Dodeska Performance Ensemble integrates theater, sound, music and technology to create innovative performance works designed to activate the spectator. Dodeska has created site-specific works around New York City, and performed at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, Dixon Place, 3030 (Chicago), Temple University (Philadelphia), the Third Coast International Audio Festival / The Public Square (Chicago) and the Milk Bar (Oakland). Dodeska takes its name from Akira Kurosawa's 1970 film, Dodesk'aden, in which Rokkuchan, a mentally handicapped boy, propels an imaginary trolley car through a slum shouting his made up onomatopoeic word for the sound the trolley makes: "Dodeskaden! Dodeskaden!" We follow Rokkuchan's method. Dodeskaden! Dodeskaden!

Personnel
Robert Quillen Camp (director) • [bio] [press]
Alexis Poledouris • [bio]
Ryan Eggensperger • [bio]
David Frank
Gavin Kroeber

Contact
e-mail: quill [at] dodeska [dot] com
postal: c/o Constant Theater
365 West End Ave #7C
New York, NY 10024

The Group (2008)
Coming up MAY 29 - JUNE 14 at CLIMATE THEATER in SF
The Group is an enacted self-empowerment workshop that combines a charismatic leader with an immersive and innovative audio experience. Inspired by the largely American tradition of packaging and selling self-empowerment, from EST and the Landmark Forum to Norman Vincent Peale and The Secret, The Group takes its audience on a savagely funny headphones-guided “soul journey” and illustrates the negative potential of positive thinking.
[website] [press info]

Field Trip (2003-2007)
Field Trip is a series of transportation-themed performance operas: Very Large People (airplane), Timetable (bus), Subway Doctor Frankenstein (subway), and Lift (elevator). Performed at Bowery Poetry Club (2003), Little Theatre at Tonic (2003), Dixon Place (2004), ACA Galleries (2006). The text of Timetable is published in issue 3 of Factorial. The full audio of Lift is below.
[mp3: Lift - full - 9:36]
[QT video: Subway Doctor Frankenstein excerpt - 3:52]

He Said It (2005)
Gertrude Stein's short play, arranged for four voices, a tea kettle, and a broken clavichord. Performed at the Ontological-Hysteric (2005).
[mp3 - full - 14:19]

AP & Birds (2005)
Synchronized mp3 players for an audience thrust into a Soho loft with giant puppet birds, Alexis Poledouris, and music by Alec Duffy. Site-specific workshop directed by Maria Goyanes, 2005.
[QT video - excerpt - 2:31]

The Oprichniki (2004)
A site-specific performance inspired by the life and work of Sergei Eisenstein that combines an audio world experienced through headphones with live, silent actors. The Oprichniki is set in a loft in a dark and magical Brooklyn, where a filmmaker's activities are attracting increasing attention from the half-human "Oprichniki,"a government organization named after Ivan the Terrible's secret police. Performed at Octopus Bushwick, 2004.

Days of Rage (2004)
An audio piece which combines headphones, speakers, and live piano. Days of Rage follows several would-be activists in present day New York as they try to orchestrate a contemporary equivalent to the Weatherman's 1969 "Days of Rage" Chicago riot. Strange and surreal, the narrative explores political alienation, the ethics of violence, and the distance between the sociopolitical climates of the sixties and today. Site-specific NYC apartment performance 2004, Performed at Elastic Arts (Chicago) 2005, Temple University 2005, The Public Square at the Illinois Humanities Council / Third Coast International Audio Festival (Chicago) 2005.
[mp3 excerpt: Scene 13: In the Opium Den - 2:27]

Also
Photos from earlier Camp &/or Poledouris work with the Constant Theater (1998-2003) can be viewed here.

Robert Quillen Camp creates most of his work with the Dodeska Performance Ensemble, which he founded in 2004. His other theater work has been performed at HERE (NYC), The Constant Theater (Portland, OR), The Empty Space (Seattle), Columbia University, Brown University, and the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art. He recently collaborated on two productions with Pig Iron Theatre Company, as the writer and sound designer of PAY UP (Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, 2005), and as the writer of CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN (Philadelphia Latvian Society, 2007). His plays and play-like texts have been published in the literary journals Conjunctions (Bard College), Chain (Temple University), Conundrum, Factorial, and Play A Journal of Plays. He was a Lucille Lortel playwriting fellow at Brown University, where he received his MFA.

Alexis Poledouris has directed or co-directed many of Robert Quillen Camp's plays, including the award-winning Turntable, Ariadne and the Bull , and Kissing Booth (Kaboom!) (Constant Theater, Portland, OR) Bad to Worse:a history play   (Columbia University and Smash Club, NYC) Babette Torquemada (HERE Ameican Living Room). Other credits in NYC include: All This Beautiful Life (The Production Company/chashama); Baby Face by Ashlin Halfnight (Electric Pear Productions/walkerspace); Momma by Edith Freni (PS122, Best of the Boroughs Festival); DIRGE with text and lyrics by Claire Brownell (Target Margin Theater/The Ohio Theater); Food for Fish by Adam Szymkowicz (Sanctuary Playwrights Theater/The Kraine); God's Waiting Room by Ashlin Halfnight (Performance Lab115/ FringeNYC at PS122, awarded“Best Play,” toured to The Merlin International Theater, Budapest, Hungary); and Cascando , a radio play, by Samuel Beckett (WKCR/New York and New Jersey).  Other work includes collaborations with Ensemble Studio Theater, New York Neo Futurists, Young Playwrights Inc., Barnard College ( 365 Days/365 Plays) . Current projects include Cherubina by Paul Cohen and an original adaptation of Istvan Orkeny's The Flower Show .  

Ryan Eggensperger has recieved numerous awards for his work as a performer and a writer. His 'edgy, funny, and uncensored' solo performance piece "Completely Satisfied Men" has been produced five times since 2002, was rated five out of five stars by eye magazine (Toronto) and won "Pick of the Fringe" at the 2005 Boulder international Fringe Festival. Called 'a confident and generous performer with an exciting angry streak' (NOW magazine, Toronto), he has won several awards (including Best Ensemble, NYC Fringe Festival, 2004) and was recently awarded a residency (with collaborator Krista DeNio) at CounterPULSE in San Francisco. He currently lives in the Bay Area.

Reviews of Robert Quillen Camp's collaboarations with Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company (links open in new windows):

Chekhov Lizardbrain (writer)
Variety
Edge Philadelphia
Curtain Up

Pay Up (writer/sound designer)
Variety
Curtain Up
Philadelphia City Paper