“Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.” - e.e.cummings
Liminal wanted to save Christmas… from itself. To do this, we decided to launch off of e.e.cummings' unusual holiday texts: Santa Claus (1946), The Christmas Tree (1920), and others, to tackle the big issues: life, death, sex, and online shopping.
Equal parts modern mystery play (casting Santa as Joe Everyman), anti-commercial anti-capitalist allegory (Death as the archetypal one-percenter robber baron), and good clean modernist holiday shenanigans (colors! line and form! conceptual constructs!), SANTA painted an alternate universe in which Death and Santa were twins separated at birth, and Santa's home life turned out to be far more complicated than we thought. Metaphysical hijinks ensued when Death tricked Santa into endorsing products that don't quite exist.
Santa featured ensemble members Jeff Marchant as SANTA; Leo Daedalus (host of The Late Now) as DEATH; alto Carla Grant in a singing role as WOMAN; Alex Reagan as the CROWD; and introducing Delilah Scanlon (age 9 1/2) as CHILD. Sumi Wu (Imago) designs costume; Ben Purdy (defunkt, NWCT) ceates a dimensional video landscape as the set; and Rory Breshears (Rocky Horror Show) designs lighting.
John Berendzen directed and composed the music.
To produce Santa, Liminal was awarded a Winter Residency at The Backdoor Theatre, the home of their friends at defunkt theatre.
Press
Portland Mercury, December 17, 2014
Willamette Week, December 10, 2014
Five Useless Degrees Blog, December 11, 2014
Oregon Arts Watch, December 4, 2014
Portland Theatre Scene Blog, December 3, 2014
Southeast Examiner, December 1, 2014
The Oregonian, November 25, 2014