OZ ARTS NASHVILLE TO PRESENT A NEW VERSION OF THE ACCLAIMED PRODUCTION SINCE I SUPPOSE, A PARTICIPATORY, SITE-RESPONSIVE REIMAGINING OF SHAKESPEARE’S MEASURE FOR MEASURE, OCTOBER 7 – 23

Australian Theater Company One Step at a Time Like This Invites Audiences to Experience Shakespeare’s Classic Urban Play on the Streets of Their Own City Using Innovative Mobile App

NASHVILLE, TENN. – September 19, 2016 — This fall, OZ Arts Nashville will welcome the celebrated Australia-based contemporary theater company one step at a time like this for the creation and performance of a new version of their acclaimed work, Since I Suppose. In this unique production, audiences will hit the streets of downtown Nashville, one person at a time, for an utterly unique take on William Shakespeare’s classic urban play, Measure for Measure. Audience-participants will walk from one city locale to another, with a headset and a custom app on a smartphone to guide them. The company will be in residence at OZ Arts September 30 – October 6 while they rehearse and test the performance journey, which will then premiere October 7 – 23.

Performances will begin daily Wednesday – Sunday at noon and will run every half hour until 9pm. Running time is approximately 2 hours, with no intermission.  Each journey begins at a secret downtown Nashville location; OZ Arts will email the starting point to participants the night before their reserved time.

Shakespeare’s Measure for Measure explores city government, corruption and morality. Since I Suppose transposes the narrative to Nashville, employing shards of text, music, instructions and video to move audiences through the scenes of the story – sometimes as voyeurs, other times as active participants in the experience. Over the course of the performance, each audience member is guided to landmarks and venues throughout downtown.

Since I Suppose was originally co-commissioned and presented to sold-out audiences by the Chicago Shakespeare Theater in the fall of 2014. The Chicago Tribune said of the performance, “The experience feels like you are inside some giant movie, where only you know it is a movie… Since I Suppose is one of the most invigorating and revealing things you can do in downtown Chicago.”

About One Step at a Time Like This
Based in Melbourne, Australia, contemporary theater company one step at a time like this creates place-responsive and conversation-based works, focusing on the activity of the audience as an essential element in the work, exploring ways to allow audience members to find a point of relaxed engagement, involvement and activity in the imagined and real worlds unfolding around them. They premiered Since I Suppose in Chicago in September 2014, following on the success of their site-responsive theater piece en route, created for downtown Chicago in 2011. The company has created more than twelve original works since 2001, and has been presented at prestigious institutions across the globe, including London Olympics, Seoul Performing Arts Festival, Traverse Theatre Edinburgh, Melbourne International Arts Festival, Auckland Arts Festival, and Clonmel Junction Festival (Tipperary, Ireland), among others.

About OZ Arts Nashville
Since opening in 2014, OZ Arts Nashville, a 501(c)(3) contemporary arts center, has changed the cultural landscape of the city. Housed in the former C.A.O. cigar warehouse owned by Nashville’s Ozgener family, OZ Arts brings world-class performances and art installations to the city, and gives ambitious local artists opportunities to work on a grand scale. The flexible 10,000 square-foot, column-free venue, nestled amidst five acres of artfully landscaped grounds, is continually reconfigured to serve artists’ imaginations, and to challenge and inspire a diverse range of curious audiences.

OZ Arts, under the artistic leadership of Lauren Snelling, has presented luminaries such as Philip Glass and Tim Fain, Tim Robbins’ The Actors’ Gang, Kyle Abraham and Abraham.In.Motion, Peter Brook’s Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, the Trisha Brown Company, and SITI Company/Bang On a Can All-Stars. OZ Arts serves as a catalyst for local creativity through its TNT (Thursday Night Things) program, which fosters collaborations between Nashville-based artists from varying creative disciplines; and its newest series the Artists’ Lounge, which gives artists opportunities to develop work before a live audience, including fellow artists, in the venue’s intimate lounge space.

For more information, please visit http://www.ozartsnashville.org/.

OZ Arts Nashville Media Contacts

Nashville press, please contact Amy Atkinson at Amy Atkinson Communications, 615.305.8118 or amy@amyacommunications.com.

National press, please contact Blake Zidell at Blake Zidell & Associates, 718.643.9052 or blake@blakezidell.com.