NTOK: No President

NO PRESIDENT: A Story Ballet of Enlightenment in Two Immoral Acts
Nature Theater of Oklahoma | Kelly Copper + Pavol Lîska
Dec 2024
$16
120 pages
5 x 7 inches
paper/perfect bound
ISBN: 979-8989946150

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A small but successful security company staffed with former actors has been hired to protect a certain precious theater curtain—and whatever mystery it conceals behind it. But things are about to get out of hand as the guards find themselves infiltrated by a rival security company composed of ex-ballet dancers, who are not only artistically more up to date, but also faster and cheaper, and who want to take over this important gig at any cost. In the end, as always in this contemporary world—where all conflicts are resolved through violence and cannibalism—life plays its fickle games of friendship, love, betrayal, and finally, we hope, redemption. No President is a story ballet of enlightenment in two immoral acts from the internationally acclaimed Nature Theater of Oklahoma.

PRAISE FOR NATURE THEATER OF OKLAHOMA

“Over the past several years the Nature Theater of Oklahoma has evolved into one of New York’s most talented ensembles…their shows are smart, witty, highly physical, and eager to twist notions of theatricality.”
- The Village VOICE

“At a time when even Off-Off Broadway productions seem infatuated with technology and spectacle, [Nature Theater of Oklahoma’s] bare-bones vision recalls the “poor theater” of the 1970s…The focus is on the actors’ voices and bodies. They animate the theater with a bravura physicality.”
- The New York Times
 
“The company boasts some particularly watchable performers…Neither traditional actors nor the kind of non-actors writer-director Richard Maxwell sometimes uses, they perform in a way that's off-kilter yet deeply rooted; their stage aura both repels you and draws you in.”
- The Village VOICE

“Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the most buzzed-about new troupe on the New York avant-garde scene, is certainly not for traditional tastes, its gleefully democratic spirit and old-fashioned showmanship certainly aims to please—and does so quite winningly.”
- The New York Times
 
“Deploying a fresh intelligence, an ingenious theatricality and a pleasingly odd sense of humor, the Nature Theater of Oklahoma has become one of the top alternative companies in New York.”
- The Village VOICE

“Nature Theater of Oklahoma stands on the frontier… The group applies scientific precision to their enactments of transcripts taken from real conversations; by dissecting contemporary speech, they reveal our splendidly otherworldly thought processes, and show how we struggle to articulate our individual realities…”
- The Village VOICE

“One of the most innovative theater companies in New York…Nature Theater seeks to unearth something that approaches beauty, or at least a fresh, strange kind of entertainment.”
- The New York Times

“The Nature Theater of Oklahoma takes aesthetic appreciation of everyday discourse to fascinating, funny, even perverse new extremes…in their inspired hands, the most unbeautiful, sometimes maddeningly hazy and imprecise language takes on a distinct and surprising appeal…You come away from their shows with an ear freshly attuned...”
- The New York Times

“Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska remind us that magical art can be made from even the most mundane material.”
- The New York Times

“Sprawling, bizarre, trivial, profound, holy, idiotic and quite resistant to criticism…as messy and capacious as life itself.”
- Time Out New York

CONTRIBUTORS

Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an award-winning New York art and performance enterprise under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. With each new project, we attempt to set an impossible challenge for ourselves, the audience, and our collaborators—working from inside the codes and confines of established genres and exploding them. No two projects are formally the same, but the work is always full of humor, earnestness, rigor, and the audience plays an essential role—whether as spectators or—just as often—as participants in the work. Using readymade material, found space, gifted properties, cosmic accident, extreme formal manipulation and plain hard work—Nature Theater of Oklahoma makes art to affect a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live.