Conceived by Kevin Augustine
Written and Directed by Kevin Augustine and Edward Einhorn
Produced by La MaMa in association with Lone Wolf Tribe
Nominations: Kevin Augustine and Edward Einhorn are nominated for Outstanding Director; The God Projekt is nominated for Outstanding Performance Art Production
Photos by Jim R. Moore
About this Production
The God Projekt is a raucous and darkly humorous minimal extravaganza on religion and secular morality that investigates the historical legacy of monotheism. God joins a cast of highly realistic, hand-carved puppets inspired by 18th century anatomical models and Old Testament animals to deliver a dynamic interpretation of a deep, contradictory, and ambiguous Almighty.
Kevin Augustine and Edward Einhorn discuss the creation of this innovative production that takes on the most epic concept of all, God.
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What attracted you to this project?
Kevin: The challenge was to tell an epic story - the secret history of God - in an intimate presentation. I based this production on my 2008 show, BRIDE- which had a 15 person cast and live band. The God Projekt, although drawing from themes and character relationships of BRIDE, became essentially a solo show.
Edward: I am drawn to large themes and ideas, and God is one of the biggest. I have a love of working with puppetry. And I was interested in working with Kevin.
What was your favorite part of working on this production?
Edward: I liked the challenge of writing towards a particular voice (Kevin's). I am nominated as co-director but honestly the writing/directing process was intertwined in that way. And finding the magic, that was a great directing challenge, and a fun one. This is the first time I have worked in partnership, and it was exciting to see what we could come up with together
Kevin: Charting the character's transformation from unaware to awake. It is good to write/direct/perform a person who goes on a journey and learns something from it in the end. I also liked this because the final point of this journey was quiet and contemplative and allowed for contact with the audience. I hoped that they would feel a bit of what the character was experiencing.
What was the most challenging part of working on this production?
Edward: This is the first time I have worked in partnership, as I mentioned above, and I am often working with my own theater company alone. Sometimes collaborations can be challenging, though ultimately rewarding.
Kevin: Getting the myriad technical puppetry effects to work. Also- working for 2.5 hours in a heavy silicone mask. Lot's of sweat. I was concerned that working without a mic would prevent me from being heard/understood as the mask slightly distorts the projection of speech. Luckily, the voice came and elocution didn't become an issue.
What was the most memorable part of this experience for you?
Kevin: It took experimenting during every performance to finally get the effect of a bleeding video camera to fully work (on our last show). We had a true nightmare of a dress run - which lasted over 3 hours resulting in warping the floor surface of our set (deluge of water instead of blood emitting from the camera).
Edward: I've never co-written, co-directed, and even co-performed a piece, so that felt noteworthy for me. Watching Kevin transform once he was under his mask was always an awesome experience, in the original sense of the word. It really felt like he became an old man before my eyes.
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