About Stephen
Follow No Strangers To All The Fun Places
Follow No Strangers To All The Fun Places is loosely inspired by the structure of Italo Calvino’s 1979 postmodern novel, If On a Winter’s Night a Traveler. But not really. Actually, the piece deconstruct the audience’s experience of watching theatre. The play lovingly followed two characters’ repeated—and constantly interrupted—attempts at making a piece of theatre.
Short vignettes of various styles of theatre and performance were presented: A short play in the style of Samuel Beckett; a Phillip Glass-style composition presented in a manner vaguely reminiscent of Einstein on the Beach; and a German-language puppet show were among the pieces presented. Meanwhile, audience members were at various times instructed to listen--via individual headsets--to a narration that deconstructed the experience of watching the piece.
Through constant breaks, disruptions and disconnections, the show broke down theatrical narrative; explored the relation of fiction to real life; and ultimately tried to answer the question of why anyone would want to make art in the first place.
"Best Play - 2018" ~ Baltimore Magazine
"[Follow No Strangers] is next-level stuff. And it’s brilliant."
~ Cassandra Miller, DCMetroTheaterArts
“...if there’s one thing Acme doesn’t do is odd and weird for its own sake. There’s an intentionality behind every element of the presentation… if you allow it, this Acme production encourages you to start thinking about everything else you consume in different ways. Take the red pill.”
~ Bret McCabe, Bmore Art
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Follow No Strangers To All The Fun Places"Follow No Strangers To All The Fun Places" (co-director and composer, The Acme Corporation, 2018)
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follow no strangers.mp3"And now it is and there's nothing left to say," from "Follow No Strangers To All The Fun Places." Music composed and performed by Stephen Nunns. Live performance recording from May 2018. Vocals: Molly Cohen, Deirdre McAllister, Kristina Szilagyi and Caelyn Somerville.
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Follow No Strangers To All The Fun PlacesFollow No Strangers To All The Fun Places (co-director), The Acme Corporation, 2017
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Follow No Strangers To All The Fun Places"Follow No Strangers To All The Fun Places"
Stranger Kindness
Williams' play was distilled down to a four-character hour-and-a-quarter performance. The dialogue from the play was substituted with other texts: Blanche DuBois' lines came from various Samuel Beckett plays and prose, Stella's lines were pulled from Thornton Wilder's "Our Town, and the character Mitch spoke lines from a variety of feminist theory texts. Stanley Kowalski's language was actually pulled from the soundtrack of the classic 1951 film, so Marlon Brando's disembodied voice was the only trace left--language-wise--of Williams' text. Portions of the performance were presented via live video to twenty small monitors that were situated in front of the audience members.
"Best Play - 2017" ~ Baltimore City Paper
"Acme offers up probably the most radical and punk rock art thing happening in the city right now. And yet, it's faithful to the Williams play in the ways that matter—namely, mood, message, and atmosphere."
~ The Baltimore City Paper
"The whole experience is uncanny, difficult, and exhilarating."
~ Abraham Burickson, Odyssey Works
Killer's Head
The play was staged it in the bell tower of St. Mark’s Church, a claustrophobic, stone-encased, dungeon of a room that fit approximately 18 people per performance. In a mere 10 minutes, Ashworth’s bravura performance went through a myriad of thoughts and emotions during the condemned man’s final moments.
Selected by The Baltimore Sun as one of the “Best on Baltimore stages in 2013,” Sun reviewer Tim Smith referred to Ashworth’s performance as one of “virtuosic nuance and arresting intensity.”
Play
This was partially an experiment in endurance—the company was particularly interested in seeing how the piece would “break down” over an extended period of time. Such temporal concerns are not that uncommon in the world of performance art, but it is not something that one normally encounters in traditional theatrical settings.
There were a total of four iterations of the play, with each repetition taking approximately one hour. (The text normally takes about ten minutes to perform.) First, the play was presented in a more or less “traditional” way, with individual lights illuminating each of the characters as they stand side by side reciting their lines. The second iteration was a typically British bourgeois cocktail party that broke down into a drunken revelry. The third was a metatheatrical moment in which the actors relaxed, ate and recited the lines out of character. The last iteration were monologues created for each character from the text.
Play was recognized as Best Production in the City Paper’s Best of Baltimore for 2013 and one of the performers, Sophie Hinderberger, won best actress for 2013 in part for her work in the piece.
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PlayPlay (co-director), The Acme Corporation, 2013.
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PlayPlay (co-director), The Acme Corporation
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Samuel Beckett's "Play" (24 Hour Cycle): 10:03 a.m."Play" Woman 2 monologue Sophie Hinderberger performing a monologue version of her lines from the piece after performing for 21 hours continuously.
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Samuel Beckett's "Play" (24 Hour Cycle): 11:31 a.m."Play" - the dinner party Taken at the 23rd hour of the continuous performance, this video displays one of the 4 incarnations of the script. The directors and cast affectionately referred to this version as "The British Dinner Party."
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Samuel Beckett's "Play" (24 Hour Cycle): 10:53 a.m."Play" The office version Hour 23
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Samuel Beckett's "Play" (24 Hour Cycle): 10:12 a.m."Play" - the traditional version The cast performs Beckett's Play exactly as it is written with no liberties taken. This video was taken in the 22nd hour of the performance.
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Samuel Beckett's "Play" (24 Hour Cycle): 9:45 a.m.Play - Woman 1 monologue Naomi Kline performing a monologue version of her lines from the piece after performing for 20 hours continuously.
Not I
Fucking A
REVIEWS
“Fucking A is fucking brilliant…this is a terrific production, and we can only be grateful to Iron Crow for bringing it to us.” – John B. Gohn, Broadway World Baltimore
“Baltimore’s queer theater, Iron Crow, proves the perfect push-the-envelope match for Parks’ distinctive theatrics. They are more than up to the linguistic, musical, political and sexual demands of the play and their production crackles with danger and unsettling power.” – Jayne Blanchard, DC Theatre Scene
“…an extremely unusual, gripping, and powerful play, which is now being given a splendid new production by Baltimore’s Iron Crow Theatre.” – Michael Poandl, DC Metro Theatre Arts
“Evocative, intensely performed and strongly directed, Fucking A stays with you, especially in a time like this. Incredibly well done. See it.” – Pandora Locks, The Bad Oracle
“Iron Crow Theatre has found its niche with these edgy, queer and dark productions. Fucking A is the latest entry in the catalogue of well-performed and directed plays and is highly recommended.” – Steve Charring, OUTspoken
The Memo
So, rather than simply making this a send-up of Czechoslovakia or Communism, I set the play in the contemporary United States in a government office in Washington, DC. In a moment of corporate personhood, government gridlock, surveillance techniques and torture were in the forefront of our national consciousness, the choice had more than a little resonance.
“With The Memo, Single Carrot manages to balance its tendency toward avant garde, progressive theater with excellent acting and staging, resulting in one of the best local productions this year.” – Evan Serpick, City Paper