New Work (Git Along Lil Doggies)

Laboratory Theater’s newest work is a meditative, cowboy dance-drama about the spiritual imprint of the windswept landscape of the American west. In a narrative drawn from a variety of sources, two outlaws on the trail of an old adversary take work as jewel thieves for a washed up brothel madam. In a chance encounter with a traveling magician, they locate their enemy and conjure the violent forces of nature through sex-magic to take revenge.

Directed by Yvan Greenberg, and featuring Corey Dargel, Sheila Donovan, Oleg Dubson, and Andrew Gilchrist, this new piece commingles writings by Annie Proulx, the outsider language of William S. Burroughs, country-western line dance, and gay pornography. The performance unfolds against a projected video landscape drawn from Marlboro cigarette TV commercials and within an evocative soundscape incorporating recordings of early country-western singer Hank Thompson and contemporary music for pedal steel guitar.
Laboratory Theater’s signature layering of choreography, text, improvisation, and imitation, provides a continuously shifting framework for a reconsideration of the frontier spirit that continues to shape the mindsets of Americans in the 21st Century.