"It's based loosely on Chekhov's Three Sisters," says director Dan Rothenberg, during a recent rehearsal break with visiting artist and cocreator Robert Quillen Camp.
Very loosely.
The three brothers often move spasmodically, as if they were no smarter than, well, lizards, and owe as much to Marx (Brothers, that is) as to the transcendent playwright. A removable brain plays a prominent role.
Pig Iron, consisting of three artistic directors and six company members, has been hailed as the city's "most imaginative theater company," attracting a 2005 Obie Award (honoring non-Broadway productions in New York), 36 Barrymore nominations, a Pew Fellowship in the Arts, and invitations to perform at festivals throughout Europe and South America.
With no home, the company is peripatetic, utilizing churches, warehouses, other companies' theaters, and, now, the Latvian Society at Seventh and Spring Garden Streets, where the crew has managed to squeeze in 130 seats.
Pig Iron comes from a reference in David Mamet's American Buffalo "which has little meaning," Rothenberg says with a shrug. "It's raw, crude iron that's not very useful, though it's used in theater curtains to help things fly in and out."
Fellow artistic directors and great friends Rothenberg, Gabriel Quinn Bauriedel and Dito van Reigersberg began performing together as students at Swarthmore College (where Bauriedel and van Reigersberg roomed all four years), before founding the company professionally in 1994. Quickly, Pig Iron become a staple of both the Edinburgh and Philadelphia Fringe Festivals. The three colleagues regularly teach at their alma mater and Princeton.
