Tag Archives: Know Theatre of Cincinnati

What would you take out of a world on fire?
BANKERS
By Brant Russell
April 21 – May 14, 2023

For deposit: one landmine, never used.

Things aren’t great in Bialystock – for one thing, the world’s ended, and its residents are pretty sure it’s the only town left. Then it gets worse: strangers arrive, tensions rise, and a battle for the unparalleled resources the town protects seems inevitable. Faced with the destruction of all they hold dear, the people of Bialystock must decide what’s worth saving in the apocalypse … and in the world that comes after. 

Know Theatre of Cincinnati‘s 25th Anniversary Season closes with a darkly funny and explosive world premiere by College-Conservatory of Music’s chair of Acting Brant Russell and directed by the Know’s Producing Artistic Director Andrew J. Hungerford.

Bankers is a home-grown world premiere, which first hit the stage as a developmental reading in the 2019 Cincinnati Fringe Festival. Andrew was immediately inspired by how Bankers used a futuristic, post-apocalyptic world to wrestle with immediate, real-world questions about environmental justice, community care, and how we come together in times of crisis. Andrew knew this show deserved a wider audience on the Know MainStage.

Brant’s work has been a fixture at the Know for years. He appeared onstage as the Sheriff in Whisper House (2018), and directed The Hunchback of Seville (2015), Darkest Night at the Gnarly Stump (2016), The Man-Beast (2018), Theatre: A Love Story (2021) and Dickless (2021). Now, Cincinnati audiences can experience his singular wit and piercing insight as playwright of our latest world-premiere adventure. 

Why Bankers, right now?

Bankers is all about what we do when the chips are down on a societal level. It’s about how we take care of ourselves, our community, and our world at large when we realize we’re living in a world that’s changed beyond recognition. 

It’s about finding the empowerment to take steps to build something greater than what came before, instead of giving into despair.

It’s about how we deal with what’s been broken beyond repair, and how we come together to find a way to mend it anyway.

Who is this show for?

Bankers is for lovers of sci-fi, speculative fiction, and post-apocalyptic stories.

It’s for fighters for environmental justice.

It’s for anyone who’s ever grappled with moral questions about what we owe each other on a communal or a global scale. It’s for anyone who’s realized that the world can’t be mended by one person – and who’s decided to keep doing the work anyway.

It’s for anyone who’s had the urge to give apathy a strong poke in the eye.

It’s for you.

Here’s our team for the apocalypse:

We’re delighted to welcome two friends of the Know to their MainStage acting debut: Aisha Josiah, the playwright of this season’s Dickless, joins the cast of Bankers to play Surrey, whose family has protected the land of Bialystock for generations, and k. Jenny Jones, intimacy director and fight choreographer extraordinaire, takes on the role of Sharon, who’s driven to distraction from grieving the family she lost at the end of the world.

Returning to the Know MainStage for the second time is Jim Hopkins, who previously appeared in 2018’s The Man-Beast, to play the Old Man, whose unexpected arrival in Bialystock may not be the happy accident he’s claiming. His traveling companion, the Migrant, is played by Eileen Earnest, who’s appeared on our MainStage in Beertown (2016), The Fisherman’s Wife (2016) and Mercury (2019).

Rounding out the cast are James Creque as Hunter, Bialystock’s one-man security detail; Know audiences will remember James from Hearts Like Fists (2015), The Fisherman’s Wife (2016), Mercury (2019), All’s Faire (2021), and The Twunny Fo’ (2022), and Ben Dudley as Herbie, for whom the battle for Bialystock’s resources becomes fiercely personal. Ben’s previous Know appearances include All Childish Things (2015) and Puffs (2019).

Bankers opens April 21 and runs through May 14. Tickets are available on our website, knowtheatre.com, or by calling our box office at 513-300-5669.

CAST

• James Creque as Hunter
• Ben Dudley as Herbie
• Eileen Earnest as the Migrant
• Jim Hopkins* as the Old Man
• Jenny Jones* as Sharon
• Aisha Josiah as Surrey

* Appearing Courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association, the Union of Professional Actors and Stage Managers in the United States, appearing under a Special Appearance Contract. 

PRODUCTION TEAM

• Director, Lighting & Scenic Designer: Andrew J. Hungerford
• Costume Designer: Noelle Wedig-Johnston
• Sound Designer: Douglas J. Borntrager
• Props Designer: Danielle Robison
• Technical Director: Jim Stark
• Stage Manager: Grace Wohlschlegel 

AT A GLANCE

Production: Bankers, by Brant Russell

Dates: April 21 – May 14, 2023. Wednesday – Saturday shows are at 8 PM; Sunday matinees are at 3 PM. 

Where: Know Theatre, 1120 Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine.
Livestreaming on select dates beginning April 26. 

Themes: tragi-comedy · dystopia · environmental justice · apocalypse 

Tickets: The standard ticket price is $25. Audiences may opt to support the Know’s initiative to pay all artists and employees a living wage by selecting the $40 Living Wage Ticket.

Low-cost admission available for $15. On Wednesdays, as part of a program we call “The Welcome Experiment,” tickets are $5 in advance, or FREE at the door.

Know Theatre is Cincinnati’s Theatrical Playground. The Know showcases unexpected voices, new works, and plays that embrace the inherent theatricality of the live experience. Know Theatre seeks to be a place where artists and audiences feel welcome to take artistic risks, creating work that is cutting edge and accessible. 

Know Theatre’s work is made possible, in part, by the generosity of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign.  

The Ohio Arts Council helps fund Know Theatre with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. 

Know Theatre is also supported by The Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation, helping to change our communities for the better through collaboration and innovation, and the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which provides a simple, powerful, and highly personal approach to giving.

 Know Theatre is a member of Theatre Communications Group and an Associate Member of the National New Play Network.

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“Absolute Cleanliness is next to Godliness!”

All-One!: The Doctor Bronner’s Play
by Beth Hyland
March 10 – 26, 2023

An irreverent pageant about life’s brightest lights and deepest darkness –
told through the life of the world’s most famous soap maker.

Small minds decay! Average minds delay! Great minds teach All-One today!

A riotous celebration of life’s darkness and light, inspired by the only soap that’s ever made you want to read the label, top-to-bottom. Cincy Fringe favorites Erika Kate MacDonald and Paul Strickland team up to lead this one-of-a-kind (extremely unauthorized by the Dr. Bronner’s corporation) theatrical experience. 

All-One!, the fifth production of our 25th Anniversary season, is a circus-slash-bathtime extravaganza inspired by the stranger-than-fiction life of “Doctor” Emmanuel Bronner, who escaped Nazi persecution in Germany and built a soap empire to lift his family out of poverty – and to spread his self-created “All-One” religion, teach his “Moral ABCs,” and to save “Spaceship Earth.”

Every production of All-One! features all-new original material devised by the cast as they explore the various uses of Dr. Bronner’s famous 18-in-1 soap, which means that this production will be unique from its previous or any future productions – this is your singular chance to see this script performed.

Local theatre artist (and frequent Cincinnati Fringe Festival performer) Erika Kate MacDonald joins the Know to direct All-One!. Her 2016 Cincy Fringe solo show Ice Candle won the Critics’ Pick of the Fringe; she’s appeared in multiple Cincy Fringes since either alone or alongside fellow Fringe favorite Paul Strickland. Paul joins Erika once again for All-One! as composer and music director of the show.

To tackle a story this big, we’ll need to break out every trick in our bag. In All-One!, get ready for original songs, showtunes, dance, storytelling, a water ballet performed in a kiddie pool, and a musical combination featuring guitar, mellophone, accordion, and castanets.

Why All-One!, right now?

“This show feels essential to the present moment. It’s about celebrating and delighting in difference, about choosing to come together not split apart, about radical impossible love in the face of appalling human actions.

It’s a show that focuses on absurdity and wonder and passion, and also mundanity… and insists on making room for everyone.

My hope is that initially any audience member will see themselves easily in some cast members and not at all in others. But this show will be so undeniably fun and wacky and intimate that by the end audiences will fall in love with the whole cast and thereby with the whole world! That’s got to help, right?”

– Erika Kate MacDonald, Director of All-One!

Who is this show for?

All-One! is for anyone who’s weathered life’s storms and understands that after the darkness, we are still alive and ready to create joy. It’s for anyone who feels like they’ve walked the fine line – sometimes the perforated line – between genius and madness.

It’s for anyone who’s ever dreamed of a meteoric rise to fame, and wondered what they’d have to give up along the way.

It’s for anyone who’s hungry for a wacky celebration of our shared humanity, and who’s ready to tap into the creative spirit to remind ourselves why we’re alive.

It’s for you.

Let’s get clean! Here’s who’ll be lathering up alongside you:

We’re welcoming back some familiar faces to the Know MainStage for All-One! Elizabeth Chinn Molloy rejoins the Know after previous appearances in SuperTrue (2018), Mercury (2019), In The Night Time (before the sun rises) (2020) and Theatre: A Love Story (2021).

Hot off their successes as stars of last autumn’s superhero musical Lizard Boy, Ian Timothy Forsgren and Erin McCamley (who also music directed Lizard Boy and 2016’s Girlfriend) return to the Know for All-One!

We’re also welcoming some fresh faces to the Know for this production! R. DeAndré Smith, L. Lucía Duque, and Willemien Patterson make their Know MainStage debuts with All-One! DeAndré frequently appears with Children’s Theatre of Cincinnati and Cincinnati Landmark Productions, while Willemien is a founding member of Performance Gallery, the Cincinnati Fringe Festival’s most-enduring group of artists. Lucía is a graduate student and instructor at University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and has performed all over the world.

All-One! opens March 10 and runs through March 26. Tickets are available on our website, knowtheatre.com, or by calling our box office at 513-300-5669.

CAST

• Lucía Duque
• Ian Timothy Forsgren
• Erin McCamley
• Elizabeth Chinn Molloy
• Willemien Patterson
• Deandre Smith 

PRODUCTION TEAM

• Director: Erika Kate MacDonald
• Lighting & Scenic Designer: Andrew J. Hungerford
• Costume Designer: Noelle Wedig-Johnston
• Sound & Projections Designer: Douglas J. Borntrager
• Props Designer: Danielle Robison
• Music Director: Paul Strickland
• Dramaturg: Liz Carman
• Technical Director: Jim Stark
  Stage Manager: Grace Wohlschlegel 

AT A GLANCE

Production: All-One!: The Doctor Bronner’s Play, by Beth Hyland

Dates: March 10 – 27, 2023. Wednesday – Saturday shows are at 8 PM; Sunday matinees are at 3 PM. 

Where: Know Theatre, 1120 Jackson Street in Over-the-Rhine.
Livestreaming on select dates TBA.

Themes: mental health · history · performance art · genius/madness 

Tickets: The standard ticket price is $25. Audiences may opt to support the Know’s initiative to pay all artists and employees a living wage by selecting the $40 Living Wage Ticket.

Low-cost admission available for $15. On Wednesdays, as part of a program we call “The Welcome Experiment,” tickets are $5 in advance, or FREE at the door. 

Know Theatre is Cincinnati’s Theatrical Playground. The Know showcases unexpected voices, new works, and plays that embrace the inherent theatricality of the live experience. Know Theatre seeks to be a place where artists and audiences feel welcome to take artistic risks, creating work that is cutting edge and accessible. 

Know Theatre’s work is made possible, in part, by the generosity of community contributions to the ArtsWave Campaign.  

The Ohio Arts Council helps fund Know Theatre with state tax dollars to encourage economic growth, educational excellence, and cultural enrichment for all Ohioans. 

Know Theatre is also supported by The Carol Ann & Ralph V. Haile, Jr. Foundation, helping to change our communities for the better through collaboration and innovation, and the Greater Cincinnati Foundation, which provides a simple, powerful, and highly personal approach to giving.

 Know Theatre is a member of Theatre Communications Group and an Associate Member of the National New Play Network.

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