COAL MINING IN HOLLYWOOD

Butcher Holler Here We Come!

For Immediate Release
April 1, 2019

Media Contact: Michael Mason, Aztec Economy / 409-767-2801 / [email protected]

Calendar info: “Butcher Holler Here We Come” Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019 June 15-18, 20-22. Thymele Arts, 5481 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 900029. Shows are at varies times. Tickets $15 at Fringe Website (http://hff19.org/5921) or at the door. For more info go to NewYorkIsDead.Net or email [email protected]

COAL MINING IN HOLLYWOOD
“BUTCHER HOLLER HERE WE COME”
A descent into the male psyche-in-crisis. A linguistic immersive experience entirely lit by headlamps

Butcher Holler Here We Come is a critically-acclaimed and award-winning original performance that descends into the interior landscape of the male psyche-in-crisis. ‘Toxic Masculinity’ is examined at its very source: five working class coal miners provide an archetypical cross-section of manhood which, when turned in on itself, negotiates a poetic and horrifying reckoning upon their own history. The result is a hallucinatory framework where secrets, lies, carnal desires, and traumatic lineages are unearthed and reversed. Other connotations of this toxicity are given dramatic voice through the politics of environmentalism, class, sexual orientation, and faith – all in a rapid-pace meditation on survival and the nature of reality itself. Told in near-to-total darkness, with the use of headlamps to illuminate the actors while they weave in and around the audience, the play invites a visceral, terrifying, and emotionally-wrought forging of manhood as it actively interrogates itself, against the backdrop forces of an un-anthropomorphic world. Proclaimed as “a jarring and fine introduction” to the festival by the New York Times, Butcher Holler Here We Come is a new American play that fuses the philosophy of Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty with a poetic dialogue akin to Breece D’J Pancake’s short stories to provoke a deeply and socially-relevant conversation about gender, nature, economy, spirituality, and the phenomenology of storytelling, en masse.

Synopsis:
1973, West Virginia. Following a cave collapse, 5 coal miners struggle to survive the dwindling supply of oxygen, the lack of food and water, the unravelling sense of passing time, and, even more threatening, their own competing natures. Brutally weaving through family histories, complicated friendships, crooked politics, childhood visions, audacious hopes, eerie dreams, criminal addictions, and fervent spirituality in this run- of-the-mill Appalachian community,

Aztec Economy, a Brooklyn-based theatre company creating original works and
featured at the Obie-award winning Ice Factory, P.S.122, The Tank, Bushwick Starr, 3LD, Dixon Place, WaterTower Theatre, and nationally in Chicago, Cincinnati, New Orleans, Tampa, Albuquerque, Washington DC, and more. Aztec Economy has an interest in providing provocative new work at a low-cost that seeks a fresh perspective on American culture and its relationship to ritual, myth, madness, dreams and deliverance.

Called, “Visceral and a fine, jarring piece of theatre” by the New York Times, a “Fast- paced thriller with a finale at once terrifying and exciting” by NY Theatre Now, “Inspired direction of a strong cast,” by Dallas Morning News, “an intense drama, very compelling” by New Orleans Defender, an “engrossing, serious script that keeps you on the edge of your seat” by CityBeat Cincinnati, “awe-inspiring! The consistency of a shocking dream and authority of brutal poetry” by CreativeLoafing Tampa, and “Exciting work that is food for the senses and the spirit” by the Baltimore Examiner, “Butcher Holler Here We Come” has been previously premiered at the Cincinnati and New Orleans Fringe Festivals, Columbia Festival of the Arts, The University of New Mexico /
Tricklock International Theatre Festival, The Tank and I.R.T. in New York, WaterTower Theatre and with Ad Hoc Beaumont in Texas.

Public performances are at Thymele Arts, 5481 Santa Monica Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 900029. Shows are at varies times. Hollywood Fringe Festival 2019 June 15-18, 20-22. Tickets $15 at Fringe Website (http://hff19.org/5921) or at the door. For more info go to NewYorkIsDead.Net or email [email protected]
Opening Weekend Featuring:
(Fri, June 14th, Sat, June 15th, Tues, June 18th)
Isaac Byrne, Morrison Keddie, Michael Mason, Adam Laten Wilison, and Cole Wimppee.
Closing Weekend Featuring:
(Thurs June 20th, Fri June 21st, Sat June 22nd (2shows))
Isaac Byrne, adam Belvo, Michael Mason, Adam Laten Wilison, and Cole Wimppee.

Full release with press quotes, synopsis, bios, publicity / production photos, and
individual actor/role performances available upon request.