Geppetto Complex

Geppetto Complex
by Impossible Bottle

Part of chashama's Summer Performance Series!

chashama 210 Art Space
210 East 43rd Street
New York, NY
(between 2nd and 3rd Ave)

Showtime: July 31, 2013 at 8pm
A one night only staged reading!

Tickets: FREE, must rsvp@impossiblebottle.org

Gepetto Complex looks at why and how humans continuously attempt to define themselves, delving into the murky lines we draw between human and not human, hanging out in uncomfortable spaces of hybridity.

Doctor James Moran and Doctor Annette Lee are the world’s leaders in biosynthetics – the creation of synthetic human beings from biological matter. Each is also engaged in a private project. Doctor Lee has designed a synth husband, Marcus, whom she has secretly altered to allow her to create a synth/human hybrid child from their joint DNA. Dr. Moran has been trying to replicate his badly brain-damaged son. His most recent attempt, Wilf, is physically identical to his son, but something about Wilf is definitely ‘off’. Moran keeps his first attempt to recreate his son – an Ape onto whom he tried to ‘graft’ his son’s mind and personality - locked in a cage in an unused part of the lab. The Ape bides his time, helping two worker-synths gain self-awareness, while a lost neuron fires in the dark. As the lines between human and not-human blur and the walls between prisons, laboratories, and homes erode the action spirals toward the brink of chaos.

The story of Pinocchio – the quintessential discovery of how to become human – forms a motif throughout the play as the human characters struggle with the implicit threat to their “humanity” that the non-humans pose, and the non-humans struggle to figure out what “human” is and whether to strive to become one or reject it for something else.

The Impossible Bottle Theatre Company is a fiercely collaborative ensemble that sifts through the cultural sediment of our time. We construct our plays through a continually revised process grounded in research, structured improv, free form writing, and moxie. By weaving together our varied perspectives, we create textured worlds that illuminate the weirdness of our own. (www.impossiblebottle.org)

Geppetto Complex is a collaborative project created by Stephanie Vella (director/writer), Julia Holleman (head writer/actor), Jeff Whitted (producer), Devin Kain (writer/actor/ designer), and the writer/actors Will Manning, Emma Myers, Jonathan Payne, Darius Stone, and Peter Stray.