Kickstarter

Please join us for a rare look at the 1965 play that incited arrests, protests, and a landmark trial - Michael McClure's The Beard!

A leader of San Francisco’s beat poetry scene, McClure caused a scandal when he brought his unhinged imagination and blunt, vicious brand of language to the theater, placing Jean Harlow and Billy the Kid into a velvet-draped purgatory. For nearly eighty minutes, words careen back and forth with blinding precision as two American icons confront their larger-than-life personas and all-too-human sexual energy. Just five performances took place before the drama spilled offstage, where San Francisco Police Department officers raided the theater and arrested the actors for "lewd and dissolute conduct."

Bringing obscene language and conduct to the stage may seem far less shocking today than it did in the 1960s. We hope to embrace this shift in morals by weaving it directly into the staging, exploring how such material can take its effect in a culture where sex and profanity are as near as the next television or computer. Combining onstage performance and onscreen playback, our production will seek not to impose, but to build on McClure’s natural grasp of what live performance can achieve. Producing the play in an intimate and unconventional performance space, we will break down the actor/audience barrier and heighten the raw immediacy of McClure’s language.

Silent Bugler Productions is pleased to present "The Beard" directed by Kristyn R. Smith as our inaugural production this June at the Deity Supperclub. We have been chosen to participate in the BoCoCa Arts Festival which will take place in Brooklyn from June 18th to 27th.

Your support for Silent Bugler Productions will go toward licensing fees, design and materials costs and rehearsal space rental. Any help is appreciated. We gladly accept donations of time or expertise in addition to monetary support. Please contact us if you would like to be involved.

silentbugler@productionparadigm.com

Silent Bugler Productions was founded by Kristyn R. Smith and Jacob G. Stulberg to revive and reinvent "poets' theater" for the 21st century. Looking beyond works driven by plot or character, we seek out plays where the "how" is as important as the "what" - plays where language is paramount. We adapt poetry for the stage and bring neglected works to light, presenting seldom-staged plays of well-known playwrights. Whether through unconventional staging, non-traditional venues, or creative combinations of media, our projects push past the familiar. Our commitment to exploring the limits of theater reflects our strong conviction that drama should challenge its audience, engage them in active viewing, and leave them thinking long after the last curtain has fallen.

http://www.bococaartsfestival.com/home.php
http://www.deitynyc.com/home/