Award Winning Actor Felix Pire Stars In Sci-Fi Stage Comedy “This Way to Your Ritual Lobotomy”

July 1, 2010 - PRLog -- HOLLYWOOD – From Cuban refugee Elian Gonzalez to a teenage youth activist, from Ghandi to a British prisoner, actor Felix Pire embodies all of these characters and a dozen more in a new one-man stage comedy “This Way to Your Ritual Lobotomy” opening July 2 at the Avery Schreiber Theatre, 11050 Magnolia Blvd. in the North Hollywood Arts District.

The play, Pire’s third full length solo performance work, brings together the L.A. Ovation and New York Outer Critics Circle Award winning team of Pire and playwright Guillermo Reyes in an innovative production that travels three thousand years into the future.

Taking us on a “hologram” tour of sad human characters of the past, Reyes plays a futuristic priest who creates a “techno-ritual” through the use of multi-media projections and character transformations, that explains what humans “used to be like in the past” before the compulsory ritual lobotomy you will receive.

The future is Orwellian, satirically funny and deadly. The world is run by an authoritarian Big Brother-like dictatorship, headed by the descendants of Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy at the center of the internationally news-making, heated custody and immigration battle in 2000 involving Cuba and United States.

A few world wars later, humanity has entered its inevitable cybernetic future where the audience must participate in this theatrical experience as part of having your intuitive frontal lobe removed.

Only through the ritual lobotomy does the audience reach a state of “Infantilism,” a feeling of total childlike bliss (which doesn’t require thinking), consecrated by the motto of the future: “Don’t worry, be happy.” This sophisticated sci-fi play is laced with political satire, laughingly pointing to the danger of technology substituting for human communication.

“I’m excited to unleash this ritual upon the audience nightly,” says Pire. “Anyone who dares show up and take part in the ‘frontal lobotomy’ is going to walk away from it having a good laugh. All of these characters are so wacky, strange and fun in a sick way. It’s all absolutely preposterous, and yet the characters are so unique that everyone empathizes with them.”

This Way To Your Ritual Lobotomy is scheduled to begin the procedures on Friday and Saturday nights at 8pm beginning July 2, 2010. For Tickets Contact: 818-766-9100 or Ticketleap.com

BIOGRAPHIES

Felix Pire, Actor
FILMS: 12 Monkeys, Phat Girlz, Dear God, It's My Party. TELEVISION: Prison Break (FOX), NYPD Blue (ABC), Gideon's Crossing (ABC), The Rerun Show (NBC), Matt Waters (CBS). STAGE: 1997 New York Outer Critic's Circle Award for Outstanding Solo Performance for “Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown,” Off-Broadway. Winner of Best Play in a Smaller Theatre at 1995 Los Angeles Ovation Awards. Acclaim from: New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Village Voice, New Yorker Magazine. "The Origins of Happiness in Latin," penned at Mark Taper Forum's Latino Theatre Initiative, won the California Community Foundation's Brody Grant and the 2001 National Latino Playwriting Award. 2008 Producer’s Guild of America Diversity Workshop participant with puppet webisode series: LosTiteres.TV. Creator of webisode series: Latinas En L.A. Puppeteer: Jim Henson’s "Puppet Up!" Received the 1996 New World School of the Arts Distinguished Alumnus Award from his arts high school in Miami. Recipient of the 2009 Plaque in Recognition of Artistic Brilliance from Urban Stages Theatre, Off-Broadway. Professor of solo performance at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Hollywood since 2003. Visiting professor of “acting in film” at UCLA 2008-2009. Earned Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in acting and directing with an emphasis in film from Southern Methodist University. (www.FelixPire.com)

Guillermo Reyes, Playwright
Guillermo Reyes is the playwright who fell off the face of the earth. It means he went from L.A. to Arizona to teach at Arizona State University where he's a professor in the asphalt desert. He has been chosen as interim Chair of the Theatre Department for the durations of the 2010-11 year. His book, "Madre and I: A Memoir of our Immigrant Lives" is available from University of Wisconsin Press, and can be purchased on Amazon.com, along with copies of Men on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown, which premiered at the Celebration Theater in L.A. and later off-Broadway, from Dramatic Publishing Company, and two plays, Miss Consuelo and Places to Touch Him, appear in the recent anthology, "Borders on Stage," also available on Amazon.

Paul Storiale, Director
Producer and director of several West Coast premieres, such as Woman with Pocketbook, The Life and Time of Joseph Jefferson Benjamin Blow and the Drama Desk Award nominated TWIST. Storiale's One Night Stands comedy earned him an ADA award for Best Director of a Comedy. He conceived and co-wrote the hit play A Big Gay Hollywood Wedding, which recently ran for six months. His latest play The Columbine Project ran in Los Angeles twice in one year sidelined with a three month run Off-Broadway. This production received five ADA awards including Best Director, Best Lead Actor, Best Featured Actress, Best Featured Actor and Best Stage Manager.

Emrhys Cooper, Producer
(Mamma Mia, CSI: New York, Bright Young Things) From London to L.A., Cooper has worked extensively throughout the world as a performer on stage and screen. He founded the production company Dream It Productions, which is quickly becoming a prestigious film company both in the U.S. and the U.K. Since arriving in Hollywood last year, Cooper has executive produced the feature film, Walk a Mile in My Pradas, starring Tom Arnold and Dee Wallace. Several other feature productions are in the works, both in front and behind the camera. (www.EmrhysCooper.com)

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