The Michigan Daily I michigandaily.com I Thursday, September 16, 2010 Trou e THE NEW ENSEMBLE HITS THE ANN ARBOR THEATER SCENE WITH AN UNPRECEDENTED STYLE OF COLLABORATION ail sWie weekend essentials Sept. 16 to Sept. 19 ON STAGE The Second City is coming to our very own city! Be sure not to miss the improv comedy troupe that gave Tina Fey, Bill Mur- ray, Mike Myers, John Belushi and like a zillion more of your favorite funny people their start in its only Ann Arbor weekend in a tour that will span until December 2011. The Second City's "Fair & Unbalanced" show will go on at The Ark this Friday and Saturday at 8 p.m. (doors at 7:30). Tickets are $25 online. AT UMMA This Saturday, take a tour of the University of Michigan Museum of Art. "The Collector's Eye," one of the tours created for the Univer- sity theme semester "What Makes Life Worth Living?," takes visitors through the galleries and focuses on the donors who made UMMA's collec- tion what it is today. The hour-long tour starts at 1 p.m. Free. 0. or a fledgling local theater company aiming to devel- op a rock star-esque fol- lowing, a concert version of a brilliant 20th-century anti-war play makes for he ultimate second production. The New Theatre Project's New Ensemble, a group of 20-something art- ists led by founder and Creative Direc- tor Keith Paul Medelis, certainly shares some traits with a rock band already. Experimentation and collaboration are key words for the group, as illus- trated by its edgy and inventive first production, this past summer's "The Spring Awakening Project," along with the scheduled plays for its first season, themed "Identity." And its members want to use those traits to win over a young audience. But not to be ignored is the members' contagious shared enthusiasm - verg- ing on radical artistic devotion - that powers their innovative project. TNTP originally planned its sec- ond production as a one-night, 16-per- son staged reading of Bertolt Brecht's groundbreaking 1941 anti-war play "Mother Courage and Her Children" in Ypsilanti's Frog Island Park. But the first-rate cast of leads had to withdraw three weeks before the Sept. 19 event because of scheduling con- flicts, causing a last-minute scramble. With the staged reading no longer a possibility, the New Ensemble took up a "wouldn't it be cool if" idea that had been languishing in the back of its mem- bers' minds. "Brecht as a rock concert in a club atmosphere," Medelis explained. The one-night "Mother Courage in Concert" on Sept. 19 will now take place with a full band and orchestra- tions in Main Street's Elmo's Hideaway. New Ensemble members Caleb Kruzel, an 18-year-old student at Washtenaw Technical Middle College, and Amanda Lyn Jungquist, a 21-year-old LSA senior at the University, wrote original music to go with the play's existing score. "Itwillbefun,but we'lljusthaveto hit this thing hard for a while," Jungquist said about the shift to a concert format. Eastern Michigan University associ- ate professor and local Brecht expert Dr. Pirooz Aghssa will conduct a pre-show discussion about the playwright, and the New Ensemble will read portions of the play throughout the performance to frame the songs. The production is list- ed on the United Nations International Day of Peace website, and Ann Arbor's 5th annual P.E.A.C.E. DAY on Sept. 19 on the Diag will feature selections from the production. The show, perhaps now more than before, keeps with the mission of TNTP, part of which is to reinvent old work for a new audience and part of which is to present work that was revolutionary when it premiered. "I want something you aren't going to forget about," 22-year-old Medelis told the Daily in his "office" - Cafe Verde in the People's Food Co-op. "A lot of the- ater is lukewarm, but this is not luke- The "awakening" of the New Ensemble "The Spring Awakening Project," the equally hot inaugural work inspired by Frank Wedekind's 1891 play "Spring Awakening," was entirely responsible for the TNTP's ascent into local theater stardom - but not before inspiring the group's creation. "The Spring Awakening Project" fol- lowed six characters in a unified plot to explore the transition between child- hood and adulthood with topics such as sex, homosexuality, social pressure and suicide. The play drew attention and acclaim this summer. Medelis was an apprentice at Ann Arbor's Performance Network theater and a recent graduate of Albion Col.- lege when he began to develop the play last winter. He ventured to start TNTP because of the success of "The Spring Awakening Project" and the cast with which he was working. But it was where the content origi- nated as much as the content itself that boosted interest in TNTP. The innova- tive six-month development process created for the play by Medelis and the cast has become widely admired in the Ann Arbor theater scene. In January, Medelis got permission to produce his own adaptation of "Spring Awakening" - distinguished from the 2006 Broadway rock musical of the same name - in the Performance Network's PHOTOS BY MARISSA MCCLAIN See TNTP, Page 2B ESIGN SY ANNA LEIN-Z ELINSKI J :I UJ FILM Last year, Joaquin Phoenix made head- lines for apparently losing his shit. The documentary(?) "I'm Still Here," opening this Friday at the State Theater, chronicles the "Walk the Line" star's downward spiral into drugs and depression, the usual. The question mark signifies the film's intentions - the film is purported to be an elaborate prank. Real or not, it'll be entertaining as hell to watch Phoe- nix's crackpot antics. BURLESQUE In the mood for something exciting this weekend, but don't know what? Tickled Fancy Bur- lesque Company is coming to the Blind Pig this Saturday at 9:30 p.m. Tickled Fancy is a 13-member group that's been on the scene since 2007 with a motley mix of clowns, tassels and liquid latex that'd be impossible to beat - if there were any competition, that is. Its $10 show promises to take on Hollywood.