Director • Actor
Paige Rogers
"The actors sing (hauntingly and beautifully), dance, chant, pound, contort, howl, sweat, and emote in ways you will not often see in conventional theatre…To discuss Tontlawald in terms of ordinary plays and stories is impossible. It is not a play in the ordinary sense, but more like an archetypal religious ritual. The actors are not so much telling a story (although the story is there and it’s a good one) as they are taking us along on a ritually-induced archetypical mystical experience."
– Charles Kruger
TheaterStorm
"The music, selected and directed by Rogers, is lovely. Soulful choral passages in something like Balkan harmonies alternate with pristine trios or quartets – from an ancient Sardinian song and Sarah Hopkins' "Past Life Melodies" to the 19th century "Sweet and Low" – or jazzy solos of a 1920s novelty "San" and Al Lewis and Mabel Wayne's "Why Don't You Fall in Love With Me?"
-Robert Hurwitt
The San Francisco Chronicle
"All in all just a gorgeous production… this is what you go to the Cutting Ball for."
"If you have found the San Francisco theater scene to be a little to conventional or a little too boring, Tontlawald will cure you of that."
– Lily Janiack
SFWeekly's Exhibitionist Arts & Culture blog
Photos by Annie Paladino
TONTLAWALD
Co-Directed by Paige Rogers & Annie Paladino
Choreography by Laura Arrington
Text by Eugenie Chan
The Cutting Ball Theater
Rob Melrose, Artistic Director
February 17 - March 11, 2012
Production Design by Silvie Deutsch
Lighting Design by David Sinaiko
Stage Managed by Stephanie Alyson Henderson
Cast
Madeline H.D. Brown
Rebecca Frank
Sam Gibbs
Cindy Im
Marilet Martinez
Wiley Namen Strasser
Meg O'Connor
Liz Wand
Tontlawald - The cutting Ball Theater
"The shards of spoken monologue and ritualized dialogue are enticingly poetic, with heavy and effective use of repetition…the cast has gorgeous voices…the staging is rich with images that are enthralling as they are mysterious."
– Sam Hurwitt
The Idiolect
"Tontlawald is a challenging, sensitive interpretation of an eastern European fairy tale…a surrealistic journey through death and magic.
Director Paige Rogers flawlessly co-directed this arrangement of text by Cutting Ball’s resident playwright Eugenie Chan, along with Annie Paladino.
– Albert Goodwyn
examiner.com
Rob Melrose © 2013