Cankerblossom: A dark fairytale

September 1-18, 2010

Tickets on sale here.

It begins, as so many of these stories do, with a knock at the door. A young couple discovers a cardboard baby on their stoop. They grow to love the child, who is completely flat, as their own. Then someone or something takes away the baby to a FlatWorld, a planar landscape populated by characters whimsical, sinister, and flat as pancakes. The couple, both ordinary and round, must enter this two-dimensional world to get their baby back. Can they rescue their adopted child and escape from a parallel universe in which there is up-and-down and side-to-side, but no way out?

For Cankerblossom, director Dan Rothenberg has teamed up with cartoonist and pioneering puppeteer artist Beth Nixon, whose fantastical cardboard creations work alongside stop motion animation, video projection, live music, and Pig Iron's signature physical style to create this shadowy fairytale land. In the spirit of The Phantom Tollbooth and Spirited Away, Cankerblossom invites you into a hidden, magical world that once you enter has no intention of letting you leave.

“Inventive staging and sublime displays of whimsy.”  
The New York Times

Last year, perennial Live Arts Festival favorites Pig Iron Theatre Company brought joy to sold-out audiences with Welcome to Yuba City (2009). Cankerblossom also features the work of acclaimed projection designer Jeff Sugg (Accidental Nostalgia, Live Arts Festival, 2007), and New Zealand gypsy musician Rosie Langabeer.

Conceived and Created by Pig Iron Theatre Company Direction Dan Rothenberg Music Rosie Langabeer Set and Animation Mimi Lien Lighting James Clotfelter Sound Nick Kourtides Costumes Leslie Rogers Video Projection Josh Higgason Assistant Director Sarah Lowry Performers Hinako Arao, Beth Nixon, David Sweeny, Alex Torra

Cankerblossom will be performed at the Christ Church Neighborhood House, which now has air-conditioning and elevator access.