The Festival:

Now in its 7th year, the Boise Creative & Improvised Music Festival is taking on an exciting new multidimensional approach in a collision of experimental music and dramatic arts. This year’s program features a theatrical production written by Heidi Kraay and held at the Visual Arts Collective. As a collaboration in theater, music and movement, this Boise Creative & Improvised Music Festival features a brand new play Me and My Shadow in addition to separate music performances, all to run May 11 and 12 at the Visual Arts Collective. Each evening will also headline performances by world class improvisational musicians before the play, after the play and during intermissions. This is a highly collaborative event that will feature both local and national, emerging and professional artistic talent, all of top notch caliber. 

The Play:

B-CIMF 2012 Presents Me and My Shadow is a theatrical experience featuring live improvisational music directed by Krispen Hartung in a play written by Heidi Kraay, directed by Kathy Simpson and choreographed by Yurek Hansen. Improvisational music, directed and loosely composed by the festival's founder and coordinator Krispen Hartung, will be integrated throughout the performance to reinforce the dramatic potential. Yurek Hansen will integrate movement into the show that fits with the improvised music. Projected scenic images by Jason Willford and Tyler Walker will further the artistic collaboration, as will painted images, some created in time during the show. Other designers include Luke Massengill, Veronica Von Tobel and Keith Hazen-Diehm. 

The Funding:

Your money will be used to help us fund needs for design building needs (especially in set, costumes and lighting), to offset printing costs (for posters, scripts, programs and rehearsal paperwork), to provide a stipend for all artists and to help offset travel costs for the out-of-town musicians coming to play for the B-CIMF Festival. We have already put in a great deal of work and rehearsals are underway. What funding you can provide will ensure that this project is not only completed, but with exceptional quality behind it. Thank you in advance for giving whatever you can to this exciting and ambitious project.

The Story: 

ME AND MY SHADOW by Heidi R.C. Kraay 

“it may be mad to live by a dream but insane to live without one” 

PREMISE:

When Marianne’s father dies, she finds comfort in childhood imaginary friends. Absorbed in an invented reality, she cuts herself off from daily life to a catatonic degree. Forced into hospitalization, she expresses her mind through art and ends up saving herself by her own terms.

SYNOPSIS: 

Marianne is a painter in Morro Bay California who is living the dream until her father dies and leaves her his bookstore. Facing a life without her father, painting and with running a business that reminds her of everything she used to have, she copes by reuniting with imaginary friends from childhood, namely Alexander. Her concerned sister, having seen this behavior before after their mother’s death, tries to convince Marianne, Marianne’s husband and their friends to get her help.

The more fun Marianne has bonding with Alexander, the more she gives up on reality, until she appears paralyzed to her loved ones. While wrapped up in her head, she feels normal, but reacts violently when her friends and family bring her out. In one such struggle with her husband, she starts a fire in the bookstore and he checks her into a hospital. Under strict care, she loses her business, gets divorced, becomes estranged from her family and the joke of the town.

Years later, Marianne is only content is in her imagination and she is lifeless outside of it. She continues to worsen and shows no progress. Her treatment team loses hope for her recovery, but when an art therapist sees a spark of interest from her in a painting session, he makes Marianne his top priority and works with her one on one. In time, she starts painting, using Alexander and her other imaginary friends as inspiration. The more she paints, the more progress she makes, amazing the hospital staff. Using her so-called psychosis as her muse, Marianne rebuilds her life and moves as far from Morro Bay as possible, to thrive while living by her own rules, making art.

The Team: