Performance artist falls short in describing Dallas avant-garde theater pioneer Fred Curchack. His one-man shows are low-tech, multimedia spectacles in which he interrogates the human condition through humor, personal experience and a deep knowledge of theater history, often employing puppetry, shadow play and other stage magic.
His latest career retrospective, celebrating nearly 40 years as a professor at the University of Texas at Dallas, includes the trigger warning “extreme irony.” The Resurrection of Freddy Chickan, named for Curchack’s alter ego, includes excerpts from nine of his 78 stage works, including his classic twist on Shakespeare’s The Tempest, Stuff As Dreams Are Made On.
“Theatre tends to be an artistically conservative art form generally. People are used to tame, very conventional kinds of approaches,” Curchack says in an article on the UTD website. “Art is not about that. Art is about shattering fixed conceptions, and particularly misconceptions about reality. ... Deep down, audiences crave experimental work. People are excited by what they don’t know and like to have their vistas opened up.”
Details
April 10-12 and 17-19 at 7:30 p.m. at the UTD University Theatre, 800 W. Campbell Road, Richardson. Admission is free. https://calendar.utdallas.edu/event/the-resurrection-of-freddy-chickan.
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