If you want to get a good idea of what is going on in the bedroom of Penn's premier experimental theater group Intuitons this semester, imagine this: First, start with two smartly dressed chaps. Next, add an entourage of four flirtatious and flexible females.ÿNow get the whole thing going with a couple of dinner cocktails, some very curvaceous furniture and a swinging selection from the piano bar. Oh, and don't forget the paint, buckets of it.
If this little act of imagination gets you going then you should peek in on 1BDRM, Intuitons' fall show that premiers next Thursday, November 1. The play is a popping romp through the swirling psyches of two roommates. They construct, deconstruct and construct all over again how the dimensions of their new bedroom retrofit all aspects of their lives. 1BDRM is performed on a set that can only be described as a metaphysical wonderland, replete with live painting, live music, and live, well, furniture. The actors themselves create the most able-bodied of props, in stunts that are as risqu‚ as they are radical.
The play is written and directed by Luke Bruneaux, a College senior, and music is performed by Dan Paul, keyboardist of the loud and funky band Big Breakfast. Mike Keutmann and Mike Shepherd make their acting debuts at Penn as the opposable leads known only as A and Z.
Bruneaux says the play is mainly about having fun on stage but cautions that it is also "a sharp-edged comment on life as we know it." And he doesn't mean in some blurry-eyed, pre-dawn sociology lecture sense. 1BDRM is a "life-sized reflection of who we are and what life has become in these last two months of American history," Bruneaux adds. A and Z's discourse is about love and loss, space and time, dreams and reality, and how one's swirling psyche is supposed to make sense of it all. 1BDRM gives the audience a thinking man's framework for today.
1BDRM runs Thursday, November 1, through Saturday, November 3, at the Iron Gate Theater (37th and Chestnut streets). Shows start at 8 p.m. and last about an hour.
