About Rods and Cables

Rods and Cables is a fun original 3-Legged Dog multimedia production.  It is a wild, vulgar, cartoonish approach to desire and despair, exploring our common fear of losing trust in the people we love the most.  This ambitious first work written and directed by 3-Legged Dog’s veteran designer Allison M. Keating creates wild chaos with her elaborate bizarre designs and compelling characters all within an intimate cabaret environment.  This play will show you the joy of experiencing new things, even if it hurts a little.

Ms. Keating’s lustrous bizarre world serves as a platform to scrutinize and examine the outrageous and often horrific actions of the characters; The Sexy Clown, That Woman, The Sultry Flight Attendant, and The Little Man with a Big Costume.  That Woman, robust, jealous, and hopelessly in love with The Sexy Clown, suddenly births The Sultry Flight Attendant, a fully-grown blonde bombshell with the intellectual capacity of an 8 year old, who is thrilled with the new and exciting experiences that life brings. From the joy of eating, to her budding sexual desires, she can’t get enough!  The Sultry Flight Attendant is overjoyed with the immediate attention the Clown gives her, only to be misled into debauchery and eventually rape.  No matter how That Woman tries to protect The Sultry Flight Attendant she cannot escape the imminent doom and despair that is the fate of all of the characters.  The Little Man with a Big Costume (an acrobat and Puck-like figure) is the only character who is able to fully comprehend the absurdity of his fellows’ actions.

The play has no set time period or place.  It is a highly stylized collage of imagery drawn from American stereotypes such as cowgirls, the circus, and 1930’s Big Band Jazz.  The set consists of an expandable red hallway, expandable projection screens, an old fashioned radio, an endoscope, a kiddy pool filled with applesauce, a megaphone on a lamp post, thousands of yards of string and 100 practical lights controlled by Arduino.  Arduino is an open source electronics prototyping platform that can read sensors and effect it’s surroundings.  This robotic control system will be programmed to manipulate the color and intensity of the hundreds of lighting units on stage to be choreographed with the music.  The costumes range from period dresses made out of donuts to modern Flight Attendant garb.  HD Video is skillfully integrated into the set on expandable projection screens to blur the boundaries between nightmares and real human fear.  The audience will sit in a two tiered circus ring.  Audience members in the lower private box seats will be served wine and olives while the rest are in the upper deck, much like rowdy baseball bleachers with a keg of beer and shelled peanuts.  The HD video will also feature a 10 minute short film about the jealousy that results from adultery among the modern day wealthy.  Original music will accompany a choreographed square dance, a tango, and a boxing match on stage, as well as two string quartet compositions and a solo cello piece.

This piece could be described as avant-garde, vaudevillian, experimental, pornographic or circus like.  It will remind us of how great it is to be silly, and encourage us to see awesome beauty in art and music in a completely adult and nasty world.

Rods and Cables is a 3-Legged Dog production.