Kelly Copper & Pavol Liska / Nature Theater of Oklahoma
Kelly Copper and Pavol Liška met at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire (US) before moving to New York. For the last 15 years they have been weaving a theatre form deliciously tinged with eccentricity that attempts to enchant daily life. At least to sing it, since very much like certain French films of the 1960s and 1970s, they use everyday words decorated with the flowers of musical rhetoric. Discussing from morning to night, acting, occasionally giving theatre courses in Europe, the couple works constantly but remains elusive. Do they do theatre, song, choreographies, performances? In fact, they luckily do all of them. Pavol Liška, who arrived in the United States from Slovakia when he was 18 years old, transmitted a very Mittel Europa taste for strangeness and irony to his company, founded in 2003. Its name comes from Central Europe: Nature Theater of Oklahoma, the troupe, as promising as it is mysterious, in Franz Kafka's unfinished novel Amerika. For the last five years, Kelly Copper, Pavol Liška and the Nature Theater of Oklahoma have been coming to Europe on a regular basis where their shows, No Dice, Romeo and Juliet and now the first two episodes of Life and Times are attracting growing interest. The Festival d'Avignon is welcoming them for the first time.
ADB, April, 2011.