Walker Art Center Opens 2019–2020 Performing Arts Season with Nature Theater of Oklahoma And EN-KNAP Group: Pursuit of Happiness
“It would be a shame to reveal how this bizarre, painful, hilarious, almost two-hour horror comedy ends. Along the way, Pursuit of Happiness generates an orgy of images, memories and emotions in the heart and mind of the viewer.” —De Theaterkrant
Pursuit of Happiness. Photo: Andrej Lamut
The notoriously inventive New York–based performance enterprise Nature Theater of Oklahoma, led by co-creators Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, returns with the Slovenian dance company EN-KNAP Group to interrogate the meaning behind the Declaration of Independence’s “pursuit of happiness” as an “unalienable right.” Think spaghetti western with an Austrian sales rep, a trip to Baghdad, and some unsettlingly happy cowboy dances added into the mix. Physical comedy and artistic parody, hypermasculinity and military might, declamatory speeches and whiskey-soaked sexuality: this theatrical adventure comments on Western tropes with poignancy, critique, insight, and hilarity. “One of the wildest things you’ll see at the theater this year” (New York Times).
Pursuit of Happiness takes place Friday, September 13 and Saturday September 14 at 8pm in the Walker’s McGuire Theater. Tickets are $28 ($22.40 for Walker members).
Program length: 100 minutes. Find Out More:
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ABOUT NATURE THEATER
Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an OBIE award-winning New York art and performance group under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. No two projects are formally the same, but the work is full of humor, earnestness, and rigor. The audience plays an essential role–whether as spectators or as participants in the work. Using readymade material, found space, gifted properties, cosmic accident, extreme formal manipulation and hard work, Nature Theater of Oklahoma makes art to affect a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live.
Nature Theater of Oklahoma returns to the Walker this year since opening the 2013–2014 Performing Arts season with Life and Times: Episode 1.
Read review in the New York Times
Read The Guardian on Nature Theater of Oklahoma
ABOUT EN-KNAP GROUP
EnKnapGroup, led by its founder, the internationally renowned choreographer and dancer Iztok Kovac, is the only permanent contemporary dance company in Slovenia. Since 2009, this ensemble of remarkable dancers has been based at the Spanski Borci Cultural Center in the Ljubljana-Moste neighborhood. Since its establishment ten years ago, EnKnapGroup has worked with over 30 Slovene and international choreographers and theater directors of diverse backgrounds, and created a repertoire of 25 full-evening stage works and dance film. In addition to making over 50 domestic appearances per year, the company regularly tours internationally.