The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy
Sinking Ship Productions &
Theater in Quarantine
a live and in-person digital theater performance
photo illustration: Josh Luxenberg
The Obie Award-winning digital theater laboratory Theater in Quarantine and acclaimed physical theater company Sinking Ship Productions team up to bring their digital live-streamed hit The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy to the in-person stage for the first time. This hysterical yet poignant sci-fi comedy broke new ground in the nascent medium, earning a New York Times Critics pick from Jesse Greene. New York Magazine’s Helen Shaw lauded the production as “a truly impossible, impressive piece of quarantine theater.”
When space captain Egon Tichy’s ship gets hit by a chunk of interstellar detritus, he’s sent careening into a minefield of time vortexes. This slapstick adventure melds cutting-edge digital theater with live performance, improbably trapping performer Joshua William Gelb amidst an exponentially expanding cast of one.
SCHEDULE
Saturday, January 13 @ 5:00 pm
Sunday, January 14 @ 1:00 pm
Run time: 40 minutes
CREDITS
Co-Creators
Jonathan Levin, Director
Joshua Luxenberg, Playwright
Joshua William Gelb, Performer
Set & Costume Design: Peiyi Wong
Sound Design: M. Florian Staab
Video Design: Jesse Garrison
End Credits Music performed by: Emily Hope Price
Based on The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
The creative collaboration between Jonathan Levin and Josh Luxenberg, Sinking Ship Productions creates original physical, visual theater that asks “What does it mean to be a human in this world?” The work, like the answer to that simple question, is complex, absurd, existential, ephemeral, surreal, surprising, funny, poetic, and strange, grounded in emotional storytelling, the tactile familiarity of objects, and futile humor of being alive. Sinking Ship works with a core group of Associate Artists, combining physical theater, puppetry, music and movement. Productions have grappled with concepts such as the creation and destruction of the universe as imagined by science fiction writers, how a man’s search for connection could ultimately lead to complete isolation, and the limits of human understanding through the search for extra dimensions of space in theoretical physics. Founded in 2008, Sinking Ship’s original works include Cassandra, an Agony, a modern telling of the myth of Cassandra (commissioned by the Getty Museum in L.A.), A Hunger Artist, based on the story by Franz Kafka (premiere at Connelly Theater, 2017, ominated for Drama Desk Awards; UK premiere at Edinburgh Fringe, 2017), Powerhouse, about the idiosyncratic composer Raymond Scott (New Ohio Theatre, O’Neill Playwrights Conference Finalist; New York Times Critic’s Pick), there will come soft rains, a triptych of science fiction stories (FringeNYC, extended at Barrow Street Theater, 2008).
Theater in Quarantine is an Obie and Drama League Award-winning performance laboratory dedicated to the exploration of the live theatrical experience in the digital space. Established in response to the pandemic by director, performer, and creative technologist Joshua William Gelb, TiQ has live-streamed dozens of visually distinctive, original works to its YouTube channel, performed out of a closet in the East Village measuring only 8 sq feet. Hailed as one of the most imaginative makers of digital performance, TiQ has been featured on NPR’s All Things Considered, Japan’s NHK Television, has been profiled in The New Yorker, The New York Times, been a four-time Times Critic’s Pick as well as one of Vulture’s “Top 10 Best Theater Moments of 2020” and the Times’ “Best Theater of 2021.” TiQ’s full archive can be found and streamed anytime on their YouTube channel at youtube.com/theaterinquarantine.