/ Home // Projects // Workshops-School // Links-Collaborators // About // Contact // Reviews // Insight // Marketing Archive /
"...Jon Ferguson - in my opinion, the most exciting movement theater artist in town..."- The Rake 2008 "In just a few short years, Jon Ferguson has shown himself to be one of the Twin Cities’ best directors. If you wonder what Jeune Lune was like in its early days, Jon is your man. He’s gained quite a cult following and has uniquely talented actors at his disposal. To see one of his shows is to see beauty, humanity, and surprise; to be engaged, touched, and to leave the theater more fully yourself." - The Rake 2008 "The British-born Ferguson has distinguished himself in the Twin Cities as a director who emphasizes and ably captures the unspoken textures of everyday experience... Jon Ferguson has put his stamp on impressionistic and richly emotive original works that draw upon movement and sound to project non-linear narratives..." - Variety 2007
You're My Favorite Kind of Pretty - Southern Theater February/March 2008 "...'Pretty' plays like the love child of Monty Python, Jane Austen, and The Princess Bride"
"Jon Ferguson directs this collaborative show about young romantic love, and it tackles those things near and dear with consistent wit and lighthearted aplomb." "It's a physical work, with lots of silly-ass dancing, visual wit, and consistent liveliness... It's to this collaboration's credit that it serves up comedy with a serious heart and dares to look at romance with innocence, freshness, and no small helping of desire." - Quinton Skinner, City Pages
"Paper hearts and choo-choo trains, pastel colors and a rainbow river, bunny slippers and human-animal creatures occupy Jon Ferguson' s new movement-theater work... the 90-minute piece tiptoes along the high wire between sugary sweet and romantically poignant. That it falls on the side of the latter is a testament to Ferguson' s finely hued sensibilities" "With pitch-perfect timing, the three actors traverse the rocky terrain of contemporary love with a smooth, childlike simplicity... but as in Davis's paintings, there are edges, and a topsy-turvy outlook that continually destabilizes a sense of the ordinary." "Ferguson's play is filled with enough charm, quirk and heartfelt emotion to disarm almost any cynic." - Camille LeFevre, Star Tribune
"This milieu of sweetness and dark is matched by the onstage action, a mix of the metaphorical, the absurd, and the real." "Somehow, Ferguson pulls off the trick of keeping us laughing at the characters without ever introducing contempt for them, with the wonderful result that Pretty plays like the love child of Monty Python, Jane Austen, and The Princess Bride." - Lightsey Darst, MPLS/St. Paul Magazine
Deep Boy Summer - MN Fringe 2007 "...charms with exuberant volatility." - Minneapolis Star Tribune "...a mystery that languorously unfolds... the comic timing of the young cast is impressive" - Minneapolis City Pages
Or The White Whale - Spring 2007 “Or the White Whale” is stunning. Productions and performances like this don’t come along every day. “Or the White Whale” reads to this feminine spectator as a virtuoso exploration into maleness, its strength and weakness, its sincerity and its contradiction—a show at once tragedy and celebration." "The stage gleams with masculine energy: stomping, striking, singing, shouting, the actors revel in themselves, in their power." "...what most strikes me about this production is that it’s virtuous. Yes, that’s the word I want." - Lightsey Darst MN artists
"Highly kinesthetic in his approach, Ferguson hunts the mythic heart of Melville's fish story with physical poetry on a spare set at the Southern Theater... there are moments that rise to the level of real ritual." "Sailors sway to a wheezing accordion and creaking ship timbers... Captain Ahab is lofted by his mates in the tableau grotesquery of death" - Minneapolis Star Tribune
"...It’s the kind of spectacle you can only see on a live stage, and the kind of spectacle the Southern Theater was meant for. See it, and see it quickly, because it only has a two weekend run. You’ll kick yourself if you miss it." "While I haven’t seen any other stage adaptations of “Moby Dick,” I can’t imagine they would be any more engrossing, entertaining, or overwhelming than Civic Stage’s “Or The White Whale.” "Director Jon Ferguson, as we’ve come to expect, has collected a cast of tireless, multitalented performers throwing everything they have at this timeless tale. - Matthew Everett (In My Humble 0pinion)
Audience Reviews - Or The White Whale 2007 "Thank you for enhancing the quality of my life through brilliant theater, once again." - Vera Mariner "It left me feeling stirred up and kind of small in the big wide world, but grateful for people, and stories, and music, and messes, at the same time... congratulations to you and the powerful cast for making something so intimately epic." - Linnea Mohn
Ligustrum Vulgare - Fall 2006 “…plunges into American alienation in order to exorcise it. Ultimately, the show argues persuasively for connection by displaying the sick hollowness of its absence.” “Cameron and Hegg deliver much of their dialogue in depressive monotone, wringing uncanny humor out of their inability to muster a basic connection.” “…this is a work of theater that evokes the nauseous regard people develop for one another when alienation sets in.”
Please Don't Blow Up Mr. Boban - Summer/Fall 2005 City Pages Spotlight – Live Action Set “…nearly a year later what sticks in this writer's mind is the show's blend of the disarming and the ballistic. That is, its sweet humanity collided aptly with the physics of the concussion grenade… Boban pretty much captured lightning in a bottle, with a combination of choreography, clowning, and deeper stuff…” City Pages Artist of the Year Article “…the show captured the extremes of humanity one would expect to encounter in such a situation: It asked tough questions and featured moments of haunting terror, but it also offered moments of sweet humor and exceptional grace.” “I was too stunned at the end of this show to clap immediately. The sadness of the final scene was overwhelming, and it took a moment to recover--and then jump to my feet.” CITY PAGES Best of the Twin Cities Article, Best Stage Production: “In challenging times, artists can trump politicians and commentators (and critics) by grabbing hold of the ephemera of mood and tone that escapes concrete analysis. Live Action Set did so in this show, a freeform and elusive example of serious clowning that took on wartime tragedy with abundant silliness and an excess of heart. No one who saw and loved the show could describe exactly how, or why, it worked, but its jarring juxtapositions and rapid-fire vignettes captured a year in which rationality seemed to have been tossed to one side and deeper realities were thrust to the fore for those who had an interest in noticing them.” Star Tribune 2005 Outstanding Experimental Theater Work: Outstanding experimental theater work: Dance, music and comedy combined for surreal intensity in Live Action Set's "Please Don't Blow Up Mr. Boban," making it the Minnesota Fringe Festival's big hit. Finalists: Margolis Brown's "The Human Show" and Cynthia Hopkins' "Accidental Nostalgia" in Walker's Out There series. Review Quotes for Boban 2005: “MUST SEE - Shows of this complexity, bravery and ingenuity are usually imported by the Walker Art Center… a richly layered piece of comic/tragic performance art… at turns slapstick funny, abstract, physical, emotional and metaphorical — always riveting, always surprising” “Funny, moving, and sometimes even terrifying, Mr. Boban provides an intelligent and provocative response to the violence of our times… a work that should immediately be given an open ended run” “a raw and funny work that constantly invents itself with honesty, and displays an affection for the victims of war… Political theater can be a minefield of soapbox self-importance, "Boban" refreshes with a lack of pretense… thank goodness for their willingness to work without a net and allowing the space between actors to fill naturally with consciousness.” “Such is the raw originality of the psychic space Boban creates that a look around in the dark revealed tears, wide eyes, and expressions of deep shock at various points… I've yet to come across a satisfying description of precisely what this show is, or why it works (and it does)”
We Are Ugly But We Have The Music - Review Quotes: "...your show was beautiful... rough and singular and beautiful" "...both pathetic and powerful... In essence, the ensemble all flex, react, respond, and adjust impeccably" "Ultimately, this piece is an experiment in the limits of performance and collaboration." "This is a very gifted ensemble of performers and I’d much rather watch people like this take risks than play it safe. The best and most innovative stage work comes from folks like this jumping off an artistic cliff or two. Sometimes they fall with a splat, and sometimes much to my delight, they bounce. Go see this show and watch them bounce."
‘Everything and Nothing and Nothing all at the Same Time’ MUST SEE! “Delightfully quirky, this show is nothing but enjoyable… "Everything and Nothing" makes no pretensions; it's just plain good theater” ***** *****
Shakespeare for Breakfast - 2001, 2002: “Hilarious lessons in love from a stellar improv troupe who draw upon Shakespeare's most memorable love scenes.” “Laughs?... plenty. Line-ups?... long. A must-see?... Oh yes.” “You’ll have a smile on your face throughout the production, and maybe even learn something about wooing in the process. In a word, Shakespeare for Breakfast is brilliant” “Rife with playful banter, well written and superbly performed, this play is a prescription for laughter.” “Laser quick and razor sharp… the results can be pants-wettingly hilarious. A fine balance between hamming it up for comedic effect and going for the emotional jugular. A beautiful hour of theatre”
King Ubu -The Gate, London - 1998 Reviews: “A mix of classical parody and surreal farce anticipating avant-garde art as well as The Goons and Monty Python… sheer madcap inventiveness” “Alfred Jarry may have been motivated by his hatred of authority figures and the arrogance of power, but his art, as this exuberantly nihilist production testifies, clearly belongs to Dada.” “The cast is immensely versatile and physically ingenious” “The cast all play with great, driven energy and there is endless inventiveness in keeping with the plays lavatorial humour” “Alfred Jarry touched on something chilling about the human race, and Wright’s fine, frenzied production puts that across forcefully.” “A closely choreographed pile-up of dizzying invention” “The cast literarily risk life and limb crashing in and out of treacherous trapdoors as they toss themselves into this nihilistic brawl.” “…re-invents Jarry’s love of slang, smut and all things gobbledygook.”
Moby Dick – at the National Student Drama Festival Scarborough 1998 "...dreams turn effortlessly into rope, parting lovers into stark white seagulls, and ladders form vast whaling ships." "The immagination involved with this stylish production is startling and vivid." "The use of ensemble acting can be perilous, but here it rivals that of our national theatres, the design is worthy of our most pretigious designers and combined with the imaginative direction, produces a work utterly captivating." "... a glowing example of the most innovative type of theatrical adaptation." - Thomas Hescott
|