UNTITLED: JOHN BANVARD MUSICAL

 

150 years ago John Banvard was the most famous living painter. He took the world by storm with his panoramic paintings of the Mississippi river, purported to be over 2 miles long. He would perform tales of adventure in front of his rolling canvas for crowds of thousands, eventually even performing for Queen Victoria. He would paint more panoramics, this time of Palestine and of the Nile River. He came back to the states and built a castle on Long Island, he became a rival of P.T. Barnum, and he eventually lost his fortune and faded away into history without a single surviving piece of art to be remembered by. This is his story. 

 

Performed and Co-created by CORN MO

Directed and Co-created by NICHOLAS A. COTZ

 

 

CORN MO has toured America and Europe supporting the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus, Wheatus, The Pontani Sisters, Ben Folds, Nick Offerman, They Might Be Giants and the Polyphonic Spree. He's also toured as Disco Mountain Man in the the band Tragedy: The #1 Heavy Metal Tribute to the Bee Gees and Beyond. In the studio, he's shared vocals with Ben Folds on Folds' cover of "Get Your Hands Off My Woman" for the Supersunnyspeedygraphic EP, joined the choir for the Polyphonic Spree's Together We're Heavy and played accordion on TMBG's "Particle Mo". He has written 7 albums, the latest being The Purchase of the North Pole with .357 Lover. He co-wrote a musical about Grizzly Adams with Nick Jones called Grizzly Adams: A True Story of Bears, Brawn and Brain Injuries. He co-wrote "Rainbow Song" with Nick Offerman of Parks and Rec. He co-produced a ballet called SEVERED: The Tragic Loves of Frankenstein's Monster with the music from .357 Lover's The Purchase of the North Pole. He's is currently working on the next two albums with Corn Mo and .357 Lover.

 

NICHOLAS A. COTZ founded Personal Space Theatrics (PST) in 2001, a 501c-3 theater company dedicated to reforming an active and consensual relationship between the actors and the audience. Since founding PST in 2001, Nicholas has helped produce over 15 shows and his directing credits in New York and Los Angeles include the Off Broadway production of rogerandtom by Julien Schwab (NY Time’s Critic’s Pick), Erika Sheffer’s Something in your Stomach, the World premiere of Mr. Schwab’s Nicotine, the first NYC production of Tim Firth’s The Safari Party, the first NYC revival of Arthur Kopit’s BecauseHeCan, PST’s collage of Americana Myth America (including works by Theresa Rebeck, Israel Horovitz and Arthur Kopit), and Woken’ Glacier Theatre Company’s Locomotive, written by Princess Grace Award winner Matthew Paul Olmos. In 2011, Cotz took rogerandtom across the Atlantic as both Executive Producer and Director of the production in the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in 2013 he once again traveled abroad with Schwab’s script as the first Americans to be invited to Estonia’s Midwinter Night’s Dream Theater Festival in Tallinn. Cotz is a Manhattan Theatre Club Directing Fellow. He received his MFA in Directing from Brooklyn College.