Quantum Theatre to open the premiere by an American company of Mnemonic — Special Discounts for PTC Members

Quantum Theatre, known for its deep experimentation, including staging its productions in unique places that aren’t theatres, is the first American company to be entrusted with British company Complicite’s devised 1999 text, Mnemonic. The show won the London Drama Critics Award for Best Play, and its subsequent Off-Broadway run at John Jay College won numerous Drama Desk and Lortel Awards, including ‘most unique theatrical experience.’ Mnemonic helped put Simon McBurney, Complicite’s internationally renowned artistic leader, on the map as one of the greatest theatre artists of our age.

PTC Members get 20% off this event! Use  Coupon Code: PTC13

Coupon code is valid for any night except Opening Night. Order tickets online here  or call 412-362-1713

The show is an exploration of memory, telling parallel, seemingly unconnected stories: the brouhaha surrounding the discovery of an unidentified body in the Italian/Austrian Alps; and a woman’s quest through Eastern Europe in search of the father she never knew. We learn the story of that woman, Alice, through her boyfriend, Virgil, whom she’s abruptly left. Like him, we’re two steps behind her but trying to catch up… and suddenly brilliant Mnemonic connects the dots not only between these two, and between Alice and her missing father, but keeps those dots going back, back, to Neolithic times in the greater human story, to this glacial corpse – a real person whose finding riveted the scientific community, and soon the world, in 1991. Because he wasn’t the Italian piano teacher who went missing in the 1940s, and he wasn’t a couple hundred years old as next surmised, he was 5,200 years old. 5200. And exactly as he was when, exhausted, he laid his head on a rock never to rise again.

Quantum does this iconic piece of theatre to some degree its own way, adding video designed by Joe Seamans to its production values, whose efforts contributed to Ainadamar and Maria de Buenos Aires recently. Now as in 1999, Mnemonic tells its story with the help of innovative production technology, cell phones featuring heavily in the characters’ attempts to connect, and voice overs providing the inner dialogue of the play’s globe-trotting cast. For Quantum, this cast is a physical, flexible, and diverse group of seven: Le Coq-trained British actor Malcolm Tulip as Virgil, our everyman guide, seen recently as John Gabriel Borkman; Carolina Loyola-Garcia as Alice, a multi-talented favorite from shows including The Red Shoes, Maria de Buenos Aires, and Ainadamar; Ken Bolden as Konrad Spindler, the Austrian scientist whose book “The Man in the Ice” inspired the play; and Andy Nagraj, Katya Stepanov, Patrick Jordan, and Antonio Marziale. The location is the Kirkwood Building in the heart of transforming East Liberty – neighbor of the coming Hotel Indigo. Quantum Artistic Director Karla Boos collaborates with designers Joe Pino (sound), Tony Ferrieri (set),Todd Brown (lighting), Albulena Borovci (costume), and Janet Madelle Feindel (dialect).

Special events in the run include: Community Night, for invited East Liberty residents on July 3; Post Show Discussion with cast on July 7; Ladies Night on July 10, a women’s-only viewing with a pre-show gathering; Grapenuts Night on July 12, which will include a special pre-show wine-tasting. For restaurant partnerships, parking information and more, visit www.quantumtheatre.com.

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