THE CRAZY LOCOMOTIVE

BY: Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz
DIRECTED BY: Andrew Krukowski
ASSISTANT DIRECTED BY: Beata Pilch

Opened January 2000

"The six stalwart cast members navigate the script's treacherous psychological terrain with ferocious good humor, clawing their way through each bewildering moment like predators on the hunt. It's a buffonish, perverse, assaultive, and exhilarating ride, just the kind Witkiewicz must have envisioned."
-Justin Hayford, The Chicago Reader

 

CAST: Beata Pilch, Nicole Wiesner, Wesley Walker, Troy Lindsey, Shannon O' Neill and Ryan Oliver
LIGHTING DESIGN: Richard Norwood
SOUND DESIGN: Ania Czerwinska
COSTUME DESIGN: Beata Pilch, Andrew Krukowski
SET DESIGN: Dave Correia
STAGE MANAGER: Temple Lentz
GRAPHIC DESIGN: Wesley Walker
VIDEO (EPILOGUE) DIRECTOR: Frank Carridi
VIDEO DESIGNER: Tom Pendergast
VIDEO EDITOR: Carrie Holt
VIDEO WARDROBE: Imma Curl

The Crazy Locomotive...
A band of degenerate criminals and artists commandeer an engine and seek to bring about God's judgment by racing at apocalyptic speeds into an oncoming passenger train.

Two social and psychological outlaws, masquerading as the locomotive engineer and his fireman, embark on a desperate metaphysical adventure in search of the ABSOLUTE.

The Crazy Locomotive is a superparody-of the worship of the machine and of the new arts of technology: futurism and cinema.

This is your brain on Witkiewicz.

ABOUT THE PLAYWRIGHT:

Stanislaw I. Witkiewicz: One of the most brilliant figures of European avant-garde, poet, painter, playwright, and an expert on drugs, Witkiewicz was an original philosopher and social critic of mass culture, post industrial society, and the rise of totalitarianism, as well as an early spokesman for a radically non-realistic theatre. He was also a pioneer in serious experimentation with narcotics. Witkiewicz first used drugs in Russia immediately before the revolution and prophetically recognized the growing importance which they would have in Western civilization. He saw the cult of narcotics as part of a desperate attempt to find meaning in a world that has lost all its color and strangeness and was growing more and more mechanized and inhuman. Politics, revolution, and even art were for Witkacy similar "drugs" offering modern man only temporary escape from the horror of existence. He killed himself shortly after the outbreak of war in September, 1939. Witkiewicz is known for other works such as: The Mother, The Madman and the Nun, The Water Hen, and The Anonymous Work.

ABOUT THE DIRECTOR:

Andrew Krukowski was born in Poland. From 1980-1984 he attended the Film School in Lodz, with alumni that included Roman Polanski and Krzysztof Kieslowski. After graduation, he worked in theaters throughout Poland, Germany and the Untied States. His first directorial debut was in 1985, Schaeffer's Audience: 3