Name This Show!
History Theatre is going to open the 2010-2011 season with the hilarious look at the outrageous life of Dudley Riggs – the fourth generation circus kid who grew up to found the Brave New Workshop (BNW). Written by BNW Artistic Director Caleb McEwen, BNW's current co-owner John Sweeney, and BNW alum Dane Stauffer, Dudley: Rigged for Laughter! has all of the sharp wit, tongue-in-cheek, fast-paced flair that has made the Brave New Workshop a staple of Minnesota and the national comedy scene for over 50 years.
This fantastic show about BNW founder Dudley Riggs already has a name: Dudley: Rigged for Laughter!
It’s a great name, but we’re challenging YOU to make it even GREATER!
In keeping with the spirit this show’s ties to the Brave New Workshop, we feel that Dudley: Rigged for Laughter! deserves a subtitle like so many BNW shows have.
Titles such as:
Brother Can You Spare A Dome, Or Cal Griffith And The Lord Taketh Away
Faith: The Final Frontier or Kicked in the Testaments
Les Follies Bourgeois Or Can The Middle Class Can-Can?
The Lion, the Witch, and the War Hero; or Is McCain Able?
Ma Bell Is A Phoney, Or If At First You Don't Succeed, Dial, Dial Again
Manger Crashers; or Three Wise Guys With a Pack of Camels
Minnesota Summer: It's Not the Heat, It's the Stupidity or Why Can't We All Just Get a Thong?
Spilling Me Softly; or Once the Gulf Goes Black, It Never Goes Back (BNW’s current show)
(There are far too many excellent titles to list them all here. For a complete list of the Brave New Workshop’s titles visit: http://www.bravenewworkshop.org/show-titles.php)
So here’s the deal:
• Send in your suggestion for a subtitle for Dudley: Rigged for Laughter!
• A winning entry will be chosen by a highly qualified* panel of experts**
• The winner will receive Four Tickets to the Opening Night of Dudley: Rigged for Laughter! (Saturday, October 2, 2010)
(Everyone who enters will receive a special token of thanks for participating – Yes, everyone’s a winner! But one of you will just be more of a winner than everyone else.)
Send your suggestion in BEFORE Monday, August 30.
Email to: pr@historytheatre.com
Give it a shot! Have some fun!
Want more information about the show?
• Show page: http://www.historytheatre.com/shows/2010-2011/dudley.asp
• A little bit about the history of the Brave New Workshop: http://www.bravenewworkshop.org/history.php
• The opening lines of the show, spoken by The Ringmaster, in a grand circus-like style:
Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages. Behold the spectacle of spectacles, the pinnacle of pinnacles, the event that resists all hyperbole! And at the center of it all, a performer who doth bestride the narrow world like a colossus, a herculean trailblazer of dynamic action and even more dynamic ideas, a pioneer forged in the crucible of public performance yielding a being that is less than a god but still more than a man...Dudley Riggs!
Brace yourself for when he speaks, because the slightest utterance from his lips rocks the very foundations of the truths you and I hold to be self evident. Gird your loins in anticipation of the paradigm-shifting wordsmack that will hurtle from the depths of his gullet to rock our very souls. Pray to whatever God you hold dear that your impending speakspank is merciful, for it is coming and it will not be denied!
Get up out of your seats this very instant! Randomly flee the truth in terror like Lutheran lemmings as a Minnesotan does the unthinkable and expresses an opinion verbally instead of silently judging from afar. Mothers, lock up your daughters, lest they be deflowered by...discourse!
We must ask ourselves, should we be celebrating this man? This rogue? This independent thinker? He is a menace to all that Minnesota holds dear: silence, repression and the unprovoked yet never acted upon hatred of all things Iowan. How can we even tolerate this filthy, sordid purveyor of...SATIRE!
How can we abide by this depraved, morally bankrupt, espresso-slinging iconoclast who has sullied the good name of the Twin Cities with shows like Minority Member in the Woodpile: The Race Riot Revue; National Velveeta; or, What a Friend We have in Cheeses; and Being Atheist Means Never Having to Say You’re Lutheran!
Have any questions?
Contact me at pr@historytheatre.com.
~ Rachel ~
Marketing Director
History Theatre
* All of our panelists are totally qualified to vote in local, state, and federal elections. Some are even qualified to perform CPR and/or drive a vehicle weighing over 26,000 lbs.
** Our panelists’ fields of expertise vary widely and include -- but are not limited to – knot tying (with a Scout badge to prove it), MTV’s “Real World: Philadelphia,” pasta making, road line painting, and more.
