Everyone will enjoy ‘Sport’

Love sports? Hate sports? A production this Saturday will leave you laughing at the best and worst of sports in America.

“Sport,” a theatre presentation of Arts Unlimited, will be performed Saturday, Sept. 8 at 8 p.m. in Russell Auditorium. “Sport” is a physical comedy about the commercialization of sports. The whole show is presented as an infomercial for Slastic, a made-up company that markets more than just sporting items. The show makes fun of almost every sport.

“`Sport’ is about an hour and five minutes long. It is comic physical theatre,” said Walter Bilderback, director of the music and theatre department. “The thing that ties it together is a satire on the commercial sport. It is a series of many sketches that examine all sorts of aspects of sports.”

“`Sport’ is basically the actors doing improv based on commedia de Arte,” said Steve Ford, a student at GC&SU. “They go from game to game using the commedia work that they have done.”

This presentation features three actors, with two or three actors performing each skit. Jackie Dibbon, Eric Johnson and Lennardo De Laine make up the cast of this show. The actors play more than one character throughout the whole show. The characters range from little kids to an old man.

“They are three very imaginative, very talented, extremely funny performers,” said Bilderback. “I can’t imagine anyone who wouldn’t be able to enjoy this show. If you love sports, you will love `Sport;’ if you hate sports, you will love `Sport.’ If there has ever been a show where I feel I can guarantee that everyone will enjoy it, this is it!”

“Sport” is the first production of the Blue Shift Theatre Ensemble, an internationally touring theatre group based in Asheville, NC. The company was founded in 1998, and “Sport” is a group effort with the acclaimed Spanish Theatre Company, El Tricicle. Since its premiere at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro, `Sport’ has toured the East Coast, performing at many professional theatres, festivals, universities and schools. In the fall of 1999, the cast was invited to tour Europe for four and a half months and received great reviews from Spain, France, Belgium and Switzerland.

“I first saw them two years ago at the American Kennedy Center: American College Theater Festival Regional Conference in Greensboro, NC. They did a workshop in physical comedy,” said Bilderback. “A couple of months later I had an opportunity to see them perform as part of the Children’s Theatre Competition, which is sponsored by the South East Theatre Conference. I have been in communication with them for the past two years. Now I have the money to bring them in. I am grateful to be able to do this in conjunction with Arts Unlimited.”

Blue Shift has been selected for a professional residency at the Kennedy Center: American College Theatre Festival. They have performed and taught at the Southeastern Theatre Conference, North Carolina Theatre Conference, Virginia Theatre Alliance and the Florida Theatre Conference.

Blue Shift’s work is diverse, ranging from an original full-length work about George Keats (brother to Romantic poet, John) to an interactive performance art dinner. The main idea of the company’s mission is the idea of cross-disciplinary collaboration. This past June their newest work, “The Fatherhood Project,” premiered. It is an original multi-media piece based on a series of interviews the company conducted on the changing roles of fatherhood in America.

“I think that they have the talent and imagination to become a very well-known company,” said Bilderback. “It is one of the funniest things I have ever seen.”

“Basically, it’s like baseball with an onion instead of a cat intestine. They peel off layer upon layer of sports from kayaking to tennis to present a hilarious, and often true, ‘instant replay’ of sports today,” said Matthew William, a GC&SU student. “You’ll definitely want to see it again. This is sports media’s `Whose Line is it Anyway?’”

“It is amazing to watch the way they perform and act,” said Ford. “It’s exciting.”

There is also a physical comedy workshop on Saturday, September 8th at 3 p.m. in the Miller Gym; it is free and open to the public. The workshop will cover commedia and viewpoints. Ford went to a workshop for Sport recently; at the workshop, he was taught basic structure and movement for certain characters.

“We took those old characters and put them into a modern day situation,” said Ford. “It is a lot of fun; it is a great learning experience.”

General admission is $10. Senior Citizens, non-GC&SU students, GC&SU faculty and staff is $6; and GC&SU students with a valid ID get in free. If you have any other questions, please contact the Music and Theatre Department at 445-4226.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Sep 7 2001. Filed under Features. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry