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your name?" of the audience member before giving them a name tag with an erroneous or approximate "name" on it. Audience members are then given a "menu" of the play titles for that evening from which the plays are selected by audience members calling out their number - the first number heard by the ensemble being the play performed. Plays begin with the word "Go!" and end when a member of the cast calls "Curtain!" Many of the plays contain elements of randomness and audience interaction. The list of plays is perpetually rotating. Every week between two and twelve plays (determined by two rolls of a die by someone in the audience) are removed from the "menu" and replaced with new plays, written and staged over the course of the week.
36:, an experimental theater troupe of which creator Greg Allen was a founding member. Opening in Chicago December 2, 1988, the show ran 50 weekends of the year through 2016. As its subtitle states, the show consists of 30 original short plays performed in 60 minutes. All were written, directed, and performed by an ensemble. The plays tend to be a mixture of autobiography,
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The structure of TML since 1988 has remained consistent: a random ticket price for the show is determined by the roll of a die with a fixed amount (currently $ 9 for the
Detroit show) being added for each person. Upon payment, a member of the ensemble wearing noise-canceling headphones asks "What's
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movement with hefty doses of Fluxus, Dada, Surrealism, Brecht, Boal, and performance art thrown in. Greg Allen came up with the name from a case study of a young autistic child who would smash light bulbs and repeat, "Too much light makes the baby go blind. Too much light makes the baby go blind."
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movement and reflects their aesthetic of non-illusory theater, where, as Allen states it, "all of our plays are 'set' on the stage in front of the audience. All of our 'characters' are ourselves... We do not aim to 'suspend the audience's disbelief' but to create a world where the stage is a
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in a public announcement. Allen's revocation of the performance rights did not extend to the New York, San
Francisco, and London branches of the Neo-Futurists. However, in solidarity with the Chicago branch, the New York and San Francisco branches ended their runs of
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From 1990 to 2014, numerous volumes of plays from the show have been published. The book "Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind: 90 Plays from the First 25 Years" published by
Playscripts has been produced all over the world with over 100 productions a year.
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Subsequent productions were staged by branches of the Neo-Futurists in New York (1995-1998, 2004-2016), San
Francisco (2013-2016), and Montreal (2007-2012). A London production was staged in 2016 as part of plans for a permanent UK-based ensemble.
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As part of an interactive tradition, when a particular evening sells out, the cast orders pizza from a local restaurant, allowing the audience to order toppings. Only a single pizza is ordered, however, which the entire audience must share.
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Allen, Greg. "Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind (30 Plays in 60 Minutes): 90 Plays from the First 25 Years". New York: Playscripts, 2015.
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as an aesthetic, as well as the format of TML, are both creations of Neo-Futurist
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Radosavljevic, Duska. "The
Contemporary Ensemble: Interviews with Theatre-Makers". London: Routledge, 2013.
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Allen subsequently founded the
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100 Neo-Futurist Plays from Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind
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Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind: 30 Plays in 60 Minutes
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aesthetic is an updating of the early 20th century
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