Single Carrot Theatre’s World Premiere of Promenade: Baltimore coming on June 2nd!


FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
BALTIMORE, MD – The ambitious international collaboration and world premiere, Promenade: Baltimore, opens next week at Single Carrot Theatre. Interviews and outreach to local community members continue to influence the shape of the show, a new element in the model first conceived by the ensemble of STEREO Akt, the Hungarian company whose Budapest-based show, Promenade: Urban Fate Tourism, served as the inspiration for this new endeavor. When Single Carrot’s Artistic Director, Genevieve de Mahy saw the show in 2015, she was inspired by the way the relationship between audience and city was changed and enhanced by the performance and began the process of collaborating across oceans.
STEREO Akt is a theatre production workshop based on the continuous collaboration of director Martin Boross and produce Anikó Rácz. Founded in 2011 and based in Budapest, the company’s work is focused on the – often silent – interaction of performers and viewers; they mount a diverse mix of stage performances, site-specific projects, and social actions with the help of an ever-growing group of artists and volunteers from the local community. Each STEREO Akt performance begins with a simple questions: what will happen to the viewer? This unique emphasis on experience – rather than text – provides the opportunity to move out of traditional theatre spaces allowing the magical and ordinary to blend against a backdrop of everyday life.
Amonst those who have traveled to the United States to collaborate on Promenade: Baltimore are Julia Jakubowska and Martin Boross, both of whom were involved in the original STEREO Akt production. Jakubowska, who is originally from Poland, first performed in Promenade when she was a newcomer to Hungary and spoke virtually no Hungarian. “I felt back then that I was an audience member more than a performer,” she recalls, adding that her original character – a woman contemplating suicide – was drawn from Jakubowska’s own feelings of loneliness and isolation. “Being here in Baltimore is much different… getting to know the city through the eyes of our actors, who are my first guide and teachers in the city. It’s an exciting and rich experience.”
Boross, who serves as director for both versions of Promenade, added that interviews with local community-members have been particularly inspiring: “One of our interviewees said that Baltimore either gives you a hug or punches you in the stomach. The city is full of paradoxes, and it has many faces… by getting in touch with the communities here, it becomes clear that there are an incredible number of citizens who want to act, who can articulate the problems of the neighborhoods, and are able to choose the right tools to move things forward.”
“Working with STEREO Akt on a project about Baltimore has been a process of exchange,” said Single Carrot Artistic Director Genevieve de Mahy. “They see Baltimore with fresh eyes and notice things I had forgotten about. I show them things that you would not see on the surface.”
“We’d like to make something that is entertaining and provocative at the same time,” Boross stated. “To create a plot that avoids the cliches, that is not harmful, but honest, and gives room for dialogue. To create something that makes people feel that they see themselves truly. Even if it’s a fragile state that image reflects, they can still be proud of this image.”
This immense international collaboration opens on June 2nd and runs through June 25th.
Show Synopsis:
Grab your buss pass and get ready to ride! Single Carrot Theatre and STEREO Akt present Promenade: Baltimore, a boundary-breaking production that invites its audience to board a bus and traverse the city, passing through neighborhoods both familiar and unknown. Audience members watch through the windows as actors on the street present poetic expression of everyday life in Baltimore, complimented by a live-mixed soundscape of music, narration, and stories based on and told by neighborhood residents. Promenade: Baltimore celebrates and explores all that is Baltimore: highlighting it’s complexity, struggles, treasures, and, ultimately, its undeniable  beauty. World Premiere.
WHEN:
June 2-June 25, 2017
Thursdays & Fridays at 6:30pm
Saturdays & Sundays at 2pm & 6:30pm
 
WHERE:
Single Carrot Theatre
2600 N. Howard Street Baltimore, MD 21218
Entrance on 26th Street.
Free parking available in adjacent lot and on the street.
 
TICKETS AND ADDITIONAL INFORMATION
Tickets: $10-$45
Web: singlecarrot.com
Phone: 443-844-9253
Email: boxoffice@singlecarrot.com
Twitter: @singlecarrot
Instagram: @singlecarrot
“The day is coming when a single carrot, freshly observed, will set off a revolution.” -Paul Cezanne