HoF on Tour -

HoF on tour

"...cerebral, audacious and a tad pretentious. Embraces a mile-wide streak of absurdism...this show is so full of unexpected pivots and clever concepts that it keeps the audience laughing." - KC Star

"...hard not to love...superb performances. Remind[s] there are still-to-be-discovered ways for theater to tell a story." - Las Vegas Review Journal

"Avant garde, but no pretenses of having great artistic merit...nudity, simulated masturbation...hilarious." - KC Stage

@ Helen Hocker Theater (Topeka, KS)
January 6 @ 8 PM

@ The 12th Annual Revolutions International Theatre Festival,
The X Theater (Albuquerque, NM)
January 12 @ 8 pm, January 13 @ 10 pm

@The Box Office Theater (Las Vegas, NV) w/ Special guests
January 19 @ 8 pm
@The Las Vegas Little Theatre (Las Vegas, NV) w/ Special guests
January 20 @ 8pm

@The Brick (Brooklyn, NY)
March 7-18

Written by Buran Company
Directed by Nikolas Weir
Original music by C.S. Luxem & Casey Mraz
Original Lyrics by Henry Bial and Adam R. Burnett
Set/Light Designed by Nick Kostner
Costume Design by Christy Artzer

Performances by Henry Bial, Brady Blevins, Adam Burnett, Thom Chrastka, Hilary Kelman, Jud Knudsen, Ben Leifer, C.S. Luxem, Geraldo Mercado, Ariana Miner, Casey Mraz, Ruth Palileo, & Val Smith

Henry Bial as The Man in the Purple Suit

Henry Bial has worked in a variety of capacities -- director, performer, designer, playwright, dramaturg, and lighting operator -- in university and professional theatres in New York,Kansas City, Boston, Minneapolis, and Albuquerque. A proud member of Buran since 2009, he was last seen on stage as The Man in the Purple Suit in The House of Fitzcarraldo at the 2010 Kansas City Fringe Festival. In "real life," Henry teaches theatre history and performance theory at the University of Kansas, where he also serves as Chair of the Department of American Studies. His most recent book is Theater Historiography: Critical Interventions (University of Michigan Press, 2010), co-edited with Scott Magelsse

Brady Blevins as The Native

Brady Blevins moved to New York after graduating from the University of Kansas and subsequently traveling the country and performing in over 30 states. Along the way he worked with The National Theatre for Children and The Hampstead Stage Company, performed everything from Andrew Lloyd Weber to Neil Simon with The Great Plains Theatre. As a company member of Buran he has performed in A Greater Release, Nightmares and Money Buckets! Favorite roles include Andrey in Chekhov’s Three Sisters, Mr. Martin in Ionesco’s The Bald Soprano, and Jerry in Albee’s The Zoo Story. Most recently he appeared in Title:Point Production's Gradient Haircuts produced through the HousingWorks organization. He is a member of the Equity Membership Candidate program.

Adam R. Burnett as Werner Herzog/Adam R. Burnett

Adam R. Burnett is a theatre artist, writer and producer originally from Topeka, KS. He is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Buran Theatre Company where he has directed most every production since 2006. Adam writes performance works, memoirs and short stories that reconstruct history and build new mythologies with an eye on place, travel, and sound. His performance works have been produced internationally and his writings have been published in a variety of forms, both print and on-line.

Hilary Kelman as Chorus/Hilary Kelman

A resident of Harlem, Hilary has recently been working with 12 Miles West Theatre Company in Rutherford, New Jersey laying groundwork for an ensemble project with Rutgers University Professor Emeritus and Shoestring Players founder Joe Hart. Prior to arriving in NYC, she was working with the Merry-Go-Round Playhouse in Auburn, NY as an actor and educator in their youth theatre company. She performed and taught arts workshops for students K-12 throughout Central New York and drove Sprinter vans through blizzards. Hilary also spent a season touring the east coast with the Hampstead Stage Company in productions of "A Christmas Carol" and "Oliver Twist". Back in hometown Kansas City, she joined the Mystery Train for two delightfully murderous productions where she became a proud owner of a genuine hatbox and wore her first catsuit. She also improvised regularly at Comedy City and as an original member of Thunderdome-champion Stitch Tactics. Hilary's involvement with Buran started back at the old University of Kansas where she got her B.A. in French and Theatre. She has been absolutely taken with how this company has flourished, expanded, and persevered.

Jud Knudsen as Klaus Kinksi/Jud Knudsen

Jud Knudsen is a Norwegian Irish Swede hailing from Minneapolis, MN. If you have any questions or for a complete listing of credentials and accomplishments, actual or otherwise, please contact Adam R Burnett.

Huge Val as Chorus/Huge Val

Huge Val is like a ravenous chipmunk without the nuts. Fortunately, she makes up for her shortcomings by listening to 80s ballads about love and suicide. When she is not teaching people to do the same, she is pointing out what everyone else is doing wrong. She marks her world with a plethora of red Xs. Her previous theatrical endeavors with Buran include Bad Dreams (Ass Director) and Cash in Cases (Call Girl) and, more recently, Boat Mountain (M. Stache). She would like to thank her team of relatives, and she looks forward to your saliva.

Geraldo Mercado as Les Blank/Geraldo Mercado

Geraldo Mercado is an artist who works in a variety of mediums: film, video, ink, flesh.

Christopher (C.S.) Luxem as C.S. Luxem

Christopher Luxem listens and records and makes sounds in a variety of settings. He has composed and/or performed live and/or phoned it in in every Buran production since 2007.

Casey Mraz as Mars Mraz

Casey Mráz , sometimes Mars Mráz, is a playwright, musician, composer, designer, filmmaker, educator, father. His plays include The Cotton Plantation, Lawrence Welk Visits a Colorado Coal Camp and The Suicide Song, which he co-wrote with Adam Burnett. He is currently working on an adaptation of the myth of Aphrodite and her affair with Ares, the god of war, titled The Birth of Aphrodite. Simultaneously, he is writing an original score for the piece. His plays are often inspired by mythologies, histories, familial relationships and explorations into the intersections of time and space.

Amy Virginia Buchanan

Amy Virginia Buchanan is a theatre artist, creator, actor, clown, director, dialectician and generally fun-loving gal from Stillwater, Oklahoma. She has studied theatre at both the University of Kansas and Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre. In New York, she serves as the Co-Director of Title:Point Productions, the Director of the Acting Company for Sanguine Theater Company, and a member of the Buran Theatre Company. As a performer, she has ranged from Lady Macbeth to "Woman in bar fight in Havana" to Magical Assistant to Midwestern Mom. As a director, she has had her way with 4.48 Psychosis and The God Diaries (NY debut at The Arthur Seelen Theatre). In 2011, she facillitated the New York Debut of her lesbian vaudeville sister act as a part of Destructo Snack USA at Dixon Place. She is presently working with Title:Point on the creation of an audience immersion piece to premiere at the Housing Works Bookstore Cafe this winter.

Nicholas Kostner

Nicholas Kostner is a scenic and lighting designer based in Brooklyn. His work with the Buran Theatre Company includes designs for House of Fitzcarraldo and Nightmares. He designed the set for the off-broadway production of Triangle at 59E59 and has assisted on numerous regional and Broadway shows since moving to the east coast. His past designs in the midwest and on the west coast include productions of The Magic Flute, Tristan Und Isolde, Harold Pinter’s Betrayal, The Shape of Things, and Brian Friel’s Translations. Other work includes the production design for the feature film Reach.www.nicholaskostner.com

Becca Barnet

The southern gal that'll skin your kill and nail that fucker to the wall before planing the door of your new chifforobe.

Christy Artzer

Christy Artzer is a seamstress and costume designer from Wamego, KS. She graduated from the University of Kansas in 2008 with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Costume Design and a minor in French. While at KU, Christy designed costumes for the Undergraduate One-Act Project The Bald Soprano, directed by Dale Buchheister, and was a costume craftsperson for the world-premier production of The Girl, The Grouch, and The Goat. After college, Christy moved to Kansas City, where she designed costumes for Buran’s The House of Fitzcarraldo. Her most recent design work was for a production of Shakespeare’s Love’s Labour’s Lost at the River’s Edge Theatre. She also produced numerous costumes for productions at Starlight Theatre and the MUNY Theatre while working as a cutter/draper at Kansas City Costume Company. Christy currently resides in Kansas City, MO and is the owner of Stitched Artz Alterations in Overland Park, KS.

Nikolas Weir

Nikolas Weir is the Artistic Director of Theatre for/of the Blind, perhaps the most audacious theatrical investigation to occur in the past three decades. He has worked extensively with Hermann Doucher's Figuren vom Dunklen Theatre in Frankfurt, Germany, most recently the opera, Ban on Love.