Proposal Draft 2

Renegade Phantasms or The Shadow Cast Along the Banks of the Mississippi

Themes
• the interest of industry vs. the interest of living things
• transient ghosts
• danger/change/unknown vs. stability/permanence/stasis
• the relationship between natural forces of the river
and the people
that inhabit it.

Premise

A force that possesses an intrinsic current, like the Mississippi
itself, resists mightily all attempts to stabilize it. Great suffering
has come, and will come, from such attempts.

Synopsis

This show is comprised of a band of ghosts who all died in someway on
or in the Mississippi River. They had been relegated to the lower
dregs of society because they gave outlets to forces that society
tends to control, and are therefore representative of ideals
manifested inside a controlling society. Within each ghost is a
current that drives them and it is this current that society tried to
crush. Some characters that we have discussed are two lovers, one who
is trying to say goodbye, and one who is trying to bring them both
back to life by building a strange machine. Other characters we’ve
discussed are gamblers, river rats, prostitutes, businessmen who tried
to control the river and died in the process, shanty boat caravans,
etc. The audience is traveling down the river (figuratively speaking),
experiencing the ghosts as they are experience the river; the audience
is traveling down the river whose banks are littered with ghosts. The
ghosts tell their stories (through surrealist representations of their
death), have conflict with each other, and comment on the present as
well as reveal the past.


Stylistic Influences

• surrealist clown, (movement through the world is the
driving force
that tells the story)
• absurdism
• circus arts (stilts, acrobatics, juggling, etc.)
• Robert ParkeHarrison (The Architecht’s Brother)
• Faulkner Rock
• old time, social music

Purpose for Telling These Stories

We wish to make connections unbiasedly from the performers to the
audience, and within the audience as well, in contrast to the
controlling effects of a society that maintains us in stasis and
static hierarchies. We seek to connect people through a dialogue that
will open a way to find a commonness within them. We aim to do this
without being didactic, only to propose that we have more choices than
are often presented to us and therefore we each need to decide for
ourselves (collectively and individually) what is important. We will
propose this by asking questions, not in an attempt to find any one
answer, but to encourage the act of questioning. We are creating this
theatre as a way of seeking a kind of justice for the injustices that
have been done and are continuing to be done; however, we choose the
way of theatre because it can affect not only the mind, but the
emotions and the soul through music, humor, movement, and play