DEAD DREAM MACHINE on NY1

Everyone's favorite local channel has been running a feature plugging my latest theatrical endeavor, THE DEAD DREAM MACHINE!  

Time Warner Cable customers can watch the clip here.

This is the last weekend you can see THE DEAD DREAM MACHINE: get your tickets here, watch the trailer I made here, and get more information here!

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More praise for THE DEAD DREAM MACHINE!

More reviews are in!

New York Magazine names it a "Critics' Pick" and says: "In this very strange play, a mad scientist has built a machine that extracts dreams from a young woman’s brain. At the finale every night, a crew of alt-venue stars—drag queens, born-to-showbiz kids, burlesque artists— all join in on a goth performance of a Nick Cave tune."

Downtown Traveler says:  "New York City has no shortage of Halloween attractions...but if you are looking for more high-brow entertainment– with a decidedly anti-Wall Street bent– head to Brooklyn for Dead Dream Machine.  This off- off- off- Broadway show features a talented cast and scenes that range from hysterical to bizarre... a uniquely Brooklyn production that combines elements of burlesque, acrobatics, puppetry and bondage. ... so hysterical, offbeat and downright bizarre [some segments] played over and over in my mind throughout the weekend.  ...You’ll feel trendy just for attending this show."

Brooklyn Spaces says:  I was lucky enough to catch a press preview of ...the incredible Dead Dream Machine... and it RULES. Go!"

Courtesan Macabre says:  "I had the pleasure of trekking out to East Williamsburg (Bushwick) NY last night to experience the new production, The Dead Dream Machine... It was disturbing and made you squirm... [director Rachel Klein] mixes style and sensuality into her visual storytelling."

My Entertainment World says:  "Consistently entertaining. ...a series of both horrifying and comedic skits.  ...the ensemble of The Dead Dream Machine was remarkable.  ...I enjoyed living the nightmares produced by the The Dead Dream Machine."

There are still two more weekends to go– get your tickets here, watch the trailer I made here, and get more information here!

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Praise for THE DEAD DREAM MACHINE!

The reviews are in!

Flavorpill says: "The Dead Dream Machine is a thoroughly entertaining compendium of dark skits ranging from a teenage horror spoof to a hilariously foul-mouthed puppet show to gothic burlesque ballets and aerialists... [Sean Gill's] creepy projections on an old red velvet curtain complete the Silencio-scene-in-Mulholland-Drive vibe."

Time Out New York names it a "Good Odds" pick: "a boundary-dissolving horror show, which includes magic, puppetry, aerialism and live song and dance... the imaginative Rachel Klein directs and choreographs."

Black Book Magazine says: "The show stars various luminaries from the alternative stages of New York City... The whole shebang is directed and choreographed by the amazing Rachel Klein... this is amazing. You must go."

City Guide says:  "...this Brooklyn-based show pumps the horror genre through a mad-scientist’s dream-extracting device, spinning out musical numbers, a zombie dance, aerialists, puppetry and assorted luminaries from the City’s alternative stages – all profoundly nightmarish."

Broadway Spotted says: "... the best parts of old school horror movies [are] the comedy, and when Machine connected to that, it was gold... with Halloween coming up it is just the right kind of show to get you into the spooky spirit!"

There are still three more weekends to go– get your tickets here, watch the trailer I made here, and get more information here!  Our luminary guest shamans for this weekend include Mx Justin Vivian Bond (September 26th), Lady Rizo (September 27th), and Michael Musto (September 28th)!

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Further Praise for SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS

Photo by Michael Blase.
Graphic Design by Sean Gill.

A few more  press responses to SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS (a description of which can be found here):

Flavorpill says:  "[SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS] depicts two familiar worlds– the workplace and dreams– only this symphony in shadows is far more exhilarating and terrifying than the norm or even Freud... Klein's Sleeper and her pesky Shadows move gracefully through the realms of modern dance, burlesque, gymnastics, and Romantic-era ballet.  The erotic dreams may be too much for the delicate heroine, but they are stunning stage pictures that are a genuine and refreshing reality." 

The New York Theater Review says: "Rigorous and dangerous... I could fully relate to the experience of dreading sleep... the company of dancers, aerial acrobats, clowns, and contortionists take on many roles and costumes, each one more arresting than the last."


New York Nearsay says:  "Dive deep into the Bowery for this sexy, macabre performance... don't miss this one!" 
 
SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS runs for just one more weekend– more information is available here and tickets are available here.

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The Village Voice on SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS

Photo by Michael Blase.
Graphic Design by Sean Gill.

Some excerpts from the Village Voice review of SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS (a description of the show can be found here):


"A lively and fantastical depiction of how we hide from our own issues, pushing them down in our daily lives until they have no other choice but to come after us in the night...  one of Symphony's greatest strengths  is its ability to depict a setting that's no so much unlike ours, yet one that's just cloudy enough to play with the performance's levels of reality...  a charming commentary on the pressures we hide from every day in our world– and the ones we discover with our head on the pillow."


SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS runs for one more weekend– more information is available here and tickets are available here.

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More praise for SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS

Photo by Michael Blase.  Graphic Design by Sean Gill.

More reviews of SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS (a description of which can be found here):


Backstage says:  "The world that the dancers craft is visually sumptuous. Klein's staging fills the theater from floor to ceiling, and each of the fantasy sequences allows a different dancer to perform a virtuosic set piece in one of many worlds sensuously imagined..."


Courtesan Macabre says:  "The production is an extravaganza of ballet, aerialists, musicians, surreal costumes, acrobats, burlesque and dancers telling a dark, but beautiful story...The eerie violin concerto is a sensuous score to this seamless, elaborate production.  Creator Rachel Klein started with a concept of the horrors of sleep paralysis.  She worked with co-story writer Sean Gill on how to portray the different nightmares... If you are in NYC the next few weeks, definitely make the time to enjoy this show!"


Black Book Magazine says:  "Every so often these "I've seen it all” eyes see something that flabbergasts me...so mark this on your calendar, get a babysitter, empty the cookie jar, and if necessary kick the reluctant lover to the curb and attend the world premiere!"


SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS runs for two more weekends– more information is available here and tickets are available here.

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Praise for SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS

Photo by Michael Blase.  Graphic design by Sean Gill.

A few early press responses to SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS (a description of which can be found here):

Call Me Adam says:  "A show that will stay with me for years to come! One of the best performance pieces I have seen...The extremely talented cast of performers engulfed the audience with their artistry."

Theater for Nerds says: "Eye-catching and exciting, with a very wide range of performance styles... spider women will swing over the stage, ballerinas dance en pointe, and busty burlesque queens strut in skimpy outfits...  the cast (A whopping 25 of ‘em) is quite talented and athletic."

SYMPHONY OF SHADOWS runs for two more weekends– more information is available here and tickets are available here.

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Theater Review: NEVERMORE, AN EVENING WITH EDGAR ALLAN POE (2011, Stuart Gordon)

Stars: 5 of 5.
Running Time: 90 minutes.
Notable Cast or Crew: Jeffrey Combs (RE-ANIMATOR, THE FRIGHTENERS, CASTLE FREAK, THE BLACK CAT). Written by Dennis Paoli (BLEACHER BUMS, GHOULIES II, THE DENTIST). Directed by Stuart Gordon (ROBOT JOX, DOLLS, FROM BEYOND).

I was lucky enough this year to spend a portion of my Halloween in the mad, increasingly inebriated company of the Nineteenth Century's greatest poet and weaver of macabre tales, Edgar Allan Poe. Upon a candlelight-flicker'd stage at Lincoln Center, Jeffrey Combs performed a special New York engagement of his one-man show, NEVERMORE.

I'm a longtime fan of Mr. Combs (one of the more committed, versatile actors of modern genre cinema) as well as the rest of the creative team: the director is the great Stuart Gordon (Mamet crony, Lovecraft-adapter extraordinaire, and the man who brought ROBOT JOX into the world) and the playwright is Dennis Paoli (rarely has an accomplished dramatist also penned the best GHOULIES movie, which was 2, by the way). It is difficult to describe the sheer power of this show– its resonance, its poetic value, its sense of history– but I shall try.

A candle journeys from its first lighting to its natural end as a whispery nub of extinguished wick. In between, Edgar Allan Poe exists. Even an intimate familiarity with Combs' body of work cannot prepare you for his transformation. Sure, a prosthetic nose, a wig, and a well-tailored costume are employed, but Combs becomes Poe. Even actively looking for it, you can only see glimpses of Combs beneath his performance, a glint in his eye here, an off-handed remark there. Combs is so profoundly in the moment that a patron's cough, the New York milieu, or Halloween night itself might bring forth an unexpected reaction, a measured improvisation.

Combs imbues Poe with a singsongy drawl and much humorous pomposity, then enshrouds him in madness and submerges him in the haze of drink. He reads aloud "The Tell-Tale Heart" ("The Tell-Tale Heart"....perhaps you've heard of it...?," he smartassedly inquires) with a manic energy which brings alive the story's humor and derangement as never before. He physically stomps upon the carpet in an approximation of the story's terrible, persistent heartbeat, injecting a sense of rhythm to the piece that one usually only associates with Poe's poetry. He reads a line like "ALL IN VAIN, because Death in approaching him had stalked with his black shadow before him and enveloped the victim" with a wet malevolence that drips morbidly from every syllable.

Claiming the birthright of his actor parents to 'perform,' Combs' Poe lays siege to the stage against the better judgment of unseen handlers, stagehands, and the poetess Sarah Helen Whitman in the audience, whom Poe was courting at the time (in the wake of his wife's death). He rants against Longfellow, pokes at the Transcendentalists, and razzes Washington Irving. He brags at length about his career at West Point and his achievement of swimming the James River. But a bottle of Rye (at first swigged surreptitiously, then guzzled out in the open) causes the evening's events to grow increasingly and exponentially unhinged. "WHOOOOOOOOPS," he blurts as he gulps down the sauce again and again and again, promenading about the stage like an irrepressible beast. His ever-roaming, drunken tongue practically becomes a character in and of itself. He stumbles and staggers and teeters and falls; he earns our applause through the Herculean act of "standing up." He straddles a music stand like a horse, amuses himself by playing with a length of his ruffly shirt caught in a gap through his unbuttoned vest, battles the forces of gravity with great slapstick physicality, and shrugs it all off with a mad, wheezy cackle. There's an insane, boozy recitation of "The Bells," whereupon Combs hurls his arms about and boogies across the stage, flinging himself and suspenders alike with reckless abandon, ultimately whimpering in the aisle, wounded and bitter, but not quite broken. And for all the humor, there is a tremendous emotive core, perhaps best exemplified by the air of melancholy that results when a dried flower falls out from between pressed pages, a sudden and unexpected reminder of his dead wife. And I can't even begin to chronicle the profundity of Combs' reading of "The Raven," a reading which transports you face-to-face with the sullen, saggy-eyed countenance from the famous daguerreotype by which most of us know Poe's face.

NEVERMORE is a masterful work. Stuart Gordon's sure, even-handed direction is capable of handling all of Poe's heights and depths and tonal shifts; Dennis Paoli's script (with much assistance from Poe's prose and poetry) is in turns hilarious and heart-wrenching; and Jeffrey Combs' performance is a staggering portrait of a majestic poet and a gutter philosopher, a man whose mind and body tested themselves against the maelstrom for only forty short years. I'm not sure when this show will be performed again, but if it's ever in your power to see it, you must.

-Sean Gill

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DREAMS OF THE CLOCKMAKER a Time Out New York pick

DREAMS OF THE CLOCKMAKER is a "Good Odds" pick on Page 97 in this week's issue of Time Out New York, and they describe it as "a dystopian metatheatrical fantasia." This weekend marks the end of CLOCKMAKER's run, so see it now that you have the chance!

Info on the show:
It's a sweeping narrative which shepherds us from Dust Bowl occultism to a low-rent 80's magic show to troubling mystical visions of a dystopian future. Written & directed by Sean Gill and starring Jillaine Gill. It will run through this October at The Wild Project (195 E. 3rd St. between Avenues A & B) from October 17-30 with 7:00 p.m. shows on Sundays and Mondays, and 9:30 p.m. shows on Fridays and Saturdays. Tickets are available via Smarttix at smarttix.com ((212) 868-4444).

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More Praise for THE TRAGEDY OF MARIA MACABRE

The New York Theater Review says "the audience is arrested and seduced by a sequined circus of rigor morticized dancers and costume acrobatics," and of the my contributions: "music lovers will be excited about Sean Gill's sound design." Cultural Capitol writes "Of course it’s always better to watch someone else experience madness and murder than to experience it yourself, and that’s why we go to the theater! We play a game of 'what if' when we sit in the dark and watch as a little girl goes to Hell – literally. And that is why The Tragedy of Maria Macabre is so much fun." Of my sound design, they note: "The music, a blend of Philip Glass, Mozart, and the Tiger Lillies, is remixed by Sean Gill into a catchier, more upbeat version of Night on Bald Mountain." Nytheatre.com reports "We are truly hypnotized until the end, wondering where the storytellers are taking us and questioning if there ever is an ending to the menagerie of characters and situations." On my work, they proclaim: "Klein and collaborator Sean Gill put together a superb sampling of music to complete the dark and twisted world that Klein has created."

And check out the black carpet opening night of MACABRE, where you'll see yours truly hobnobbing with the rich and famous and heads of state and other dignified personages.

Four performances still remain– see the trailer and get the details HERE.

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The Huffington Post's Bess Rowen on DREAMS OF THE CLOCKMAKER

As part of a larger piece on the art of storytelling, Bess Rowen touches upon DREAMS OF THE CLOCKMAKER in this article from the Huffington Post. An excerpt:

"As Gill brings us into her world of mysterious vials and a masked character known as 'the clockmaker,' her words are what make the pictures clear and crisp. I see what she describes, my brain making the leap from aural to visual as I listen and watch her speak. conveying. ...There is something primitively human in listening and watching as a story unfolds, and if you are lucky enough to be in the presence of someone who is truly talented in this regard, allow yourself to imaginatively engage and enjoy the experience."

Read the whole story HERE. See the show– info HERE. (Only three more performances.)

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THE TRAGEDY OF MARIA MACABRE appearing March 2nd at Dixon Place!

For you New Yorkers, this Wednesday will mark the full-length theatrical premiere of Rachel Klein's THE TRAGEDY OF MARIA MACABRE, a morbid fantasia of movement and dance. Rachel conceived, directed, choreographed, and costumed the piece, and I helped co-write the scenario, did the sound design, and last year I made a short film adaptation. It also features original music from Borut Krzisnik (THE TULSE LUPER SUITCASES) and stage management by Marina Steinberg. It stars Abigail Hawk (CBS' BLUE BLOODS), Michael Porsche (LA ENFERMA), Elizabeth Stewart (AENIGMA), Preston Burger (GO-GO KILLERS!), Danielle Marie Fusco (STAGE BLOOD IS NEVER ENOUGH), Freddy Mancilla (GO-GO KILLERS!), Megan O'Connor (STAGE BLOOD IS NEVER ENOUGH), Brian Rubiano (GO-GO KILLERS!), and Eric Schmalenberger (THE VOLUPTUOUS HORROR OF KAREN BLACK).

The plot is as follows: Upon dying, Maria Macabre is not granted eternal slumber, but instead a whirling, kaleidoscopic carnival of horrors: a morbid funhouse where humanity is stripped away and a permanent place in the gruesome chorus line is all but assured. Flavorpill calls Rachel "a mistress of the macabre" and BeaconPass calls it "darkly glamorous" and proposes that "rarely do you get to witness someone else’s nightmares — and rarely are they so vivid." See also: Backstage Pass with Lia Chang, New York Cool, Time Out New York, and the Village Voice.

WHO: You.
WHAT: THE TRAGEDY OF MARIA MACABRE at Dixon Place.
WHEN: Wednesday, March 2nd at 7:30 P.M.
WHERE: Dixon Place- 161A Chrystie Street. Manhattan, NY.
HOW MUCH: 15 dollars.

Also, this Sunday, a few of my short plays are going up at the Bowery Poetry club as part of a residency- the information is available HERE.

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Broadway After Dark on PRINCES OF DARKNESS

Though the run is over, more reviews keep coming in. Broadway After Dark weighs in on the show HERE. Of yours truly, they say "Sean Gill's sound design is excellent."

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The Happiest Medium on PRINCES OF DARKNESS

Well, the run may be over, but praise for PRINCES OF DARKNESS continues: The Happiest Medium weighs in with thoughtful review, here. On the sound design of yours truly they say: "Before PRINCES OF DARKNESS (written and performed by Bill Connington) even begins, there’s an ambiance created by sound designer Sean Gill that does its best to set a tone of creepy nervousness. Resonating within the small theatre, which is completely draped in black cloth, is the kind of music reserved for the scenes in movies that have the most startling effect – a subtle drop of blood oozing down a table, a shadow crossing a deserted hallway. Let yourself get pulled too deeply into the sounds and you’ll find that you’ll jump when the seat behind you thuds down."

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J.B. Spins on PRINCES OF DARKNESS

J.B. Spins reviews PRINCES OF DARKNESS, a new play written, produced, and performed by Bill Connington and directed by Rachel Klein which I've done the sound design for- and you can read the full review here. Regarding yours truly, Spins says "the creepiest aspect of Darkness might be Sean Gill’s unsettling audio effects."

Four performances remain:
Wednesday, August 11th @ 9:00 pm
Thursday, August 12th @ 9:00 pm
Friday, August 13th @ 9:00 pm
Saturday, August 14th @ 7:00 pm

and tickets/other information can be found here.

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