PUNCH AND JUDY RETURNS!

Punch and Judy

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 23, 2016

THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT

PROUDLY ANNOUNCES AN ENCORE REMOUNT OF

PUNCH AND JUDY

Los Angeles, CA – The School of Night is pleased as punch to announce the impending remount of its 2016 Hollywood Fringe Festival hit Punch and Judy.

During a long, hot summer marked by violence, simmering racial tension and the specter of emergent fascism, Los Angeles audiences and critics found catharsis in this timely and uproariously funny tale of spousal abuse, infanticide, child molestation, racism and spree-murder.

Here’s what the critics who saw it had to say:

Punch and Judy is absolutely flawless … hilarious, dark physical comedy that will have you yelling out loud in response and defense.
-Tracey Paleo, Gia on the Move

Highly polished and pitch-perfect commedia dell’arte … Johnson has assembled one of the ablest and most expertly timed physical comedy ensembles in recent memory.
-Bill Raden, Stage Raw

Some of the best and most versatile fight sequences that I have seen on an LA stage … a brilliant and hilarious show.
-Pauline Adamek, Arts Beat LA

The show is a genuine case study of style and comic delivery that deserves to be preserved in amber.
-Ernest Kearney, The TVolution

The content and form serve each other seamlessly … a great cast is led by someone who is genuinely world-class … I recommend it highly.
-Guy Pivot, Fringe Review UK

This live-action adaptation of the western world’s most enduring popular entertainment follows the beloved and irascible domestic abuser Punch on a hilarious and kill-crazed day of adventure. All your favorite characters are sure to put in appearances: Judy, Pretty Polly, Scaramouch, Jim Crow, Toby the Dog, Jack Ketch, Hector the Horse … even Old Nick himself, the Devil and Prince of Lies, will wind up on the receiving end of Punch’s tomfoolery.

Drawing on performance traditions as richly varied as commedia dell’arte, the Roman gladiatorial games, the English mystery plays, Kenpo Karate, grand-guignol, Atellan farce, vaudeville and Hollywood action-splatter cinema, The School of Night is proud to present a blast of theatrical bombast crafted to batter and berate its viewers into giddy, satisfied submission.

Mr. Punch will tickle your ribs as he bludgeons, stabs, slashes, burns, shoots and inappropriately gropes his way straight into your heart.

Not recommended for kids.

Christopher Johnson (Writer/Director) most recently helmed the critically lauded and award-winning Entropy for Hollywood’s Theatre of NOTE. He is the founding artistic director of Chicago’s historic Defiant Theatre for whom he served as producer on dozens of projects including the U.S. premieres of Sarah Kane’s Cleansed and Phaedra’s Love, the Chicago premiere of Caryl Churchill’s The Skryker and multiple iterations of the cult-classic Action Movie: The Play. Defiant directing credits include Titus Andronicus, A Clockwork Orange, Macbeth, Dope and Hamlet as well as world world-premiere adaptations of Stephen King’s Apt Pupil and Thomas Harris’s Red Dragon (the latter garnering Christopher a Joseph Jefferson Citation for Best New Adaptation). Other Chicago and Los Angeles directing credits include Henry VI, Part 1 (The Production Company), Balacarita: The Adventures of Young Krishna (Silk Road Theatre Project), The Pity of Things – Desert Aria (Theatre of NOTE), Cave Dwellers (North Avenue Productions) and Dulcitius (The School of Night). Credits as playwright include Godbaby and Dope (both Defiant Theatre). Christopher has appeared as an actor at the Goodman Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Lyric Opera, Chicago Opera Theatre, Redmoon Theater, The Building Stage, A Crew of Patches and Defiant Theatre.

Jen Albert (Producer/Fight Choreographer) Jen earned a BA in theatre from Columbia College Chicago where she became SAFD certified in all manner of stage combat before going on to get her Blue Belt in Kenpo. She is an emeritus company member of Babes with Blades, Chicago’s first all-female stage combat theatre company, with whom she traveled to Scotland to perform at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. She is currently a faculty member of Art of Acting – the Conservatory of Stella Adler in Hollywood where she teaches stage combat. Recent Los Angeles fight choreography credits include: Entropy (Theatre of NOTE), Fifty Shades of Shrew (Broads’ Word Ensemble), The Noir Series (Heretick Theatre Lab), Conduct of Life and Down in the Face of God (The Vagrancy), Henry VI, Part I, Very Still and Hard to See, and Beauty Queen of Leenane (The Production Company). Favorite roles as an actor include: Kate in Fifty Shades of Shrew, Inez in Women w/o Walls (both for Broads’ Word Ensemble), Poison Inniman in Action Movie the Play (Defiant Theatre), Gwen in Fifth of July (The Production Company) and Yvonne in War (Theatre Banshee).

Jimmy Slonina (Mr. Punch) currently stars as Benny the Clown in Cirque du Soleil’s Mystere at Treasure Island in Las Vegas. Previous Cirque credits include Zarkana, “O” and the North American tour of KOOZA. In 2013 he starred as the concert host/emcee of PINK’s The Truth About Love Tour, entertaining tens of thousands nightly in North America, Europe and Australia. He created characters for and performed in Franco Dragone’s Vegas aquatic spectacle Le Reve. Jimmy has also performed as a physical comic in more than a dozen Las Vegas showrooms, has appeared in several acclaimed films and web series and produces various popular video and film projects. Originally from Chicago, Jimmy enjoyed many years as a critically acclaimed actor in a broad variety of contemporary, classical and physical theatres. He has worked with many world-renowned, award-winning Chicago theatre companies, including Steppenwolf Theatre, Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Redmoon Theater and Defiant Theatre. He is also the recipient of two Joseph Jefferson Awards for acting.

Rounding out the cast are Kjai Block, Tiffany Cole, Synden Healy, Sondra Mayer and Eric Rollins.

Ryan Beveridge (Live Foley/Sound Design) works primarily as a composer for film and television. Recent scores include Waiting for the Miracle to Come, starring Willie Nelson and Charlotte Rampling, NBC/Universal’s Mr. Robinson, the James Caan series Back in the Game for ABC, and Meeting Evil, starring Samuel L. Jackson. His entrée into the industry came through collaborations with Stewart Copeland (drummer of The Police), and he has been fortunate to have his music featured at seven Sundance Film Festivals. In addition to film, Ryan enjoys composing for dance, the theater, and arena. He provided vocal arrangements and music supervision for the live arena spectacular Ben Hur Live directed by Philip Wm. McKinley (Spiderman/The Boy from Oz-Broadway), which had its premiere at the ’02 Dome in London. Ryan studied music at Northwestern University and has received fellowships from the Sundance Institute and BMI. He is excited to be working with Chris Johnson, whom he has known since their days at Edison Junior High School many moons ago.

The production staff includes Linda Muggeridge (Costume Designer), Fred Manchento (Scenic Designer) Andrew Leman (Puppet and Graphic Designer) Eric Bridges (Stage Manager).

Performances are Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm and Sundays at 7:00pm, Friday September 16 through Sunday October 2.

Tickets are $15 and may be purchased online at: http://punchandjudy.brownpapertickets.com

All performances are at The Ruby Theater @ The Complex, 6476 Santa Monica Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90038.

The show has a running time of 50 minutes with no intermission.

The School of Night is a not-for-profit theatre company dedicated to the study and live presentation of the dramatic works of the European renaissance, their more modern permutations and their much neglected antecedents: the folk and religious dramas of the middle ages, the tragedies, comedies and spectacle entertainments of pagan Rome and the Greek-influenced Atellan farces from which these derived.

The School of Night employs a combination of the finest theatrical artistry and dramaturgical scholarship to create performances that evoke for a contemporary audience the same emotional immediacy, linguistic power, comedic vigor, charged spirituality and theatrical vitality that these artistically influential and culturally significant works provided audiences in centuries and millennia past.