Beautiful Burnout

Opening Night: March 1, 2011
Closing: March 27, 2011
Theater: St. Ann's Warehouse

Inspired during St. Ann’s acclaimed engagement of Black Watch, Frantic Assembly and National Theatre of Scotland’s Beautiful Burnout is about the soul sapping three-minute rounds that determine which young men become gods and which gods become mortal. Conceived by Frantic Assembly directors, Scott Graham and Steven Hoggett, and written by Tony-nominated playwright Bryony Lavery (Frozen), Beautiful Burnout was instigated by Hoggett’s observations of young boxers in training at Brooklyn’s famous Gleason’s Gym, where he became intrigued with both the beauty and brutality in the movement and distress of the live boxers. It resonated with the authentic drilling and soldiering he explored so brilliantly as choreographer of Black Watch, coupled with similar issues among working class youth seeking transcendent ways to escape, in this case, through amateur fighting. Set in a Glasgow boxing ring, with a powerful soundscape by Underworld, Beautiful Burnout is a stunning immersion in the visceral world of boxing that "surely, is the closest that dance-drama will ever come to the contact sport itself." (The Independent)