For half a century, performer, playwright, and professor Fred Curchack has carved a unique and personal path through the world of theater.
He’s created dozens of original shows, toured internationally, embarked upon spiritual odysseys disguised as theater, and theatrical odysseys disguised as spiritual ones.
But this month, the shape-shifting artist returns to where much of it began—Mercury Theater in Petaluma, the recently rechristened site that was long the home of the Cinnabar Theater, which evolved into the youth-focused entity continuing under that name).
Curchack has performed more than 60 of his works in the space and, in his words, it is an “artistic and in some ways spiritual home.”
Mercury Theater will host Resurrection of Freddy Chickan, a fever-dream retrospective stitched from nine of Curchack’s most outrageous and revelatory works. Expect music, shadow-play, movement, puppets, video projections—and a voice that the New York Times once said proves that his “imagination knows no limitations.” Proceeds benefit the theater company.
“I made a list… there were 62 of them that I presented [there],” says Curchack, listing solo work, duos, ensemble collaborations, and at least one opera. His daughter, performer and filmmaker, Alia Beeton, grew up there. His wife, actor Laura Jorgensen has performed there “endlessly.” The place, he says, is “very much family.”
And yet, Resurrection of Freddy Chickan is no sentimental scrapbook. Nor is it merely a survey of his greatest hits (though fan favorite elements will abound). Instead It’s a lucid descent into the subterranean terrain of the psyche, bolstered by comedic timing and landing audiences, gratified, into new ways of understanding themselves and each other. “They’re all very crazy, neurotic, unconscious kind of journeys,” he says. “I’d be an idiot if I proclaimed they were some sort of spiritual truth… but they represent my own very limited human attempt to make that kind of journey for myself.”
Curchack is a theater artist in the sacred sense—he’s waiting for Grotowski, not Guffman. The new solo show, he explains, is both a creative liberation and a logistical necessity. “The solo is an amazing compromise,” he says. “You get to work your ass off all day long if you feel like it—and you don’t have to beg for other people’s time.”
But make no mistake: for Curchack, solo doesn’t mean solitary. His aim is to bring the audience with him—downward, inward, and back again. “There’s this thing about a shaman descending into the underworld and bringing back something of value from the subconscious for the community and for healing,” he says. “All of that resonates with me.”
That resonance may register as humor. Or shock. Or maybe, if the conditions are right, something closer to bliss. “The world is in a state of deep suffering,” he says. “But it’s always been the case…With theater, when you touch those deepest levels of your deepest anguish, your deepest suffering—if you can uncover what that is—you may find yourself a kind of luminosity or transcendence or even bliss or delight.”
This is the tightrope Curchack walks: equal parts ecstatic, elegiac, and deeply entertaining. “I hope they’re funny,” he says of his shows, “but they also represent profound suffering… Theater can be fun. And part of it is that when you touch those deepest levels… something redemptive can happen.”
His body of work—which blends psychology, politics, mysticism, and multimedia—has drawn comparisons to a bevy of theater innovators, but Curchack ultimately defies categorization. He seeks to align with artists who engage with performance as spiritual pursuit. But he’s also aware that, in a “world of celebrity,” such pursuits can seem antiquated or overly earnest.
So he smuggles them in under the guise of spectacle, and the result is work that’s as trippy as it is trenchant—and so damn entertaining. “My wish is that it irritates people on some level—which ends up being useful to them ultimately,” he says with a sage laugh.
Resurrection of Freddy Chickan is a return—but it’s also a revival in the truest sense. It’s Curchack, once again, inviting us to suspend disbelief, descend together, and emerge with something strange and maybe even luminous. That he’s doing it in a place so woven into his personal history only deepens the spell.
“I’m so happy to be able to make a contribution,” he says. And if it raises a few shekels for Mercury Theater? Even better.”
‘Resurrection Of Freddy Chickan’ plays Fridays and Saturdays, May 23, 24, 30, and 31 at 8 pm. For tickets, please visit www.mercurytheater.org or call 707.658.9019. Tickets are $25 for general admission and $15 for students. Proceeds benefit Mercury Theater, which is located at 3333 Petaluma Boulevard North in Petaluma.
Note: This production contains depictions of and references to rape, abortion, suicide, decapitation, obscenity, profanity, insanity, racism, sexism, classism, fascism, and extreme irony.
