The Monkey Farm is guitarist/composer/facilitator Nick Didkovsky's setting for stories written by Chuck W Vrtacek. With theatre director Valeria Vasilevski reading (known for her extreme work with Diamanda Gallas among others) and realtime voice warping using special software designed by Phil Burk, Robert Marsanyi, and Didkovsky, the ensemble is completed by members of the legendary and incorruptible band, Doctor Nerve.
Premiering May 4, 2001, 8:30pm at Roulette, 228 West
Broadway, NYC www.roulette.org
Stories by CW Vrtacek
Read by Valeria Vasilevski
Guitar, concept, conducted improv, and software by Nick Didkovsky
Conducted improv: Doctor Nerve
Voice warping software: Nick Didkovsky, Phil Burk, Robert Marsanyi,
JMSL, JSyn
Interpreter: Bill Moody (American Sign Language)
This is an ASL Interpreted Performance
Additional funds provided by The Foundation for Contemporary Performance
Arts
mp3 previews of software-in-progress
Live excerpts from premiere performance (Roulette May 4, 2001,
rough mix)
See a drive by shot of The Monkey Farm, recently taken by CW Vrtacek himself.
you know......just as an aside to that joke and without dwelling
on the maudlin aspects, because my dad was one of the town drunks, he often
took me to this really cheap dive of a bar where he drank with indigent
guys and the owner of the bar had a monkey that he kept chained at the
bar, a little spider money, and the guys at the bar would feed it olives
and pickles and peanuts and stuff....the bar was really awful and was called
the Saybrook Inn but everybody in town disparagingly called it "the monkey
farm" as a slap at the patrons and when it closed down after the original
owner died, it reopened and the new guy called it "the monkey farm" and
if you ever go to old saybrook, ct, you can drive by The Monkey Farm and
know the real story of the name (which most people don't anymore) - the
other thing I remember about this place is the bartender whose name was
Kasper and he had a HUGE goiter on his neck and 1. i never saw a goiter
and tht was freaky when i was 7 and 8 years old and 2. i thought it was
weird that he was named after a cartoon character (the friendly ghost)
