Professional Direction
|
|
150
|
|
| Organic Theater Company, Chicago |
||
| If growing plants are ever to see full bloom, they need protection and nourishment during germination. The analogy, it seems, can apply to fledgling theatre as well. That, at least, is the concept behind the Organic Theatre’s Greenhouse, an artistic shelter and theatre provides for six non-Equity drama groups. In the year since the Greenhouse began, six shows have opened—and most would not have seen the light of stage without the cross- fertilization the Greenhouse provided. Stage Bill, Chicago “I love the throw visual razor blades at the audience.” Chicago Sun Times
Chicago Magazine |
||
| Little Caesar |
||
| Riccio’s real interest lay, I seems, not I the war between “We Serve and Protect” and “Cosa Nostra” but in the war between style and story. The result is that audiences can go to the Organic’s production of Little Caesar and appreciate a new step in the development of narrative in theatre. But never, to my knowledge, was style used as an active means to deconstruct plot. In Little Caesar it happened for the first time. Here style is used as an active force to arrest the movement of this (biographical) plot and to break it up into palatable, digestible morsels of scenes boarding on tableaux reminiscent of silent films. Style becomes the digestive juice that breaks down the story into immobile, sharp, elegant bits we can savor and assimilate. The resulting show is decorative, elegant, and civilized. It is only natural that Tom Riccio should be the director to take this important step: he has long been a believer in style-dominated theatre based on clearly readable movement going back to Commedia del Arte. Facets Features, Chicago “Little Caesar” is a bulls-eye
barrage of mugs, molls, and money…Performances are tightly controlled.
Riccio and choreographer Elizabeth Ruf have studied the early talkies.
Actors emot with snarls, sneers, and mothers’ sobs; they act, react
in jerky exaggeration…the Organic’s “Little Caesar”
is great fun. It show that even after a spate of misfires, Riccio and
company never lost their nerve, Mother of God Rico would be pleased. The Chicago Sun-Times
|
||
| The Conduct Of Life |
||
| The slamming of a door, the glow of a cigarette, the regular beats of a jumping-jack exercise routine—all assume a sudden power that leaps from the darkness and silence surrounding them…under the direction of Thomas Riccio, have found the right tone and mood for Fornes’ work. Richard Christiansen, The Chicago Tribune Directed by Thomas Riccio, the Organic production is worthy of Fornes’ vision. Riccio’s simple, almost declamatory style offsets the horror of events and lets us see down to the disease itself…The Conduct of Life provides not excuses. All its enormous craft is bent toward eliminating distractions. Toward isolating and displaying a brutal essence. The Chicago Reader
|
||
| Titus Andronicus (Featuring John C. Reilly) |
||
| Riccio’s production of displays his fondness for performance art. It’s a high-concept show full of arresting images…the images Riccio created for this production are certainly exciting, and they often elicit a visceral response fro the audience. (One man who saw the show complained that he had nightmares afterwards about severed limbs and bloody stumps.)…Still, anyone who sees this production will never forget Titus Andronicus. Riccio strives relentlessly for speed and energy. The Chicago Reader
|
||
| Betawulf |
||
| Betawulf evokes a sense of magic and myth that goes beyond the usual standards of “theatricality” back to the orgins of performance as an expression off awe and wonder. The Chicago Reader
|
||
With a lot of help from the show’s designers, Riccio and his 33 actors have created a swirling scene of futuristic kitsch for their “Betawulf.” … Riccio has cleverly deployed the action throughout the Organic’s hangar-like auditorium. The actors emote in the rafters, sing religious chants from the back of the bleachers, clamber up scrap metal totems and swagger down an entrance ramp bathed in a blood red light. Huge sheets of plastic form the rough waves under which Betawulf and Grendel’s mother battle gently undulating sheets of gauze serve as the sea Betawulf navigates. Richard Christiansen, The Chicago Tribune
|
||
Betawulf was conceived by the theatre’s Artistic Director, Thomas Riccio, and the production evolved out of an experimental workshop process under his direction…In the post-apocalypse world, the enormous economic and technological structure that dwarf us have been swept away. The survivors are left to put the fragments to new uses on a human scale, a scale on which heroic action is once again possible. This may be the most seductive aspect of this scenario, even more so than seeing the enormous structures laid to waste. The New Art Examiner
|
||
Hunt, who identifies himself specially as a composer of New Music, assembled his score improvisationally, working with actors, director T. Riccio, and Sam Pappas, the well-known creator of original instruments as works of art. The final structure is a road map, with crossings, cues, signposts, but with slightly different routes taken each night…Huge plastic tarps are waved in the air to create the effect of a vast lake and to add, not coincidentally, their harsh barrage of sounds and music. The Chicago Musicale
|
||
Rubber City |
||
Akron,
Ohio, “the once great, now blighted rubber capital of the world,”
is the backdrop fro T. Riccio’s Rubber City, a surreal comedy tracing
the last day in the life of an Elvis impersonator who happened to be married
to a Marilyn Monroe impersonator. American Theatre Magazine
|
||
| The Stranger In Stanley's Room |
||
| Kiss It Good-Bye |
||
| Akron |
||
| The Cleveland Play House |
||
| Bosoms and Neglect |
||
| Christmas on Mars |
||
| The
production at the Brooks is freewheeling and funny. As directed by T.
Riccio, everything works together to produce a consistent vision, however
spaced–out that vision is. The Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
||
| End of the World |
||
| Tom Riccio has guided his character with a fanciful but strong and almost unerring hand. Northern Ohio Live Magazine
|
||
| Sea Marks |
||
| Splendidly acted and directed and frequently a moving in-depth study of two contrasting characters. The Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
||
| Teatro Di Roma, National Theatre Of Italy |
||
| Il Ronzio Della Moche |
||
| La Mama Etc, New York City |
||
| La Mulata, The Buzzing Of Flies |
||
| Le Boursedes Artistes, Zurich |
||
| The Big Deal |
||
| The Big Deal is political
theatre. It is a plea for world peace that views war as the product of
irrational power-mad rulers. It proposes that ordinary people are much
the same the world over, but that our society encourages the average person
to snuggle into conformity and never question the rulers’ decisions. The Cleveland Plain Dealer
|
||
| New York Theatre Workshop, New York City |
||
| The Grand Hysteric |
||
| The Box (Featuring David Hyde Pierce) |
||
| American Theater Of Actors, New York City |
||
| Leather Heart |
||
| Publick Theatre, Boston |
||
| The Country Wife |
||
| Playwrights Platform, Boston |
||
| The Body Parts |
||
| Cabaret Dinner Theater, Cleveland |
||
| Follies: The Better Than Nude Revue |
||