“Stuff Dreams Are Made On” Fred Curchack returns to Studio 64 with his internationally renowned one-man show, Saturday January 4th at 8PM, doors open at 7:30PM. Join us early for a glass of wine and a snack before the show
Don’t miss out! This award winning show is a rich and strange adaption of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. Use the link below to secure your seat for this special performance. Purchase tickets in advance ($20). Tickets at the door will be $25 if available.
Fred Curchack has created seventy-eight original theatre pieces (fifty-one ensemble works and twenty-seven solos). Stuff As Dreams Are Made On was featured at dozens of international theatre festivals (Next Wave-BAM, Theatre of Nations, Theater der Welt, Theatre des Ameriques…). It received the Gold Medal at the International Festival of Solo Theatre, the American Theatre Wing Award, Critics’ and the show has been "Best of the week" in the L.A. Times, “Top ten of the year" in The New York Times, "Top ten of the decade" in the Austin Chronicle, and in the "Top ten of all-time" in The Dallas Morning News. Fred has received funding from Creative Capital, the National Endowment for the Arts, Arts International, The Henson Foundation and he is a Guggenheim Fellow. After receiving a drama degree from the High School of Performing Arts in N.Y., and a BA and MA in Theater from Queens College, Curchack studied Indian Kathakali, Japanese Noh, Balinese Topeng, choreography with Alwin Nikolais, and he trained with Grotowski’s Polish Theater Lab. He has taught theatre at the United Nations International School, N.Y.; Sonoma State University, California; and he is currently Professor of Theatre at The University of Texas at Dallas.
Review excerpts for Fred Curchack’s STUFF AS DREAMS ARE MADE ON: Gold Medal-Int’l Solo Theater Festival, Belgrade; American Theater Wing Award; Hollywood Drama-Logue Award; Dallas Critics Award; Austin Circle of Theaters Awards (including “Best Play” and “Best Actor”); Year’s Ten Most Noteworthy Plays-The New York Times
“TOP 10 OF THE YEAR … it is clear that when Mr. Curchack is on stage, imagination knows no limitations. His art is firmly rooted in technique, ranging from Noh to Kathakali, from classic mime to Method acting…Mr. Curchack is so polymorphous in performance that at the end of the show, one might expect to see a dozen participating artists take a bow instead of one unmasked, seraphic-looking theatrical virtuoso.” -- Mel Gussow, The New York Times
“CRITICS’ CHOICE…“THE BEST OF THE WEEKEND…Fred Curchack – writer, editor, director, musician, mask-maker extraordinaire – delivers a sly, visually astonishing deconstruction of Shakespeare’s The Tempest.” – Scott Collins, Los Angeles Times
“Paradoxically, the most gorgeous visual effects in the recent crop of Tempests might well be the light-and-shadow pictures of Fred Curchack’s solo production, which makes astonishing use of poor-theatre techniques to create illusions and magic…Curchack’s performance, through which Shakespeare’s poetry speaks strongly, if with an unfamiliar thrust and flavor, serves as a reminder that The Tempest’s larger challenge is the reconstruction of a truly human moral drama.” -- Frederick Turner, American Theatre
“…what Curchack is up to in Stuff As Dreams Are Made On is essentially unlike any other solo show. It is, first of all, an ambitious adaptation of The Tempest. Marshalling his formidable training in cross-cultural performance techniques (Noh theatre, Indian Kathakali, Balinese Topeng, African dance, Growtowski’s Polish Theatre Lab), Curchack gives himself the challenge of matching the inexpressible beauty of Shakespeare’s verse with non-verbal theatrical gestures – and he succeeds impressively…
More than a deconstruction of Shakespeare, however, Curchack’s performance is an examination of the actor’s art: the power and the pain of impersonation, the humiliation of playing for an audience and the hostility that engenders, the comforting schizophrenia of adopting different identities as an actor and the terror of returning to the inescapable self…Fred Curchack reminds us of the power of live theater with the fiery magnetism of his images, whose resonance is deep within us. And in this catastrophic period when we are both coddled and threatened by machines, he pushes himself beyond all limits to demonstrate the divine possibilities of the human body. -- Don Shewey, Prelude, Portland Maine
“Fred Curchack is a genius, an inspired lunatic…Curchack seems to have used Prospero’s magic island as an apt vehicle for an investigation of the nature of theater itself which, in Curchack’s case is sheer magic…it will take your breath away.”
-- Scott Fosdick, The News American, Baltimore
“Fred Curchack is definitely some kind of genius…a virtuoso man of the theatre. The things he doles with voice, masks, shadows, mime and comic timing are separately masterly, and collectively bewilderingly accomplished. Curchack is clearly on top of his art, and creating a genuinely new form of theatre…Everything in the production is a direct illumination of themes in The Tempest.” -- Liam Lacey, The Globe and Mail, Toronto
“Fred Curchack is a genius.” -- Don Carter, Seattle Post-Intelligencer
“Top of the all-time Top Ten List…Curchack is an almost miraculous performance artist…His performance has the stylization of Japanese theater, the cheap laughs of the commedia…It seems to have been made out of bits of rubber and string, and yet it’s as astonishing as a rose plucked from the air…The Jungian idea that one person’s psyche contains man and mask, father and daughter, good spirit and bad monster, even ventriloquist and dummy, is one of the central, animating images in Stuff. The real wonder of it is the way Curchack envelops all of these levels at once: He questions his art, delves into Shakespeare’s words, plays with the performer-audience relationship and cracks hilarious asides…Stuff is truly dreamlike in that its images touch us deeply in several ways at once.” – Jerome Weeks, Dallas Morning News
“On the scale of one to 10 – 10 being incredible, elegant, guerrilla, gonzo, in-your face theater – Fred Curchack cracked the thermometer last night…It becomes an adventure just keeping up with the actor…One minute he is deranged Marcel Marceau, next he is Noh girl, next a Sex Pistol, next a snakeoil salesman, then a social critic, a slapstick comic, a slick dude, a shadow, gone. Curchack’s mastery of shadow play and light would be reason enough to see him. He uses theater to amaze, illuminate, empower…if you like wizardry, conjuration and wonderment, by all means don’t miss Stuff As Dreams Are Made On.” -- Wayne Lee, The Seattle Times
“If you think that theatre has lost its magic, Fred Curchack is just the man to change your mind…It’s often bizarre, frequently breathtaking, occasionally puzzling but always delightful. It also allows the audience to play with its own senses of wonder, illusion, imagination and surprise.
Stuff As Dreams Are Made On explores the world of an actor trying to play all the roles in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. But the play is also an exploration of the power of theatre and the awe-inspiring effects that can be created with a few simple ingredients and a wonderful imagination…Curchack proves himself a master at presenting the unexpected…for anyone who wants to be surprised, challenged and, above all, entertained, it shouldn’t be missed.”
– Barbara Crook, The Citizen, Ottawa, Canada
“Funny, remarkable, offensive and scary, and clearly exhibiting all those qualities deliberately, Curchack celebrates one-man versatility on two very different levels…The point is not to celebrate Shakespeare or stage poetry – although that inevitably happens, too – as much as it is to take everybody as close as possible to some sort of psychic-esthetic edge. It’s a challenge well worth taking.” – Sid Smith, Chicago Tribune
“Fred Curchack, the astounding theater artist…is as much an archaeologist as he is a fearless scout on the future frontiers of theater. With a few laughably simple tools – Bic lighters, a doll, homemade masks, throwaway flashlights – he plunges deep into our collective subconscious, breaks through the centuries’ crust of theatrical convention, to recapture that tingling awe at the moment of the theater’s birth. He brings The Mystery back…This playfulness transforms Shakespeare’s romance into a kind of action-adventure tale that’s enthralling for viewers of all ages and stations, but it barely weakens the play’s classical integrity – in fact, certain passages of verse were clearer and more alive than I’ve ever heard them because Curchack emblazoned them with unforgettable images.” – Dan Hulbert, Dallas Times Herald
“Curchack’s one-man foray into Shakespeare is both hilarious and provocative, at once demystifying The Tempest while creating magic and illusion that Prospero himself would envy…Into the bargain, he takes a few whacks at modern lit-crit, tickles performance-art pretensions and, with virtuoso force, shows how magically rich the theater still can be.”
-- Mike Steele, Minneapolis Star and Tribune
“Astonishment is the stuff of wit and heart, intelligence and soul. Astonishment is the “Stuff As Dreams Are Made On”…You’ve never seen anything quite like it…Don’t know your Shakespeare? Don’t worry about it. The way Curchack tells it in just over an hour, a blend of contemporary hip and classical precision, equal parts intellect and eroticism, you’ll not only get the point; I suspect you’ll leave with a yearning to check out the original. It would be an injustice to examine “Stuff” too closely, to ruin Curchack’s surprise after surprise after surprise. Curchack doesn’t so much deconstruct The Tempest as explode it and then patch it back together with integrity, mystery and fun. Part of Curchack’s magic is that he distills theater to its essence: character and drama…”Stuff” is the creation of an unfettered imagination.”
-- Jackie Demaline, Times Union, Albany, N.Y.
“Like Shakespeare’s magus Prospero, performer Fred Curchack orchestrates one dazzling feat of wonder after another…A most fascinating, often sublimely funny theatrical collage.”
– Maggi Kramm, Saint Paul Pioneer Press
“Dallas’ resident theatrical genius…Curchack thinks deeply about the theater and writes well for it. And he is one of the greatest actors I have ever seen…his Prospero and Ariel are performances worthy of the finest Shakespearian actor...it’s clear that going too far is part of Curchack’s strategy in trying to reach the deepest part of the minds and souls of his spectators. And Fred Curchack does do that.” -- Lawson Taitte, WRR, Dallas
“I do not use the word sorcerer idly…It is an absolutely stunning piece of work…the next time I see the original Tempest, I will do so with a new appreciation of the text and the characters…Curchack is a master of shadow art…The effect is archaic, astonishing – and about six times more sophisticated in effect than most artists achieve with a roomful of equipment…A stunningly beautiful, funny, frightening, magical show of masks, shadow art, eerie sound and special effects all created with one unamplified voice and a handful of props…Don’t miss it.”
-- Nancy Scott, San Francisco Examiner