Love Unpunished

Pig Iron Theatre Company brings back its production of Love Unpunished, as part of The Philadelphia Live Arts Festival & Philly Fringe.

This risky, thoughtful movement-theater piece touches on American catastrophes as seen from the stairs of the World Trade Center. With this piece, the company ventures back to its roots in experimental dance theatre and continues its exploration of hybrid performance techniques. Love Unpunished was developed during its residency at The Mandell Theatre at Drexel University. Dan Rothenberg directs.

A dance-theatre meditation on love and grief, Love Unpunished tackles the moments of fear and human contact directly preceding the collapse of the World Trade Center Towers — and reverberates beyond this disaster to the war in Iraq and Americans fleeing floodwaters of Katrina. Set on an iconic 20-foot span of escape stairs, the original work is not so much a story as a panorama of movement, bodies rushing up and down to avoid catastrophe. Bodies rush up to avoid rising waters, rush down to avoid fire and smoke, huddle together for comfort and contemplate their own mortality. Somewhere in the midst of the constant rush and accidental encounters, each body must suddenly face his or her beliefs on life and death, history, myth, dreams, coincidences, fears and deep hungers.

Performances: September 10, 2006, at 9pm / September 11, 2006, at 7pm / September 14, 2006, at 5pm September 15, 2006, at 5pm / September 16, 2006, at 4pm / September 17, 2006, at 7pm