
Paradise Park
by Charles Mee
The Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5
February 12 - March 3, 2013
Directed by Tina Brock

Director
Tina Brock
Costume Design
Erica Hoelscher
Lighting Design
Josh Schulman
Scenic Design
Anna Kiraly
Assistant Director
Stephen Hyams
Technical Director
Scott Cassidy
Video Design
Michael Long & Anna Kiraly
Sound Design
Tina Brock
Dance Choreographer
Heather Cole
Production Stage Manager
Mark Williams
Liam Brock & Mark Williams
Liam Brock & Mark Williams
Assistant Costumer
Jessica Barksdale
Assistant Lighting Designer
Robin Stamey
Fight Choreographer
James Kiesel
Production Assistant
Dan and Scott Perry
Catapult Design and Construction
Christian Prins Coen
Magic Consultant
Francis Menotti
Box Office Wizardry
Eileen O’Brien
Photography
Johanna Austin / AustinArt.org)
Produced by arrangement withInternational Creative Management
The IRC’s 2013 season is made possible in part by generous grants from: Wyncote Foundation, The Samuel S. Fels Fund, The Philadelphia Cultural Fund, The Charlotte Cushman Foundation and Ernst & Young, LCC.
Playing time is approximately 85 minutes; there will be no intermission.
*Member of Actors Equity Association
MUSIC
Many thanks to these artists for their generosity in helping to create Paradise Park:
3 Leg Torso – Animals and Cannibals
Buena Vista Social Club – Buena Vista Social Club Presents
Maria Callas – The Very Best of Maria Callas
DeVotchKa – How It Ends
Bill Frisell – East West
Bill Frisell – Ghost Town
Bill Frisell – Good Dog, Happy Man
Bill Frisell – Nashville
Robin Holcomb – Rockabye
Robin Holcomb – Robin Holcomb
Pat Metheny Group – American Garage
Pat Metheny Group – As Falls Wichita, So Falls Wichita Falls
Pat Metheny Group – Beyond the Missouri Sky
Pat Metheny Group – Off Ramp
Pat Metheny Group – Speaking of Now
The Penguins – The Best of The Penguins
John Zorn – Filmworks VII: Cynical Hysterie Hour
Reviews
Paradise Park (2013)
"Paradise Park explores our desire to escape our lives with wit, philosophical insight and a great deal of silliness... ...absurdist theater is out there for anyone willing to let go of rigid plot expectations and plunge into an adventure."
Mark Cofta, Philadelphia City Paper
"...strikes the perfect balance between the hilarious, the unnerving, and the insightful in its outrageously entertaining production... ...this is what theater of the absurd is all about..."
Debra Miller, Stage Magazine
"...I sure wasn't bored."
Tim Dunleavy, Talkin' Broadway
“… IRC’s Tilt-a-Whirl production of Charles Mee’s American theatrical collage.”
Jessica Foley, The Philadelphia Weekly
Director's Notes
February, 2013
Welcome to the Park!
2013 marks the IRC’s eighth season presenting difficult and rarely-produced absurdist gems from authors from around the globe. For the first time in the IRC’s history, we’re celebrating the tenacious spirit of America and all things American, which must be a play about a wacky ride through a fictitious American theme park written by the incomparable Charles L. Mee.
Today we will take a journey through a Twilight Zone of sorts: a Disneyesque world where its vacationers and inhabitants are looking for meaning and respite from their disordered and anxiety riddled lives. Edgar, Paradise Park’s resident Ventriloquist tells us: "… because the theatre is the art form that deals above all others in human relationships, then theatre is the art, par excellence, in which we discover what it is to be human and what is possible for humans to be… theatre, properly conceived, is not an escape either but a flight to reality, a rehearsal for life itself, a rehearsal of these human relationships…” We’re happy to rehearse with you.
Chuck Mee, on his work: “…human beings are, as Aristotle said, social creatures… we are the product not just of psychology, but also of history and of culture (and) we often express our histories and cultures in ways even we are not conscious of… our lives are more rich and complex than can be reduced to a single source of human motivation.. .I like plays that are not too neat, too finished, too presentable. My plays are broken, jagged, filled with sharp edges, filled with things that take sudden turns, careen into each other, smash up, veer off in sickening turns. That feels good to me. It feels like my life. It feels like the world.” Here, here!
Vikram, our Paradise Park tour guide tells us:
“…we need a little kindness to survive
if nothing else only that modest enough
no big deal
something more than that?
no problem
that, too would be nice
icing on the cake.”
For much, much more, visit Charles Mee’s website, The (Re)Making Project at www.charlesmee.org.
Thanks for helping us bring Paradise Park to life. Let’s raise a glass to not having all the answers, and to the possibility that our relationships can serve as a mirror to understanding and growth if we dare to take a look.
Well wishes,
Tina Brock
Producing Artistic Director
Paradise Park
Feb. 21, 2013
Mark Cofta
City Paper
Tina Brock’s Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium shows again and again that absurdist theater is out there for anyone willing to let go of rigid plot expectations and plunge into an adventure. Take this seldom-performed Charles L. Mee comedy, about hapless characters who “escape the animal way of life” in an endless amusement park that they seem unable to leave. Brock and inventive designers Anna Kiraly (scenery), Josh Schulman (lights) and Erica Hoelscher (costumes) make low-budget magic in the cozy 50-seat Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, creating a collage of carnival fun spliced with everyday befuddlement and anxiety. From boat tours going nowhere and a fruitcake catapult to a family’s tenuous connection after losing a child and a blossoming romance, Paradise Park explores our desire to escape our lives with wit, philosophical insight and a great deal of silliness. Now in its eighth season, IRC continues to prove, as one Paradise Park visitor quips, that “everything isn’t not possible.”
Through March 3, $20-$25, Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut St., 215-285-0472, idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org.
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium presents: Paradise Park
THEATRE
FEBRUARY 14, 2013
BY: SAMANTHA CLARKE
EXAMINER.COM
“Because the theatre is the art form that deals above all others in human relationships, then theatre is the art, par excellence, in which we discover what it is to be human and what is possible for humans to be… Theatre, properly conceived, is not an escape either but a flight to reality, a rehearsal for life itself, a rehearsal of these human relationships of which the most essential, the relationship that defines most vividly who we are and that makes our lives possible, is love.”
This quote is from a play presented by a theatre company that prides itself in “seldom-produced absurdist works.” In my humble opinion, I have never heard a sentence so far from being absurd. Of course, this beautiful ode to theatre and its reality is uttered by a ventriloquist in a twisted and distorted Disney meets Tim Burton world. So, yeah… Maybe a bit absurd.
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium (IRC) presents the Philadelphia premiere of Charles Mee’s dark comedy PARADISE PARK at Walnut Street Theatre’s Studio 5 space. Paradise Park tells the story of this Edgar Bergen-esque ventriloquist and his sidekick dummies Charlie and Mortimer; a fractured family hoping to bury a family secret, and an assortment of charming and disarming existential hitchhikers looking for meaning and respite from their disordered and anxiety-riddled lives. (Sounds normal, right?) Through thirty-one scenes featuring fruitcake tosses, square dancing and magic tricks, the folks of Paradise Park wrangle, philosophize, sing and laugh on their coveted tiny island, as they long for peace and contentment for the price of admission.
The Paradise cast includes new faces to the IRC stage: Sean Close, Colleen Hughes, and Shamus McCarty, along with some IRC regulars: Heather Cole, John D’Alonzo, Michael Dura, Tomas Dura, Robb Hutter, Bob Schmidt and Tina Brock, who also directs the show.
Paradise Park opens tomorrow February 15 and runs Tuesday through Saturday at 7:30 pm and Sunday at 2:30 pm. Catch it before it closes on March 3, 2013 at the Walnut Street Theater’s Studio 5 in Philadelphia. For tickets: www.idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org
Philadelphia Weekly
ARTS AND CULTURE
30-Second Reviews: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Bilal, IRC's "Paradise Park" and More
By PW Staff
Posted Feb. 27, 2013
ON THE GUEST LIST
The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s Paradise Park
Through March 3. Walnut Street Theatre’s Studio 5.
idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org
Overall vibe: The expectancy of an early summer night overtakes you the second you step off the elevator on to the fifth floor of the Walnut Street Theater. The sound of crickets flood your ears, a brightly colored paper bag of freshly popped popcorn is placed into one hand and a program into the other as you make your way to your seat on IRC’s Tilt-a-Whirl production of Charles Mee’s American theatrical collage.
Most memorable moment: Even before the house lights dim to black, this production is guarded (and guided by) a giant mouse—or rather, a guy wearing a giant mouse suit. So when this guy, actor Shamus Hunter McCarthy, removes his giant mouse head to state plainly to the audience: “Me, I’m asking for a modest retirement package. It’s no pleasure for me, frankly, not allowed ever to take this mouse costume off, so that if I want to go to the bathroom, I just have to shit in my pants and wear them all day,” a moment of clarity is achieved under the plastic wrap of gross absurdity.
Scene stealer: Expert multi-tasker and actress-director Tina Brock, who you can tell demanded truth out of her actors initially in rehearsal, and secondly from herself as a performer on the stage in the beautiful, strained environment that is Paradise Park. (Jessica Foley)
Stage Magazine
The Absurdity of Escapism in Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium’s PARADISE PARK
Written by Debra Miller
Published on February 18, 2013
Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium strikes the perfect balance between the hilarious, the unnerving, and the insightful in its outrageously entertaining production of Charles Mee’s PARADISE PARK. With pacing as fast as a rollercoaster ride, 31 vignettes set in an amusement park consider life, relationships, and the overall human condition within the paradise lost of our earthly existence, questionable values, and self-defeating behavior.
But rather than deal head on with the big questions posed (“What do you want?” “What do you think it means?”), the denizens of PARADISE PARK prefer the promise of escapism provided by the mindless entertainments of pop culture and their own incessant chattering. The banality and triviality of these laughably familiar avoidance techniques resonate, as the eccentric characters on Mee’s contemporary ship of fools take refuge from the realities and problems of life, from true communication and rational thought, and from self-awareness and self-acceptance in the theme-park illusion of a perfect world.
IRC’s repertory ensemble (Heather Cole, John D’Alonzo, Michael Dura, Tomas Dura, Colleen Hughes, Robb Hutter, Bob Schmidt, and Tina Brock, who also directs) and two newcomers to the company’s signature ridiculousness (Sean Close and Shamus McCarty) capture all the nonsensical self-delusion and existentialist angst in wildly energetic performances and monologues. Their frenetic attempts to avoid the oppressiveness of the outside world, their own inner turmoil, and the unbearable eventuality of death are equally funny and desperate, and fully in the spirit of Mee’s absurdist script.
Colleen Hughes (Ella) and John D’Alonzo (Jorge) turn in particularly animated performances filled with rapid-fire musings on Freudian-style dream analysis, favorite desserts, and how champagne is poured in England (including a dazzling touch of magic and a giddy grass-is-always-greener mentality). Robb Hutter is especially unsettling and moving in his self-revelatory harangue as Bob, the Pizza Guy, while Tina Brock (Nancy) and Bob Schmidt (Morton) bring emotional nuance and introspection to the acrimonious spouses’ identical soliloquies, delivered first by the wife, and then in a subsequent scene by the husband, who have more thoughts in common than they share with each other.
The design team, too, has done an outstanding job of creating the chaotic sensory overload of our post-modern era, with mood-setting music and sound effects (by Tina Brock), lighting (Josh Schulman), and central video projections (by Michael Long and Anna Kiraly) of Esther Williams, Dairy Queen, and countless other recognizable images from American mass culture—all in perfect synch with the actors. Erica Hoelscher’s costumes reinforce the madcap concepts, with laughably foppish and angelic attire for Jorge, and spot-on dummy costumes and make-up for Charlie (Michael Dura) and Mortimer (Tomas Dura), the antithetical alter-egos of Edgar, the Ventriloquist (also played by Robb Hutter).
As Edgar tells us, “Theatre, properly conceived, is not an escape . . . but a flight to reality, a rehearsal for life itself.” This is what theater of the absurd is all about, and IRC celebrates it in a breakneck 80 minutes of absurdity-with-a-message in PARADISE PARK. You might even recognize an exaggerated version of yourself there.
PARADISE PARK
By Charles Mee
Directed by Tina Brock
February 12-March 3, 2013
Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium
Walnut Street Theatre, Studio 5
825 Walnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106
215.285.0472
www.idiopathicridiculopathyconsortium.org
About Debra Miller
Debra holds a PhD in Art History and teaches at Rowan University, Glassboro, NJ. She is President of the Board of Directors of Da Vinci Art Alliance, Philadelphia, and has served as a Commonwealth Speaker for the Pennsylvania Humanities Council, and a judge for the Barrymore Awards for Excellence in Theatre. Her publications include articles, books, and catalogues on Renaissance, Baroque, American, Pre-Columbian, and Contemporary Art, and feature articles on the Philadelphia theater scene.
Talking Broadway - Philadelphia
by Tim Dunleavy
Paradise Park
My wristwatch was running fifteen minutes slow the night I went to see playwright Charles Mee's Paradise Park, so I got to the theatre a little late. As a result, I expected to be confused, and sure enough, I was. Yet later that night, when I read the play (Mee posts all his scripts for free on www.charlesmee.org), I was surprised to find that I had actually gotten there just after the lights went down and that I hadn't missed a single line of dialogue. So why was I confused? Probably because that's what Mee seems to have intended.
Paradise Park is set an amusement park where people have come to escape their worries. Some are there for the day, while some have been there for ten years. They're all searching for meaning in their lives, and trying to find it in the park's various attractions. It's a pretext for a series of scenes filled with Mee's trademark absurdity. A few examples: A husband dances to Latin jazz while his wife throws cardboard boxes at him. A pizza delivery man admits he committed a triple murder. A voice from a loudspeaker questions the nine-member cast on what the best qualities of a cheerleader should be, even though no cheerleaders appear in the show. And a ventriloquist has an intellectual discussion of theatrical theory with his two dummies (who are played by humans); in a nod to the most famous ventriloquist act ever, the three are named Edgar, Charlie and Mortimer. It's all symbolic of something, or rather it's symbolic of a whole bunch of things; some of it is meticulously explained, but most of it isn't explained at all.
All of this has a certain wacky charm, but the main plot threads never coalesce; the husband and wife who have misplaced their teenage daughter seem to be in a different park than the young couple making sincere but awkward stabs at romance. There are plenty of funny moments, but plenty of moments that fall flat too. The cast performs with gusto, although John D'Alonzo, who shouts most of his lines, has a bit too much gusto. (He plays a magician, or an angel, or something.) Directed by Tina Brock (who also plays that box-hurling wife), the production never slows down, and Anna Kiraly's set design, full of curtains and witty projections, is always interesting to look at.
I wasn't always entertained by Paradise Park, but I sure wasn't bored.
Paradise Park runs through March 3, 2013 and is presented by The Idiopathic Ridiculopathy Consortium at the Walnut Street Theatre Studio 5, 825 Walnut Street, Philadelphia. For tickets, visit www.IdiopathicRidiculopathyConsortium.org.
-- Tim Dunleavy