The Broad Stage presents the return of The 7 Fingers with RÉVERSIBLE for three performances only, February 15 – 17. The 7 Fingers, who performed Cuisine & Confessions at The Broad Stage in 2017, are the best in contemporary circus performers. RÉVERSIBLE is also performing February 1-2 at Irvine Barclay Theatre.
Imagine your grandparents and what they lived through when they were your age. Eight outstanding performers dug through the histories of their families. They unveiled stories from the past and skeletons in the closets that reflected, in some way or another, how they experience life today.
Through a unique, riveting mix of theatre, circus, dance, music and acrobatics, RÉVERSIBLE is dedicated to a generation who forged the world that we live in today and whose stories might hold the key to a better tomorrow. Our elders lived in a simpler era, when time moved at a less rapid pace. This time in history inspired poetry, imagination, passion and staggering virtuosity.
Are these stories written in our DNA? How will the past guide our evolution in the future? With the 7 Fingers’ RÉVERSIBLE, be prepared for the best in contemporary circus: moments of pure grace yielding to rushes of adrenaline, as a cast of multi-talented performers travel through time and space. Be part of a vibrant journey that will give you goose bumps: peek through the key hole at a Reversible world, where everyday life is turned upside down into new spectacular, universes filled with beauty, emotion and hope.
In the show a cast member asks a resonant question of her late Grandfather, “In the end what did you hold on to? What should I?” The show was born when Gypsy Snider,writer-director-choreographer and 7 Fingers artistic director was thinking about her ancestors while hanging laundry.
“I wanted them to create characters based on where they came from; a past that they were not even aware of,” Snyder said. “The idea was that we would then construct characters based on events that occurred in these artists’ DNA pool over the last 150 years. This has proven to be the deepest and most exciting part of creating Reversible. Every day they’d come back with new stories about their grandparents or their great-grandparents, things they had no idea about.
“One girl found out she was Jewish, she had no idea. One girl who is Swiss found out that her Japanese grandmother had abandoned an arranged marriage in Japan and ran away with a Swiss man. She became the first woman to immigrate to this tiny Swiss village. What we’re feeling in this current generation is that we are uprooted. We are not as connected to family and past as we were even 50 years ago.”
Snider continued, “The process The 7 Fingers has been developing over the last 15 years is that we begin with a spark, an idea, a desire to express and explore a concept that fascinates us, something for a better understanding of who we are -- and a vehicle to explore storytelling through circus. We create a playground in which we ask the artists to improvise on themes, structures, situations, so that they are able to bring in their own quality—and together we create the show. It’s a very organic, very creative, and always surprising process, one that allows us to create one entity that is separate from us, an entity that takes us further than something that any of us might have imagined alone.”
The Broad Stage, 1310 11th St. Limited free parking is available. Friday, February 15 at 7:30 p.m. Saturday, February 16 at 7:30 p.m. Sunday, February 17 at 2 p.m. Starting at $60. Prices subject to change. www.thebroadstage.org
Submitted by Tim Choy, Davidson & Choy Publicity
