The Pig Iron Theatre Company of Philadelphia is one of the most exciting theatre ensembles I've been fortunate enough to see. Their works are at once irreverent and heart-wrenching, hilarious and horrifying, minimalist in design yet dizzyingly complex in content.

As such, I hope you'll join me in getting REALLY excited about Pay Up, a remount of their 2005 piece of the same name. That version never traveled north from Philly, but this time around it's playing at Montclair State University at the end of this month. 

Pay Up has been edited and somewhat re-vamped since it's debut, but the basic premise remains the same.  Based in part upon the writings of M. Keith Chen on economics and social conditioning, Pay Up invites audiences to visit a number of performance booths offering simultaneous scenes of varying category. The catch is this: there are more scenes being performed than you will have time to see, so you have to pick what you watch. The piece tests the audience's responses to such economic factors as demand, advertising, and status.

I, for one, am fascinated and can't wait. Pig Iron's Gentlemen Volunteers and Shut-Eye (one of the legendary Joseph Chaikin's final projects) in particular taught me that experimental theater does not have to sacrifice potent emotional content. I'm sure Pay Up will be no different.

(image from "Gentlemen Volunteers," via www.pigiron.org)