'The Cows Come Home' (Camden People's Theatre, Brighton Fringe Festival Underbelly) is invited to participate in the international theatre festival, Junge Hunde, Denmark (Nov, 2008).
A proposed multi-media dance theatre piece, inspired by Sophocles' Antigone - The Antigone Files- has been shortlisted for an Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Award.
ZEB FONTAINE/Artistic Statement. Each production brings together artists and theatre specialists drawn to the interrelationship of sound, movement, text and performance space. Intersections with the rich complexity of ancient tragedy and myth resonate with both contemporary and timeless issues. Aesthetically, we journey beyond conventional text-based productions, toward the purely sensory experience of performance.
FORTHCOMING PRODUCTIONS - a series of TRAGIC TRANSPOSITIONS:
2008 The Cows Come Home
READ RECENT REVIEWS OF 'THE COWS COME HOME'!! Sold-Out Performances in London
http://www.londontheatreblog.co.uk - 'This is densely imagined and experienced dance-drama, evocative and tantalising and paradoxically satisfying. The Cows Come Home is an enigmatic experience that resonates in some place deeper and stranger than the intellect, transcending narrative obscurity to achieve a beguiling synthesis of music and image and motion.'
http://www.musicomh.com/theatre/cows_0508.htm - 'By the time the lightbulb pops and the illusion is destroyed, Zach Dunbar and Jesús Rubio Gamo have served up a multi-layered, deeply compelling but also meditative work of experimental theatre. Nothing prepares you for this spectacle, an amalgam of myth, physicality, compulsive behaviour and ritualism. It demands reflection, not on death – human or bovine – but on the quality of life, or the necessity of suffering'.
http://magazine.brighton.co.uk (click on Theatre & Comedy/scroll to 'Archives') - 'Like a mass of oil and water, like some kind of wonderful fluid, move the dancers of Zeb Fontaine...They are the living embodiment of what is now seen as ‘fringe’ dance but in reality is the future of such theatre, whether we know it or not'.
THE COWS COME HOME
It’s the after hour of a tragedy. A chorus plans a celebration when a farmer’s dying memories enter the space triggering the chorus to re-experience the Great Going Down. Dance theatre, live electro-acoustic sounds and film fuse in this twenty-first century exploration of the tragic chorus. Bits of the Oedipus story mix in with modern themes about mad cows disease, infection and religious belief - it will melt in your mind.
During the last few decades innovative productions of Greek tragedy have acknowledged the leading influence of dance. Increasingly found in fringe theatres (The Gate, Soho Theatre, Camden People’s Theatre), dance-based productions propose new approaches to the interrelationship of performance space, sound, text and movement.
Written and Directed by Zachary Dunbar Choreography by Jesus Rubio Gamo Devised by the Company: Cinematic composer Giuseppe Lomeo (co-founder of the electro-acoustic Opera Mutica ensemble), soundscape artist and designer Patrick Furness and Ollie Hymans (Animate Space www.animatespace.com). The artistic direction is by Zachary Dunbar whose specialty in Greek tragedy brings an innovative and present-day voice to its modern reception.
Camden People's Theatre 58-60 Hampstead Road, London, NW1 2PY - World Première www.cptheatre.co.uk
6th-11th May, 2008; 8:00 pm; 12/£10
Ticket Bookings: Ticketweb 08700 600 100 (24 hours); www.ticketweb.co.uk Can also purchase tickets from Camden People's Theatre ONLY 30 minutes before the evening's performance. Ground floor venue; Full wheelchair access.
The Udder Place, the Udderbelly's Pasture, Old Steine, Brighton, BN1 1NH
12th-13th May, 2008; 6:15 pm £12/£10
Tel bookings 01273 709 709; Web Bookings www.underbelly.co.uk and www.brightonfestivalfringe.org.uk
Tickets on sale from 20th March 08
The Press on Zachary Dunbar’s previous productions: OUT OF CHARACTER 'Three sparkling and beautifully devised plays by Zachary Dunbar are a joy to behold…an exceptionally original and exciting spectacle’ (The Scotsman****);
‘Very professional, mature and considered drama…truly remarkable’ (The Stage);
THE YEAR OF THE PIG ‘A squeak away from fame!’ (Times)
The Press on Jesus Rubio Gamo’s recent Stabat Mater at the UK’s Resolution Festival (Robin Howard Dance Theatre, London) ‘Gamo’s Stabat Matter was the highlight of the evening…gestures alluding to the Virgin Mary and womankind were connected smartly through sound and text’ (Gillie Kleiman, The Place)
PROTEGE
A music lesson sets the dynamics of a version of Euripides' Hippolytus in which a young student develops a crush on her teacher with devastating consequences.
‘A triumph for the director-writer-lyricist. Such manifest joy in the acting and singing, with the added bonus of hearing students he trained to sing in Mandarin and play real Chinese instruments!…an indelible, civilising experience.’ (Hertford)
‘Zachary Dunbar gives us a totally ORIGINAL work- full of gorgeous melodies… All in all, the musical is a wonderful reminder that we STILL have, in this country musical theatre writing talent – which sadly remains largely undiscovered. If I have inspired you to see this production in Edinburgh, then I shall personally feel proud to have brought a remarkable talent to the wider world of musical theatre.’ (Graham Powner, Editor Theatreworld Magazine)‘
A squeak away from fame…. (The Times, Arts Section)
-Adagio for a Bedsheet -Reconnect my Venus -Out of Character
A trilogy written for the Children’s Trust (Tadworth), the UK’s leading rehabilitation unit for children and teenagers who have suffered brain traumas. Adagio for a Bedsheet - on a clothes line, a bed sheet twists and turns subject to the whims of the wind. Choreographed to the 'Adagio' from Schubert's String Quintet in C, the piece is an allegory on Cerebral Palsy.Reconnect my Venus - rehabilitation of brain-injury sometimes results in funny, ironical moments when patients misinterpret figures of speech. This play examines figures of speech as codes of inclusion or exclusion among teenagers, one of whom is recovering from a horse riding accident and is learning to fall in love. Out of Character - the most extended of the three plays deals with a bike accident. Charlacombe Diabelli, a budding composer, a teenager in love with Bach, has a bike accident which sends his divorced mother Cleo reeling for the answer. Mime, puppetry and the civilising music of Bach makes this play travel from the centre of a bike accident and into the path of painful redeeming truths.
'Three sparkling and beautifully devised plays by Zachary Dunbar are a joy to behold…an exceptionally original and exciting spectacle’ (The Scotsman)
‘Very professional, mature and considered drama…truly remarkable’ (The Stage)
'Exceptional theatre creation…inspiringly the way theatre at its best is made’ (Janet Suzman)
'An enthralling choreographed piece, Zachary Dunbar has an eye for the strong visual images and showed that he can control an audiences’ attention with a fine eye for detail’ (Phillip Hoffman- Arts Eds)
‘The achievement of these teenagers in a piece brilliantly written and directed by Zachary Dunbar could have shown a clean ten pairs of heels to many of our most famous players’ (Editor- Amateur Stage Magazine)
‘Mesmerising, well-observed and thought-provoking’ (Channel 4 TV)
‘It is inadequate to describe Delphi, Texas, though this is a work of considerable formality, (predicated by its Greek original) of remarkable invention – indeed, genius – and a dramatic production of great integrity, with outstanding acting’ (David Rafaello, MusicOMH.com)
‘Dunbar’s allegorical setting affords scathing social commentary combined with hilarity… this makes fine, uplifting and thought-provoking theatre that demands a much wider audience’(Fiona Macintosh – author/editor, Greek Tragedy and the British Theatre, Oxford)‘
Dunbar, as both revisionist writer and auterist director, shows great accomplishment in managing to pull off an intellectually sophisticated idea with such immense audience appeal. His text is strong and inventive, the juxtapositions persuasive and engaging, the staging of the piece is fiercely imagined and wholly compelling’ (Dan Rebellato - playwright/professor, University of London and author of British Drama and Globalization)
‘Achieves the impossible. The text is nothing short of brilliant. The unfixed mutating identities and intense mimed images show us a new and most exciting way of restoring to Greek tragedy its bite’. (Yana Zarifi - director, Thiasos, an international theatre company specialising in classical Greek theatre). Click below to enlarge the images.
THE BALLAD OF EDDY TYRONE; a radio play; 'Brokeback Mountain'-style romance (based on the Oedipus myth) of two cowboys who hit if off in 1980s Houston, just as a mysterious disease affecting young men comes calling on the world of the urban cowboy. Podcast on World AIDS day, 1st December 2007. Forthcoming broadcast London Resonance FM 104.4.
2008 
TEXAS EDDY ©zdunbar 1995
THE YEAR OF THE PIG II ©zdunbar 1998
OUT OF CHARACTER ©zdunbar 2002
RETURN TO SENDER ©zdunbar 2000
TOM’S HOUSE ©zdunbar 2000