2008 Woodie Awards
Stomp
Uptown Girl
Suzy Kenly
Issue date: 11/24/04 Section: Features
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As viewers take their seats in the Orpheum Theatre (8th Street on 2nd Avenue) to see the Off-Broadway production of Stomp, their eyes are treated to a visual feast. Covering the walls on either side of the seats and on the stage is a various assortment of random objects, from cooler bottles to road signs, from toilet paper rolls to old sinks, from brooms to trash cans. The walls are avalanches with lots of junk. The junk, as the audience will soon find out, is anything but, as the actors prove that just about anything can make music.
Stomp has been called the most unusual collaboration of percussion, dance, and visual comedy, and has received raves ever since it's first production in Brighton, U.K. World tour groups have preformed it in London, Athens, and Sydney before coming to New York.
Stomp was written in Brighton, U.K in 1991 by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, who first came up with the idea for Stomp ten years earlier, in 1981. It came to New York in 1994, where it quickly went on to win an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for Most Unique Theatre Experience.
The play begins with one actor sweeping the stage, billows of dust coming out from under the broom. This action leads to the question as to why the stage is so dusty, when it is swept every single performance? The answer soon follows a he begins to tap the floor with the broom slowly, setting the rhythm for his fellow percussionists, who saunter out with their own brooms, banging them to their own syncopated beats. Soon, the theatre is alive with music, but there are no drums, no flutes, no trumpets, no sopranos or tenors. All that is heard is just the tapping and beating of the brooms on the floor, with each musician in perfect rhythm. Then two of the musicians sweep, tap tap, sweep, tap tap. They conclude their first piece by flipping their brooms as quickly as though they were cowboys in a dusty road whipping out their guns. The audience is instantly impressed, and starts cheering.
Stomp has been called the most unusual collaboration of percussion, dance, and visual comedy, and has received raves ever since it's first production in Brighton, U.K. World tour groups have preformed it in London, Athens, and Sydney before coming to New York.
Stomp was written in Brighton, U.K in 1991 by Luke Cresswell and Steve McNicholas, who first came up with the idea for Stomp ten years earlier, in 1981. It came to New York in 1994, where it quickly went on to win an Obie and a Drama Desk Award for Most Unique Theatre Experience.
The play begins with one actor sweeping the stage, billows of dust coming out from under the broom. This action leads to the question as to why the stage is so dusty, when it is swept every single performance? The answer soon follows a he begins to tap the floor with the broom slowly, setting the rhythm for his fellow percussionists, who saunter out with their own brooms, banging them to their own syncopated beats. Soon, the theatre is alive with music, but there are no drums, no flutes, no trumpets, no sopranos or tenors. All that is heard is just the tapping and beating of the brooms on the floor, with each musician in perfect rhythm. Then two of the musicians sweep, tap tap, sweep, tap tap. They conclude their first piece by flipping their brooms as quickly as though they were cowboys in a dusty road whipping out their guns. The audience is instantly impressed, and starts cheering.