Superterranean

Pig Iron Theatre Company will present the world premiere of Superterranean, a design-driven theater work springing from MacArthur Fellow and Tony Award-winner Mimi Lien’s fascination with underground architecture, built environments, and hidden networks and their influences on human behavior. “I am drawn to holes, portals, pipes, partial objects, and openings,” Lien says. “In all of these, what we see is only a part of a whole, indicating a vast and complex system that is unseen and unknown.” A team of 10 performer-creators, led by Pig Iron artistic director and Pew Fellow Dan Rothenberg, will devise a script and movement sequences in response to Lien’s visual research, scale models of performance environments, and sculptures. The project deepens the designer’s decade-long collaboration with Pig Iron—which includes ambitious sets for the Center-supported A Period of Animate Existence (2017) and Welcome to Yuba City (2009). Geoff Manaugh, author of The New York Times-bestselling The Burglar’s Guide to the City and the popular architecture and design blog BLDGBLOG, will serve as dramaturg, connecting the rehearsal room to current trends in architectural studies. The work is slated for a 2019 debut at FringeArts.

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