[ This Just In! ]

For Immediate Release
Date: July 6, 2000

Artists to Create The American Demons at Retreat in Wimberley

Austin, TX--Deborah Hay, Dan Dietz, Andrea Moon, and Jason Neulander head to Wimberley on Friday, July 7, for an 18-day intensive rehearsal retreat to create the script and performance of The American Demons, Salvage Vanguard Theater's newest world-premiere production, which opens September 15. The American Demons is sponsored in part by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts.

Deborah Hay, a nationally-reknowned choreographer; Dan Dietz, an award-winning actor and writer; Andrea Moon, a writer and performer; and Jason Neulander, a director and performer are working at the Dancing Waters Inn, a bed-and-breakfast in Wimberley. The retreat is the second step in a three-part collaborative process to create The American Demons, which is based on Fyodor Dostoevsky's novel The Possessed and the school shootings at Columbine High School.

Dietz, Neulander, Hay and Ruth Margraff worked together for a four-week rehearsal intensive in April and May to come up with a working style, to learn new artistic vocabularies, and to generate an outline for the final piece. Due to scheduling conflicts, Margraff was unable to continue with the project and was replaced by Moon. During the Wimberley retreat, the artists will work for 18 days to turn the outline into a performance. Then in August and September, the collaborators will polish the project and present it to the public for three weekends, with musical accompaniment by the Golden Arm Trio, September 15 - 30, at the Blue Theater in East Austin.

Deborah Hay, who has 40 years of professional performance experience, says: "I have never worked in a more democratic environment." This is because, unlike traditional projects, the script, acting, and direction are being created collaboratively through the process using the source material. Dan Dietz says: "It is really exciting and scary working this way. Normally you have a finished script to work with, but here we're all creating it together and we wont really know what it's going to be until it's on its feet. I feel like this project is a really wonderful representation of Salvage Vanguard's mission."

The American Demons process comes out of The Choreography Dialogues, a discussion series about dance conceived and coordinated by Hay and Neulander. Neulander continues: "Deborah and I were both interested in exploring how to stretch the boundaries of our different artistic disciplines [theater and dance]. This project is doing just that in a way that none of the collaborators have ever worked before."

Salvage Vanguard Theater is a nonprofit arts organization committed to fostering a dynamic exchange between visionary artists and audiences new to their work. To that end, Salvage Vangaurd Theater seeks to combine explosive energy with expert technique, creating forms that defy theatrical traditions and define a new avant-garde.

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