Attack Theatre gets gory with new ‘Dead End’

If there’s one thing that Pittsburgh dance company Attack Theatre knows, it’s that a show… If there’s one thing that Pittsburgh dance company Attack Theatre knows, it’s that a show divorced from the emotions and experiences of its audience is barely a show at all. Armed with this awareness, Attack will showcase its whimsical and morbid Halloween production, ‘[Insert Clever and Thought-Provoking Title Here],’ in a manner that firmly demands complete and utter involvement from its audience. Premiering to the world in the umbra of All Hallows Eve, ‘[Insert Title]’ is a two-act dance performance that is unique mainly because of its eclectic structure. ‘Our philosophy with shows is to create a structure for ourselves and then break all of the rules,’ said Michele de la Reza, who is a co-founder, artistic director and dancer of Attack Theatre. ‘We use the structure as a departing point.’ Act One of ‘[Insert Title],’ called ‘Dead End,’ is the more conventional portion of the show. ‘Dead End’ is based on the illustrated novel ‘The Gashlycrumb Tinies’ by recently deceased American macabre artist Edward Gorey. In ‘Tinies,’ 26 children ‘mdash; who each correspond to a particular letter of the alphabet ‘mdash; die in untimely and somewhat amusing fashions, from choking on pears to being assaulted by bears. Similarly, ‘Dead End’ will feature 26 different dance numbers, one for each of Gorey’s vignettes, although Attack has transformed each one with its own interpretive vision. ‘ ‘Within our interpretation [of Gorey’s work], we take one idea and we explore that idea and go many different directions,’ said de la Reza, ‘and [show composer] Doug Lavine created a score that incorporates so many styles. It keeps you on your toes.’ For the performance of Lavine’s score, Attack recruited three local musicians ‘mdash; Paul Thompson, Jeff Berman and Ben Opie ‘mdash; to bring ‘Dead End’ to its particular equivalent of life. Between the three of them, they play more than eight instruments across the wide array of styles present in the piece. Act Two, however, is where the audience’s influence becomes paramount. Called ‘Untitled 2008,’ the piece is a distinct deviation from the intriguing but conventionally structured first act. During the intermission between acts, Attack will ask audience members for actions, emotions and settings, which are then used to set up a dance-off of sorts. ‘When the audience returns from the intermission, we will have set up a wall perpendicular to them, so that the two teams of dancers can’t see each other but the audience can see everything,’ said de la Reza. ‘The audience will choose which team is the better interpreter of their topics over the course of five rounds, and the winner will get to choose the title of the show from a pool of public-created possibilities.’ While it might seem risky to create a work so entirely invested in participation of the audience, de la Reza has confidence in Attack’s history with improvization. ‘The teams, the topics and even the music [by DJ Soy Sos, or Herman Pearl] in ‘Untitled 2008′ will be unknown to us until the moment of the show. But each show is made different by the audience – by their experiences and perspective,’ said de la Reza. ‘We’ve been working with improvisation for years, as both a tool and an element of performance, and we wanted to put it to the test.’