Neo-Futurists

The Neo-Futurists are an experimental theater troupe founded by Greg Allen (an alum of the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center) in 1988, based on an aesthetics of honesty, speed and brevity. Neo-Futurists in theatre were inspired by the Italian Futurist movement from the early 20th century.

The Neo-Futurist architects, designers and artists believe in eco-sustainable cities cross-pollinated by arts and technology to provide a better quality of life; the definition of Neo-Futurism in art and architecture came from the reference to the United Nations’ report Our Common Future.

The Neo-Futurist aesthetic demands that everything that transpires in their theater be non-illusory, which is to say that they pretend nothing; actors only play themselves. All plays take place on a stage, specifically, the stage on which they are performed, in the present. If one of the performers reports that something has happened, you can bet that it really happened. Much of their work contains the possibility of failure, a unique theatrical component that keeps them and the audience honest. Their plays are wildly eclectic, touching on all genres and tones; plays may be political, satirical, personal, tragic, comic, abstract, musical, surreal, poetic, and so on.

The bottom line is that Neo-Futurism does not buy into the "suspension of disbelief"—it does not attempt to take the audience anywhere else at any other time with any other people. The idea is to deal with what is going on right here and now.

The Neo-Futurists began with the show Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind: 30 Plays in 60 Minutes, often abbreviated as TMLMTBGB (though many refer to it simply as TML). For the first few years, the Neo-Futurist movement consisted entirely of TMLMTBGB, but then expanded to include "prime time productions." These productions began late evening, as opposed to TMLMTBGB's late-night starting time (11:30 in Chicago, 10:30 in New York).

The Neo-Futurists have published three books of plays from TMLMTBGB - two books of regular plays, and one of plays that use only one actor. They've also released one CD recording of plays from Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind, one video, and a recording of Jokes and their Relation to the Unconscious, a play described as an attempt to destroy comedy by analyzing it to death.

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