“Explosive youthful energy…sheer intelligence…sense of history…radical theatricalvision…the TEAM are not afraid to invoke the values and ideas that make the liberal dream of America worth fighting for: and it’s that willingness to express idealism and hope, as well as cynicism and despair, that gives their work its special richness, and its political edge…the current American crisis has driven the TEAM to new heights of controlled madness.”
– The Scotsman
“For anyone who has had it up to their Fox-scarred eyeballs with faith-based politics…Director Rachel Chavkin has a prescription…Particularly in the Heartland wants you to love thy frickin’ neighbor… the spirited TEAM soon explodes into the unexpected: They create people real enough to sustain an in-character audience Q&A and compassionate enough to infect a blasé public with their openheart- edness. Simultaneously intelligent, rueful, celebratory, delightful and devastatingly sad,the show actually lives up to its ambitions. If after Heartland we can’t put the “us” back in “U.S.,” we’ll no longer have Kansas to blame.”
“Particularly in the Heartland,” this weekend’s offering Ice Factory, Soho Think Tank’s annual summer festival, makes a particularly strong case for the virtues and rewards of new theater. Created and performed by the shockingly talented ensemble, the TEAM, winners of the 2005 Fringe First Awards in Edinburgh, the piece is unconventional drama at its very best.
—Iris Brooks, The New York Sun, July 21, 2006, full article
TEAM stands for Theater of the Emerging American Moment. Using a company-created collage of media, texts, original writing, song and movement, the TEAM explores, sends up and celebrates the American experience. The company doesn’t bash; it pokes and explores. In “Architecting” it pokes at race and reconstruction, legacy and loss.
—Gwen Orel, The New York Times, January 7, 2009, full article
Well, okay, all of us got 5 stars from the Scotsman, which is the paper that awards the Fringe First – but NOT all of us did the morn hike.
The seat was beautiful, but I think far more excting was the 5-star review from Joyce McMillan, the head reviewer for the Scotsman. She has given us wonderful 4-star reviews in the past – and all the reviews here frankly are hugely erudite criticism of the work itself (vs. say, how sexy a movie actress looks onstage) and are generally always gratifying in some way – but to receive a 5-star was extraordinarily meaningful. I got handed an EARLY edition of the paper at 2am in the Trav bar Sunday night, and my head nearly exploded.
In general reviews have been beautiful, tho often with less stars. A quote from the METRO today (4-stars): “Architecting is bewildering, relentless and hugely relevant…It’s a stunning effort from a company totally at ease documenting America.”
Check out the TEAM’s first feature of the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe: a beautiful interview between Artistic Director Rachel Chavkin, Performer Frank Boyd, and Associate Director Davey Anderson.
Fringe favourites The TEAM return to Edinburgh with a reimagining of Margaret Mitchell’s iconic Southern drama. Kirstin Innes caught up with them to discuss everything from Barack Obama to Scarlett O’Hara.
Picture the scene. A run-down little bar in post-Katrina New Orleans. Just like every night, the usual drunks and barflies hanging around: a passionate Southern nationalist; a faded beauty queen; a bitter Hollywood screenwriter; Henry Adams, the 19th century political thinker and historian; Margaret Mitchell, author of Gone with the Wind. Oh, and two venture capitalists called Rhett Butler and Scarlett O’Hara, making a fast buck off the rebuilding of a city . . .
Architecting is layered, onion skin-like, with literary and political references to Margaret Mitchell’s epic novel Gone With the Wind and therefore to the American Civil War and the period of Reconstruction that followed the conflict. It explores themes of nation building and feminism, as well as introducing characters such as a contemporary anarchist architect and a Presidential grandchild.
—Jackie McGlone, The Scotsman, July 31, 2008, full article
For anyone who has had it up to their Fox-scarred eyeballs with faith-based politics…Director Rachel Chavkin has a prescription…Particularly in the Heartland wants you to love thy frickin’ neighbor…the spirited TEAM soon explodes into the unexpected: They create people real enough to sustain an in-character audience Q&A and compassionate enough to infect a blase public with their openheartedness. Simultaneously intelligent, rueful, celebratory, delightful and devastatingly sad, the show actually lives up to its ambitions. If after Heartland we can’t put the “us” back in “U.S.,” we’ll no longer have Kansas to blame.
Explosive youthful energy…sheer intelligence…sense of history…radical theatrical vision…the TEAM are not afraid to invoke the values and ideas that make the liberal dream of America worth fighting for: and it’s that willingness to express idealism and hope, as well as cynicism and despair, that gives their work its special richness, and its political edge…the current American crisis has driven the TEAM to new heights of controlled madness.
— Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman, August 11, 2006, full article
