SWANKY SOIREE: Ushers in 4th Greenhouse Theatre Project season

Innovative Theatre in Unexpected Places

COLUMBIA, Mo 10/13/14 (Beat Byte) -- A near standing room only crowd packed PS: Gallery last night to open the Greenhouse Theatre Project's (GTP) fourth season -- and pay tribute to GTP organizers Elizabeth Braaten Palmieri and Emily Adams. 

Known for living up to their tagline, "Innovative Theatre in Unexpected Places," GTP is a nomadic troupe, variously making its home and stage at Columbia's liveliest venues.  Lively theatre invariably follows, usually a new take on an old standby (think Romeo and Juliet played as a British punk West Side Story in a downtown warehouse district). 

This December, Braaten Palmieri and team promise "a new, even wilder adaptation" of Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning classic "Our Town," taking the good citizens of Grover's Corners to an audience at Orr Street Studios.  

 

"A sexed-up, tripped-out" adaptation of Don Juan follows in February, where the amoral but charming womanizer will enchant audiences at SilverBox Photography Studios, also in the North Village Arts District.

Throughout the season, "Pop-Up Performances: one-night stands with mysterious, experimental theatre," will show up at various locales.  "We’ll give you the time and place," GTP explains, "but you won’t know what you’re getting until you’re there." 

The season wraps in May with a new and original play, The Con Artist, "the story of an authentic fraud" scripted by Braaten-Palmieri and inspired by the documentary "Art and Craft", about Mark Landis, reportedly the world's most prolific art forger.   The stage is apropos:  the Columbia Art League. 

To kick off the live auction portion of Sunday evening's 3-hour "Soiree", long-time audience members raved about the group, with words like "fabulous," "inventive," and "genius."   The audience devotion has been obvious at past performances, which sell out quickly. 

Auction bidders shelled out thousands of dollars for donated goods and services that included an all-inclusive, week-long yoga excursion to Hawaii compliments of Polly Sweitzer's Yoga Sol.  True/False film fest passes; Joel Sager, Mike Sleadd, Marilyn Cummins, and Shane Epping artworks;  gift baskets from Artlandish Gallery and other businesses:  all auctioned to support this living Best of Columbia via the Best in Theatre tour. 

As chief auctioneer, Columbia's best-known champion of Constitutional justice, attorney Jeremy Root, wielded a gavel, which made this writer wonder if he doesn't have a future on the Bench.         

Greenhouse Theatre's Season 4 Premieres Dec. 10-14 with Our Town.   PS:  Tickets go fast.

-- Mike Martin

GREENHOUSE THEATRE PROJECT 2014-2015 SEASON

Heart Beat review of last season's Three Sisters

Greenhouse Theatre Project’s production at PS Gallery not a sight but an experience
Vox Magazine, April 2014

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