You won't want to miss Trey Parker's "Cannibal The Musical," which is performed by the Insurgo Theatre Movement, running March 14th through April 5th at the Onyx Theatre

Hailed as “intimately related to the betterment for a quickly evolving Las Vegas theater status quo” and “wild west avante-garde theatre”, the Insurgo Theater Movment is a non-profit organization dedicated to an exploration the theatrical form including classics, alternative and original works. In 2007 the company produced a heavily revamped version of LYSISTRATA at the Onyx Theatre, as well as HAMLET: PRINCE OF DENMARK, featuring a female in the lead role.

Insurgo was founded in 2001 by John Beane, Jessica Topliff, Bill Tanner and Jesse Runde with their production of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Over the course of their five year stint in California they produced more than 35 complete runs, created the midnight show juggernaut KILL YOUR TELEVISION, won the OC REGISTER Best Production and Direction for HENRY V, won the OC THEATER AWARDS at South Coast Rep for Best Actor for WAITING FOR GODOT, Best Ensemble for TAMING OF THE SHREW, and more. They have been called "undeniably ballsy" and "the storefront theater to keep an eye on" by the Los Angeles Times. In 2003, they won the Focus on Fortune Award for Business for Theaters, and for staging of new plays.

The Insurgo Theater Movement presents the Las Vegas premiere of Stanislaus Witkiewicz’s THE WATER HEN

Discover “probing cultural works from the renegade mind of the Insurgo Theater Movement” (City Life, 2007). Insurgo presents the Polish absurdist’s masterpiece at the Onyx Theatre January 18-February 9^th.

Las Vegas, NV - January 03, 2008 – This January the Onyx Theatre is home to a play rarely performed in America and written by a dead Polish playwright that was part scientist, part radical, part hedonist, and totally unforgettable.

"While the battle is going on, father organizes a card-game." THE WATER HEN is a totalitarian satire, a tragedy, an existential comedy and a romantic fugue. The play deals with the initiation of new family members and their expectations of life through a non-linear timeline highlighted by the failures of the ambitions of the other family members. In Witkiweicz’s world, time and expectation give way to Pure Form and the inevitability of existence.

About the Production

Directed by Insurgo Artistic Director John Beane, the play features performances by Insurgo company members Samuel Craner, Heather Chamberlain and John Beane as well as burlesque comedienne Emily Lauren as the Duchess, CSN Dance Director Kelly Roth as Ephemer/Detective, and featuring the talents of F. Ed Knutson, Geo Nikols, Stacia Zinkevich and Kevin Matthews.

Group rates are available.

Please join us for an opening night champagne gala on January 18^th @ 8PM!

About the Author

Born in Warsaw, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was raised in his family home in Zakopane. In accordance with his father's antipathy toward the "servitude of the school", the young Witkiewicz was homeschooled and encouraged to develop his talents across the creative fields.

From childhood, Witkiewicz was a close friend of Bronisław Malinowski. Following a crisis in Witkiewicz' personal life, Malinowski invited him to act as draughtsman and photographer on an expedition to Oceania in 1914, a venture interrupted by the onset of World War I. On his return, Witkiewicz, nominally a citizen of the Russian Empire, went to St Petersburg and was commissioned an officer in the Tsarist army.

Witkiewicz lived through the Russian Revolution in Petersburg. His later works would show his fear of social revolution and foreign invasion, often couched in absurdist language.

He had begun to support himself through portrait painting and continued to do so on his return to Zakopane in Poland. He soon entered into a major creative phase, setting out his principles in New Forms in Painting and Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in the Theatre. He associated with a group of "formist" artists in the early 1920s and wrote most of his plays during this period. Of the plays, only Jan Karol Maciej Hellcat met with any public success at the time.

After 1925, and taking the name 'Witkacy', the artist ironically re-branded the paintings which provided his economic sustenance as The S.I. Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm, with the motto: "The customer must always be satisfied". Several grades of portrait were offered, from the merely representational to the more expressionistic and the narcotics assisted. Many of his paintings were annotated with mnemonics listing the drugs taken while painting a particular painting, even if this happened to be only a cup of coffee.

In the late 1920s he turned to the novel, writing two works, Farewell to Autumn and Insatiability. The latter major work encompasses geo-politics, psychosomatic drugs, and philosophy.

During the 1930s, Witkiewicz published a text on his experiences of "narcotics," including peyote, and pursued his interests in philosophy. He also promoted emerging writers such as Bruno Schulz. Shortly after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany in September of 1939, he escaped with his young lover to eastern Poland. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, Witkacy committed suicide. Witkiewicz lied to his lover, saying that he would give her poison while he was to cut his veins. However, he had not given her poison, but himself took Veronal and slit his wrists. She woke up later to find him dead.

Witkiewicz had died in some obscurity but his reputation began to rise soon after the War, a war which had destroyed his own life and devastated Poland. Czesław Miłosz framed his argument in The Captive Mind around a discussion of Insatiability. The artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor was inspired by the Cricot group, through which Witkiewicz had presented his final plays in Krakow. Kantor brought many of the plays back into currency, first in Poland and then internationally.

The Ministry of Culture in the new Communist Poland decided to exhume Witkiewicz's body in the post-war period and move it to Shakopane, and give him a ceremonial burial with honors. It was performed according to plan, though nobody was allowed to open the coffin delivered by the Soviet authorities.

Much later, a genetic study proved that the body belonged to an unknown Ukrainian woman — a final absurdist joke 50 years after the publication of the writer's last novel.

FACT SHEET

Production: THE WATER HEN

Presented by: The Insurgo Theater Movement

Location: Onyx Theatre 953 E. Sahara Ave. #16 Las Vegas, NV 89169

Showtimes/dates:

Opening Night: Friday January 18^th @ 8PM

Plays Thur-Sat @ 8PM through February 9^th

Ticket prices: $15 admission, $10 for students/seniors

Reservations: www.onyxtheatre.com or 702-732-7225

About The Insurgo Theater Movement

Hailed as “intimately related to the betterment for a quickly evolving Las Vegas theater status quo” and “wild west avante-garde theatre”, the Insurgo Theater Movment is a non-profit organization dedicated to an exploration the theatrical form including classics, alternative and original works. In 2007 the company produced a heavily revamped version of LYSISTRATA at the Onyx Theatre, as well as HAMLET: PRINCE OF DENMARK, featuring a female in the lead role.

Insurgo was founded in 2001 by John Beane, Jessica Topliff, Bill Tanner and Jesse Runde with their production of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Over the course of their five year stint in California they produced more than 35 complete runs, created the midnight show juggernaut KILL YOUR TELEVISION, won the OC REGISTER Best Production and Direction for HENRY V, won the OC THEATER AWARDS at South Coast Rep for Best Actor for WAITING FOR GODOT, Best Ensemble for TAMING OF THE SHREW, and more. They have been called "undeniably ballsy" and "the storefront theater to keep an eye on" by the Los Angeles Times. In 2003, they won the Focus on Fortune Award for Business for Theaters, and for staging of new plays.

The Insurgo Theater Movement presents the Las Vegas premiere of Stanislaus Witkiewicz’s THE WATER HEN

Discover “probing cultural works from the renegade mind of the Insurgo Theater Movement” (City Life, 2007). Insurgo presents the Polish absurdist’s masterpiece at the Onyx Theatre January 18-February 9^th.

Las Vegas, NV - January 03, 2008 – This January the Onyx Theatre is home to a play rarely performed in America and written by a dead Polish playwright that was part scientist, part radical, part hedonist, and totally unforgettable.

"While the battle is going on, father organizes a card-game." THE WATER HEN is a totalitarian satire, a tragedy, an existential comedy and a romantic fugue. The play deals with the initiation of new family members and their expectations of life through a non-linear timeline highlighted by the failures of the ambitions of the other family members. In Witkiweicz’s world, time and expectation give way to Pure Form and the inevitability of existence.

About the Production

Directed by Insurgo Artistic Director John Beane, the play features performances by Insurgo company members Samuel Craner, Heather Chamberlain and John Beane as well as burlesque comedienne Emily Lauren as the Duchess, CSN Dance Director Kelly Roth as Ephemer/Detective, and featuring the talents of F. Ed Knutson, Geo Nikols, Stacia Zinkevich and Kevin Matthews.

Group rates are available.

Please join us for an opening night champagne gala on January 18^th @ 8PM!

About the Author

Born in Warsaw, Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz was raised in his family home in Zakopane. In accordance with his father's antipathy toward the "servitude of the school", the young Witkiewicz was homeschooled and encouraged to develop his talents across the creative fields.

From childhood, Witkiewicz was a close friend of Bronisław Malinowski. Following a crisis in Witkiewicz' personal life, Malinowski invited him to act as draughtsman and photographer on an expedition to Oceania in 1914, a venture interrupted by the onset of World War I. On his return, Witkiewicz, nominally a citizen of the Russian Empire, went to St Petersburg and was commissioned an officer in the Tsarist army.

Witkiewicz lived through the Russian Revolution in Petersburg. His later works would show his fear of social revolution and foreign invasion, often couched in absurdist language.

He had begun to support himself through portrait painting and continued to do so on his return to Zakopane in Poland. He soon entered into a major creative phase, setting out his principles in New Forms in Painting and Introduction to the Theory of Pure Form in the Theatre. He associated with a group of "formist" artists in the early 1920s and wrote most of his plays during this period. Of the plays, only Jan Karol Maciej Hellcat met with any public success at the time.

After 1925, and taking the name 'Witkacy', the artist ironically re-branded the paintings which provided his economic sustenance as The S.I. Witkiewicz Portrait Painting Firm, with the motto: "The customer must always be satisfied". Several grades of portrait were offered, from the merely representational to the more expressionistic and the narcotics assisted. Many of his paintings were annotated with mnemonics listing the drugs taken while painting a particular painting, even if this happened to be only a cup of coffee.

In the late 1920s he turned to the novel, writing two works, Farewell to Autumn and Insatiability. The latter major work encompasses geo-politics, psychosomatic drugs, and philosophy.

During the 1930s, Witkiewicz published a text on his experiences of "narcotics," including peyote, and pursued his interests in philosophy. He also promoted emerging writers such as Bruno Schulz. Shortly after Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany in September of 1939, he escaped with his young lover to eastern Poland. Following the Soviet invasion of Poland on September 17, 1939, Witkacy committed suicide. Witkiewicz lied to his lover, saying that he would give her poison while he was to cut his veins. However, he had not given her poison, but himself took Veronal and slit his wrists. She woke up later to find him dead.

Witkiewicz had died in some obscurity but his reputation began to rise soon after the War, a war which had destroyed his own life and devastated Poland. Czesław Miłosz framed his argument in The Captive Mind around a discussion of Insatiability. The artist and theatre director Tadeusz Kantor was inspired by the Cricot group, through which Witkiewicz had presented his final plays in Krakow. Kantor brought many of the plays back into currency, first in Poland and then internationally.

The Ministry of Culture in the new Communist Poland decided to exhume Witkiewicz's body in the post-war period and move it to Shakopane, and give him a ceremonial burial with honors. It was performed according to plan, though nobody was allowed to open the coffin delivered by the Soviet authorities.

Much later, a genetic study proved that the body belonged to an unknown Ukrainian woman — a final absurdist joke 50 years after the publication of the writer's last novel.

FACT SHEET

Production: THE WATER HEN

Presented by: The Insurgo Theater Movement

Location: Onyx Theatre 953 E. Sahara Ave. #16 Las Vegas, NV 89169

Showtimes/dates:

Opening Night: Friday January 18^th @ 8PM

Plays Thur-Sat @ 8PM through February 9^th

Ticket prices: $15 admission, $10 for students/seniors

Reservations: www.onyxtheatre.com or 702-732-7225

About The Insurgo Theater Movement

Hailed as “intimately related to the betterment for a quickly evolving Las Vegas theater status quo” and “wild west avante-garde theatre”, the Insurgo Theater Movment is a non-profit organization dedicated to an exploration the theatrical form including classics, alternative and original works. In 2007 the company produced a heavily revamped version of LYSISTRATA at the Onyx Theatre, as well as HAMLET: PRINCE OF DENMARK, featuring a female in the lead role.

Insurgo was founded in 2001 by John Beane, Jessica Topliff, Bill Tanner and Jesse Runde with their production of A STREETCAR NAMED DESIRE. Over the course of their five year stint in California they produced more than 35 complete runs, created the midnight show juggernaut KILL YOUR TELEVISION, won the OC REGISTER Best Production and Direction for HENRY V, won the OC THEATER AWARDS at South Coast Rep for Best Actor for WAITING FOR GODOT, Best Ensemble for TAMING OF THE SHREW, and more. They have been called "undeniably ballsy" and "the storefront theater to keep an eye on" by the Los Angeles Times. In 2003, they won the Focus on Fortune Award for Business for Theaters, and for staging of new plays.