JACK OF CUPS
A vibrant song about the irrepressible power of story and community. And recycling.
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Poster by Nicholas Medvescek
Every Spring, the communities of the future gather for a celebration of light and fertility: the Remembrance Festival. The Festival is held on the Island of Higher Ground, a barren and unwelcoming place out in rough waters, where sits an empty village of ancient buildings carved by the ancestors from the bare rock itself. These people — all that is left of humanity after the Flood What Drowned the World — risk their lives sailing for the Island to see each other, to bring to this far-flung place what they’ve grown and built and imagined. To share all with all.
Why do they do this thing?
Tradition says that on the first night of every Festival, Jack of Cups will stand among the people in the stone amphitheater, offering an answer to this question. Jack of Cups: the mysterious wandering storyteller who collects and carries the history of the world, who does not appear to age, who serves at the feet of Mother Ocean. Every Festival, tradition says, Jack will arrive and start the party off in the same way: a new telling of the same story.
The story that remembers and recreates the world. The story of the birth of their world, and the death of ours.
Devising in collaboration with the Remembrance Festival Planning Committee, Gabriel Rodriguez inhabits the role of Jack: our mischievous guide into a new old world. A drowned world. A dead-and-reborn world. A world of cobbled-together beauty, mended into wholeness from the broken pieces of our own.
What do the people of the ancient future see when they remember us?
What must we learn from each other if all of us are to survive?
The runtime is approximately one hour and fifteen minutes.
The first iteration of Jack was self-produced without a company by a small team, and went up in 2018 at Absurd Conclave in Brooklyn. In 2019, alongside co-director Madeline Wall and a team of dedicated talented passionate weirdos, Gabriel developed a brand new version of the show.
This incarnation had its world premiere at legendary off-Broadway house The Flea Theater.
Here are some nice things people said about it:
"Laurie Anderson took me to see Jack of Cups for her birthday yesterday—neither of us had much of a clue about what it was going to be. It turned out to be one of the most haunting amazing beautiful scary things either of us had seen for ages."
”It’s truly the first work of art I’ve seen that really, really gets to grips with the actual vastness and intensity of what is happening.”
- Timothy Morton, philosopher, author, professor
"This gorgeous, inventive production was a rare thing: a climate apocalypse myth that stirred feelings of optimism for our planet."
- Emily Hewitt, photographer
"But the importance of “Jack of Cups,” and why audiences should watch it, is how it pushes viewers away from being complacent [. . .] It’s a reminder that everyone can take steps toward creating a better and cleaner world."
- Alejandra O'Connell-Domenech, The Villager