Photo by Aaron Baker
Don't be mislead, the Antidepressant Festival is not a cry for help—but what’s going on here? Are these plays or psychiatric sessions? You can be the judge by taking in one, or many, of the 17 shows presented by the Brick Theater as part of the fifth Antidepressant Festival running from June 5 to July 4.
The Brick’s first Summer Theme Festival Series started out with The Hell Festival in 2004 and has continued ever since with winning topics like moral values, pretension and selling out. Other plays from the theater have gone on to win awards (like The Bouffon Glass Menajoree, which won the 2007 New York Innovative Theatre Award) and tour internationally. Each year their festivals have offered up plays and interactive experiences not found in your average New York summer event.The Brick Theater is known for its clever, funny and current-event-related productions.This year should be no different.
“We wanted to talk about the recession without being obvious about it,” says Michael Gardner, a founder of the theater. “Plays about instant happiness, fake happiness and the pharmaceutical industry immediately came to mind.”
Speaking of pharmaceuticals, if plays were pills would there be a limit? I think not. Prescribed for your pleasure are: Your Lithopedion, about the founder of Serial Killers Anonymous; Le Mirage, self help from the Order of the Solar Temple; Infectious Opportunity, have you ever pretended to have an infectious disease; Exit, Pursued by Bears, about an online anonymous furry sex community and many more tantalizing and twisted sounding productions. Also, returning this year to the theater is Gyda Arber’s hopelessly fun Suspicious Package, an interactive play where you are the star, the streets of Williamsburg are your stage and your director comes in the form of an mp3 player.This year Arber is prescribing the play to you, giving the audience Suspicious Package: Rx, where happy pills are part of the adventure.
While Gardner says the festival is a good way to “focus our summer binge drinking,” he also mentioned the kind of vigor a series like this generates.
“It’s a hotbed of creative energy and a great way to meet other theater makers,” he says. “The company gets larger every year.The summer theme festival is kind of the lynchpin of the whole affair. It’s not unusual to find someone directing one show, acting in another, running box for a fourth and sewing costumes for the fifth.”
Overall it looks to be a raucous good time. And how could it not with productions involving evil wizards and an octopus cult (Adventure Quest), sock puppets and the apocalypse (Afternoon Playland), and Booze, Sports and Romance. As the seven Brick Theater staff members and their volunteers get ready to medicate, choose your plays wisely and responsibly.
“Theater itself is a happy pill,” says Gardner. “And we like to prescribe it in large doses.”
> Antidepressant Festival
June 5 through July 4, the Brick Theater, 575 Metropolitan Ave. (betw. Union Ave. & Lorimer St.), Brooklyn, 718-907-6189, www.bricktheater.com; times vary, $15.
