Elevator Repair Service

Gatz

TBA pass holder reservations required

Gatz Preview on YouTube.
Medly of dance scenes from ERS performances.

One morning in the low-rent office of a mysterious small business, one employee finds a ragged old copy of The Great Gatsby in the clutter of his desk and starts to read it out loud. And doesn’t stop. At first his coworkers hardly seem to notice, but then weird coincidences start happening in the office, one after another, until it’s no longer clear whether he’s reading the book or the book is doing something to him. Six hours long and with a cast of 13, Gatz is by far ERS’ most ambitious endeavor yet. Not a stage adaptation of Fitzgerald’s novel but a verbatim reading of the entire book, accomplished by the staff of a small office in the midst of their increasingly bewildered business operations.

Elevator Repair Service, a theatre ensemble, was founded by director John Collins and a group of actors in 1991. The company has produced a body of influential and critically-acclaimed work that re-imagines for the stage literary works, found texts, historical research, films and videos. ERS’ central aesthetic goal is the rigorous exploration of theatre’s unique properties. Combining conventional and radically unconventional performance styles, choreography and experimental design, ERS pieces celebrate the unpredictable and revelatory experience of live performance.

Gatz is a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Walker Art Center in partnership with Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and the National Performance Network. www.npnweb.org. NPN and the NPN Creation Fund is sponsored by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Altria, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency).

www.elevator.org

"Gatz creates its own dramatic universe...One is left not primarily with the expected exhaustion, but with a unique and lasting texture of amusement, insight and possibility." Variety