Who mixes these elixirs?

Brett Keyser (director, designer, writer, performer) lights the flame. He is a whirring nocturnal swallower of moths, flies, and other half-truths. (If you prefer whole-truths, keep scrolling…)

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Collaborators

Glen Berger (playwright) subsists on moonbeams; a rare bird. Look for him HERE.

Raymond Bobgan (consulting director) catches scarabs and raids wasp nests. When not so occupied, he is to be found amidst large swarms HERE.

Tracy Broyles (costumes, sets, properties) sips night-blooming cereus (Epiphyllum oxypetalum), or kok’oi ‘uw, the ‘ghost smell’. The daylight now finds her HERE.

Norman Stuby (properties) seems exceedingly pleasant for one who habitually feasts upon field mice and small rabbits, the occasional mole… You will find traces of this creature HERE.

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photo: Kim Weimer

 

Brett Keyser is a performance artist whose Nightjar Apothecary produces solo and collaborative works exploring fiction-enhanced episodes in the history of science and technology. Keyser served four years (2006-09) as Artist in Residence at the American Philosophical Society (APS) Museum where he created and performed numerous works, including Darwinii: The Comeuppance of Man (2009), a collaboration with playwright Glen Berger; TANN, HORNS, & DEAD DOGS: Tales of Civic Effluvia (2008); You Are Here (2007-08); Turkish Delightenment (2006-07); and Horridus! Horridus! Name-calling in the Wilderness (2003-04).

He is a North American Cultural Laboratory (NACL) associate artist, and was a core collaborator with the performance group Wishhounds with whom he co-created and performed Blue Sky Transmission: A Tibetan Book of the Dead (2002, La Mama E.T.C., Cleveland Public Theatre), Even Without Angels (2001, CPT), and The Hidden Twin (2001, Philly Fringe). With Cleveland’s Theatre Labyrinth he co-created and performed in five original productions, including The Sibyl (1998-2000), an internationally touring solo performance inspired by the writings of Pär Lagerkvist and Giordano Bruno.

He is a 2010 recipient of an Independence Foundation Fellowship in the Arts. His APS projects have received funding from the Pennsylvania Humanities Council and the Pew Foundation’s Heritage Philadelphia Program. With Wishhounds he was co-recipient of a 2001 Rockefeller Foundation MAP Award.

Keyser has worked with primary and secondary school students in San Francisco, Cleveland, and Philadelphia, and with university students at The University of the Arts, Drexel University, Moravian College, Oberlin, and Michigan State. He has worked with the Franklin Institute’s Traveling Science Show, and has led workshops and public programs at Cuyahoga Valley National Park (Artist in Residence, 2001), Cuyahoga Valley Environmental Education Center, Great Smoky Mountains National Park, Independence National Historical Park, The American Philosophical Society, The Chemical Heritage Foundation, and the Schuylkill River National & State Heritage Area.

Trained as a performer at Odin Teatret in Denmark, Primus Theatre in Canada, and at the San Francisco School of Circus Arts, he also holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from the dear departed Department of Folklore and Folklife Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.