By a drunken stranger trying to pick a fight with you on a subway platform at 3 am. All things seem to be conspiring against you, but deep down you know your heart is pure. In the cold, harsh New York City winter of 2009, a group of actor-aerialists huddled together for warmth in a dance studio in Williamsburg. Faced with the near-impossible decision of creating their own original theater or eatin
g each other alive, they bravely chose the former, and FIGHT OR FLIGHT was born. Not content to sit back and watch the world go to hell, refusing to be swept up in the mediocrity that they saw and despised, unwilling to calmly accept their eventual fate like some zen drowning cow, they Fought and they Flew! These plucky pioneers share a dangerous vision: that acting can be enhanced by flying on a trapeze, and that the aerial arts can be enhanced by applying the basic principles of acting. You bet, but such radical notions are the future of the beleaguered, stale, near-dead art form now known as “theater.” Anton Chekhov wrote, “We must have new forms!” And he wasn’t talkin’ about 1099s. Fight or Flight wants to share with you its rebellious new approach to theater. What began under cover of darkness in a small Brooklyn studio is already spreading. Look for cryptic signs branded into the sides of rural barns that warn not only of the presence of witches, but also of Fight or Flight. They will leave secret messages at railroad stops where not only hobos can see them, but you can see them too. Because when trapeze-based theater becomes not only the preferred way to do plays, but the only way to do plays, there will be a place for all of you in the new world order. Watch the skies.
