steely Dan
Slippery People/The Talking Heads
Heroes/David Bowie
Blind/The Talking Heads
Hypnotized/Bob Welch
Your Most Valuable Possession/Ben Folds Five
Bodhisattva/Steely Dan
People Are Strange/The Doors
Regrets/ Ben Folds Five
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic/The Police
Turandot – Act 3 – Nessum Dorma/Three Tenors
And She Was/Talking Heads
Incidental Music
Dracula
by Phillip Glass
performed by
The Kronos Quartet
Die Konzerte fur 3 und 4 Cembali
by Johann Sebastian Bach
performed by
Trevor Pinnock, Kenneth Gilbert,Lars, Ulrik Mortensen & Nicholas Kraemer
Reviews
Marriage (An Utterly Improbably Occurrence in Two Acts) (2012)
"...the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's spellbinding production compresses the epic scope of an opera into a microcosm of human malice."
Jim Rutter, The Philadelphia Inquirer
"This is illuminating absurdity, with dark humor that casts a spotlight on the capricious and arbitrary cultural mores imposed on all of us by those who hold sway. "
Debra Miller, Stage Magazine
"...fleshes out its woolly characters with farthingales and periwigs. There's hand-kissing, jilting, curtsying, spying, seduction, idiocy, and murder, all accomplished with good manners."
Merilyn Jackson, The Philadelphia Inquirer
Director's Notes
September, 2012
Welcome!
I became hooked on studying non-verbal communication in college, fascinated with the many ways we speak volumes about what we feel and think without uttering a word. As I envisioned staging this play it resonated in an age when we suffer from no shortage of exchange of words, opinions and discussion about everything imaginable, anytime of day, across continents, with strangers. Which got me thinking about whether, in our world today, we have become less adept at reading the subtle signals both verbal and unspoken that allow us to connect on a deeper level? Where and how does a person fit in to the modern social equation when their style, their entry into a face-to-face exchange is not so overt, so rapid, so recognizable?
I howled at the discomfort Ivona causes the Kingdom as they grapple to interpret her silences --her inability (or her choice) to not follow the prescribed path. Silence is a powerful exchange that challenges people to sit with themselves and the confusion of interpreting the moment. It feels like our patience with putting up with that which we don’t understand has become less and less as we have the ability to tunnel technologically deeper to connect with like-minded people whose story we understand, with whom we don’t risk feeling awkward. Maybe we don’t want to be uncomfortable, despite what we might learn about our intolerance of others and the aspects of ourselves we deny until they are mirrored back to us.
There are many levels on which Ivona can be understood -- whatever the nugget of truth you derive, we encourage you to pick sides, root for your favorite character both verbally and silently and treat it as an all-out sporting event, with a winning and losing team. You decide who is on what team and send them support both verbal and silently as the play progresses. Groans, cheers and commentary are welcome -- you won’t throw the actors (think Rocky Horror). You help us create the live theater experience, and have as much a stake in how that picture is painted as the actors. So laugh, boo or groan as the spirit moves you.
A huge thanks from the cast and myself to Allen Kuharski for the many hours he contributed guiding us through the historic and dramaturgic intricacies of Ivona.
Thanks for spending your evening with us, and will you tell a friend about the IRC?
Tina Brock
Producing Artistic Director
Sunday, September 9, 2012
Philadelphia Inquirer
by Jim Rutter
Fringe review: Ivona, a dark and unsettling princess
Few shows in this year's Fringe Festival will plumb the depths of the human psyche more than Witold Gombrowicz's Ivona, Princess of Burgundia.
Courtiers in this fictional kingdom encounter Ivona (Heather Cole), described as an affront so ugly she stands as an unbearable reproach. She returns their teasing malice with an anger-inciting apathy. Prince Phillip (David Stanger) turns ridicule into a ruse; he decides to marry the girl, throwing the royal family into a murderous fury.
Hints of Macbeth, Lear and Hamlet peek through the tapestry of Gombrowicz's play, and like Shakespeare, Ivona employs both laughter and tragedy to tease out the unwelcome reminders of our darker natures.
As theatre, it's a piece of literature par excellence; the Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's spellbinding production compresses the epic scope of an opera into a microcosm of human malice. The maddening performances teeter from jest to despair to viciousness, the constant shifts of mood all the more real for what they reveal about humanity's inability to stomach a difference that refuses to indulge, let alone acknowledge, convention, lies and self-deception. Tina Brock's direction tempers this with moments of blistering humor; Erica Hoelscher tops garish costumes of neon spandex and paisley prints with wigs festooned with toilet paper rolls. Haunting music accompanies dreamlike monologues, and Maria Shaplin's lighting enshadows Lisi Stoessel's set of castle walls to recede into a dark point on the horizon.
These elements provide enough distance that the play, unlike its titular character, does not stand as a rebuke or indictment. But this Ivona, engaging and funny and insightful, still shimmers like a mirror we should feel some shame to peer into, or at the very least, cackle back at in fascination and horror.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Stage Magazine
by Debra Miller
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s IVONA, PRINCESS OF BURGUNDIA Offers Wisdom through Absurdity
Director Tina Brock and her absurdist-themed Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium have soundly reaffirmed their position as the foremost purveyors of the genre in Philadelphia with their new Fringe production of IVONA, PRINCESS OF BURGUNDIA. Polish playwright Witold Gombrowicz (1904-69), whose works were banned under his country’s Nazi occupation and subsequent Communist regime, takes a scathing look at the ruling class in this biting satire of aristocratic etiquette, canons of beauty, and social façades.
While the behavior of its characters is ridiculous, the play’s moral is wise and its familiarity frightening. This is illuminating absurdity, with dark humor that casts a spotlight on the capricious and arbitrary cultural mores imposed on all of us by those who hold sway. In keeping with Gombrowicz’s cautionary tale of forced conformity and rejection of “the other,” Brock issued a tongue-in-cheek “no-nudity alert” for this fully-clothed Fringe production, in a festival rampant with (female) undress. Good one!
The cast of thirteen includes the IRC’s absurdly skilled stable of regulars along with some ridiculously masterful newcomers to the company. Susan Giddings as Queen Margaret and Robb Hutter as King Ignatius–veteran actors making their first appearance with the IRC–are stellar as the royal couple, at first exceedingly proper and condescending, then coming completely unhinged at the threat of their son’s engagement to the common and disturbingly uncommunicative Ivona. David Stanger, featured in last season’s MARRIAGE, turns in another outstanding performance as the spoiled, mercurial, and mean-spirited Prince Phillip. All three meticulously parody the haughty attitudes, refined gestures, and faux manners of the entitled upper crust. Especially noteworthy among the supporting members of the ensemble are Michael and Tomas Dura, hysterically funny as Ivona’s gossiping aunts, hell-bent on social-climbing at the expense of their ordinary niece (well acted by Heather Cole).
Erica Hoelscher’s zany costumes and hilarious wigs (employing toilet paper rolls as curls) and Lisi Stoessel’s historicizing set design (with portraits of the royal pets in powdered wigs) visually highlight the absurdity of aesthetically questionable fashion trends, considered, in their time, to be the epitome of good taste.
Ivona (Heather Cole) and her two aunts (Michael and Tomas Dura) in the IRC’s IVONA, PRINCESS OF BURGUNDIA
For tickets to the IRC’s meaningful mockery of (no) manners, visit www.brownpapertickets.com/event/253448, go to the Philadelphia Fringe Festival website at http://livearts-fringe.ticketleap.com/ivona-princess-of-burgundia/#view=calendar, or call the Fringe box office at 215.413.1318.
IVONA, PRINCESS OF BURGUNDIA
by Witold Gombrowicz
Directed by Tina Brock
September 5-23, 2012
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium
Walnut Street Theatre, Studio 5
825 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19107
215.285.0472
September 24, 2012
Talkin' Broadway
by Tim Dumleavy
Absurdity piles upon absurdity in Ivona, Princess of Burgundia, a 1938 work by the Polish playwright and novelist Witold Gombrowicz. But, unlike so many deliberately outrageous plays, Ivona never tries one's patience. The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium's production lets the audience in on the joke from the first moments, when we see the cast in Erica Hoelscher's witty costumes. The play is set in a fictitious kingdom, and we see the king and queen and the members of their court wearing fancy suits and gowns right out of 18th century France—but the wigs that the actors wear would never pass muster in Versailles. Most appear to be made out of cotton batting and are covered with empty toilet paper rolls. They're powdered wigs by way of the powder room.
Decorum and courtly civility rule the day in this palace. That's why everyone seems so flustered by the sudden appearance of Ivona (Heather Cole), who wears a blank expression and says nothing, even when she's questioned by the king and queen. (She does eventually make a few remarks, although they tend to be non-sequiturs.) The men and women of the court interpret Ivona's silence as disdain and arrogance, and a threat to their genteel society. Since she won't explain herself, everyone projects their feelings onto her. Prince Phillip (David Stanger), filled with pity for Ivona, proposes marriage—not because he loves her, he says, but to teach her a lesson "because I couldn't stand you." (When he breaks up with her, she still doesn't seem to care.) Eventually the royal family, the Lord Chamberlain (Lou Seitchik), and all the other members of the court look for a way to get rid of the drab, apathetic girl whom the king calls "Grumpy-Dumpy." In the process, they reveal their own callousness and their need to enforce conformity at any cost.
Director Tina Brock's delightful production is broad by necessity—everybody is over the top. Everybody, that is, except Cole, whose Ivona is a nice counterbalance to the rest of the cast. Cole's bemused commoner never seems like a simpleton—in fact, she's bordering on passive aggressive, and she comes off as much wiser than the fools running circles around her. Even when Gombrowicz's story becomes a bit repetitive, Brock's energetic cast always keeps things interesting.
Ivona, Princess of Burgundia gave its final performance on September 23, 2012.
Saturday, September 8, 2012
Philadelphia Inquirer
by Merilyn Jackson
Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe highlights
This weekend marks the start of Philadelphia's annual 16-day, multimedia, high-low, inspiring-disconcerting (and sometimes appalling) entertainment mashup known as Live Arts Festival/Philly Fringe.
Five Inquirer critics who have been around the festival block more than a few times were asked to scan their catalogs, comb through their memories, and follow their hearts to choose five productions they are looking forward to.
Here you go.
Ivona, Princess of Burgundia In this third Philadelphia incarnation of Witold Gombrowicz's play in a decade, Idiopathic Ridiculopathy fleshes out its woolly characters with farthingales and periwigs. There's hand-kissing, jilting, curtsying, spying, seduction, idiocy, and murder, all accomplished with good manners.