No Dice

“[Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s] No Dice is a tour de force. Its limited, deeply human characters express the grandiose desire to engage the “universal cosmic murmur.” Instead, they embody it. Resistance is futile.”  -- The New York Times 

Come for the magic, stay for the ham sandwiches! Nature Theater of Oklahoma presents a short 4 hour version of their legendary 11 hour melodramatic spectacle, No Dice. An epic of the everyday blown to transcendental proportions, No Dice takes over one hundred hours of the company's recorded telephone conversations and filters them through the conventions of amateur dinner theater to arrive at a uniquely mind-altering experience. Originally conceived as an exercise in “non-literary” theater, No Dice has been 100% orally generated in the tradition of epic storytelling. No written script for the piece exists. Instead, working from models of early performance and heroic sagas such as The Odyssey and the 1001 Nights, the company has generated, via telephone, their own modern quest for the elusive narrative thread – with luxurious diversions along the way to address more pressing personal concerns such as: “Should I maybe stop drinking?”, “Am I going to get fired?”, and “How can we get to that big Hollywood money?” In the fight of their artistic lives, on the edge of total failure, the performers engage in mighty battle to get to the heart of the “story” and perform the ultimate heroic task of transforming the coarse stuff of their own lives into art. Will they pull it off? A devilish performance that stretches the endurance of actor and audience alike. Nature Theater of Oklahoma lathers itself into a transcendent froth of brut acting that finally must be experienced to be believed.

PRESS QUOTES:

“It’s not easy, on a Saturday night in this maddening city, to feel that you have landed exactly where you want to be, and even, perhaps, where you need to be. But No Dice, performed by the Nature Theater of Oklahoma, is that rare, wondrous type of theatrical sustenance: You leave blissful and sated, yet wanting more.” The New York Times

“Over the past several years the Nature Theater of Oklahoma has evolved into one of New York’s most talented ensembles…their shows are smart, witty, highly physical, and eager to twist notions of theatricality” The Village VOICE

“No Dice is electric with the irrepressible individuality of its many creators, and its odd little scenes effectively tune our ears to hear the ‘cosmic murmur’ of the everyday language that usually passes away unnoticed.” The Brooklyn Rail

“At a time when even Off-Off Broadway productions seem infatuated with technology and spectacle, [Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s] bare-bones vision recalls the “poor theater” of the 1970’s…The focus is on the actors’ voices and bodies. They animate the theater with a bravura physicality.” The New York Times