Sacramento Theatre Experiment(STE) is the sister company of Beyond the Proscenium Productions (www.Beyond-Pro.org). STE is a group of passionate artists dedicated to exploring the multitude of possibilities between movement and text.
Reviews:
Dreams & Diatribes Redux by Ann Tracy, directed by Nick Avdienko
It's physical theater--lots of jerks and stretches, handstands and intertwining bodies--with a cast of five accompanied by spacey music …director Nick Avdienko works them hard...There's also near-constant use of projected video... And there's the bit about the sexy eggplant. The show opens up into nimble wit, clever interplay of words and motion, and a smart use of modest resources on the director's part. If you're looking for something “different,” this one's a good choice.
Sacramento News & Review
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MedEia by Oscar van Woensel, directed by Nick Avdienko
MedEia Director Nick Avdienko's challenging new take on the Greek classic features stylized physical movement woven with fragmentary, repeated phrases, including many lyrics out of pop songs. There's video and voiceover in the mix--hence the extra "E" in the title. And there are two Medeas. The young one marries Jason, gets dumped and proceeds with her chilling revenge. The older, dressed in white, looks on and remembers. This complex, layered production is quite interesting … In addition to directing, Avdienko composed the music, much of which is quite effective.
Sacramento News & Review
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Symphony of Rats by Richard Foreman, directed by Nick Avdienko
This show's wild and wooly … an interplanetary voyage with golf clubs, a pogo stick and a woman who walks on the ceiling. Symphony of Rats makes Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot look like a data-driven whodunit. What Avdienko has done—and really done quite well—is turn an unconventional script that challenges almost every convention of storytelling into an absorbing, diverting, shape-shifting 75 minutes of theater. And he's done it with modest resources. Blair Leatherwood, playing a president … is deliciously deranged. If you want to know if the show makes sense, you're posing the wrong question. It gets you at an intuitive level. It's also highly physical and fun. And Avdienko, who's a composer, plays with music and sound layered with movement. Very interesting.
Sacramento News & Review
