Round 2
Beyond Words
AFO Fest
BEYOND WORDS
performed by Bill Bowers
directed by Scott Illingworth
October 2013
One the most acclaimed multi-disciplinary artists in America today, Bill Bowers employs an eloquent mixture of music, monologues and mime in his on-going investigation of the silence surrounding the enigmatic matters of gender in our culture today. Often compared to Chaplin and Keaton, he has performed throughout the U.S., Europe, and Asia. For BEYOND WORDS, Bowers draws his characters from life and moves beyond mere anecdotes to create a vibrant and visual poetry. With both audacity and compassion he explores what it means to be a boy and the messages we receive on our way to becoming men. It is an inclusive montage that celebrates maleness and humanity in capacious terms rather than any narrow punitive viewpoint that diminishes us all.
Trailer
BILL BOWERS (Performer) is an actor, mime and educator, Bill Bowers has traveled throughout all 50 of the United States, Europe and Asia. His Broadway credits include Zazu in The Lion King, and Leggett in The Scarlet Pimpernel, and he has appeared on the stages of Theatre for a New Audience, St. Anne’s Warehouse, EST, Radio City Music Hall, The Kennedy Center, Steppenwolf, LaMaMa, New York Fringe, and HERE. Bill has written and performed his own plays Off Broadway and in theaters around the world. These plays include ‘Night Sweetheart ‘Night Buttercup at HERE, Under a Montana Moon at Urban Stages and the Kennedy Center, It Goes Without Saying at the Rattlestick Theatre, and Beyond Words at Urban Stages. His devised ensemble play, Heyokah Hokehay, has been produced in Colorado, Montana, Wyoming, and the Edinburgh Festival. Hailed by critics as “ the great American mime”, Bill has been awarded the Dallas/ Ft Worth Critics Award, Best of the Berkshires, Best One Man Performance in the International United Solo Festival and International Fresh Fruit Festival. He is featured in the film Two Weeks Notice, and on television in Disney’s Out of the Box, Remember W.E.N.N., One Life to Live, and All My Children. Bill holds an MFA from Rutgers University’s Mason Gross School of the Arts, and an Honorary PhD from Rocky Mountain College. Bill studied with the legendary Marcel Marceau. Bill serves on the faculties of NYU Steinhardt, Neighborhood Playhouse, Stella Adler Conservatory, and the Bill Esper Studio. bill-bowers.com
SCOTT ILLINGWORTH (Director) is a freelance director, faculty member at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts Graduate Acting Program, regular teacher of master classes for LAByrinth Theater Co and artistic director of The Capnomancy Project. His recent directing credits include Chicago Summer (Collaboration at Steppenwolf), Israel Horovitz’s New Shorts (LAByrinth and Gloucester Stage), Lake Effect (Geva Theatre Center), The Hard Sell (LAB’s Barn Series at The Public), Leaving Iowa (Adirondack Theatre Festival) and the reading of A Taste of Sunlight in December (Victory Gardens Theatre). He has also served as assistant director to Philip Seymour Hoffman on The Long Red Road (Goodman) and for Mark Wing-Davey on several productions, including Passion Play by Sarah Ruhl (Goodman, Yale Rep, EPIC). Later this fall he will direct Deep Trees with Lili Taylor for LAByrith’s Barn Series and Across the Water by Mona Mansour at New York University.