Kind Words

Posted By Robert Matney on Monday, September 15, 2014 | 1 comment


We asked a couple of our colleagues (Beth Burns and Barbara Chisholm Faires) whom we’ve worked with, and who have been deeply involved with the development of Deus Ex Machina,  if they wouldn’t mind sharing thoughts about our past work or thoughts about the plans we’ve shared with them so that we could populate the “Testimonial” section of this site we are building. They both replied with humblingly-kind observations, which leaves us both breathless and eager to fulfill them:

From Beth Burns:

My prediction is that the Deus project will be not only a wildly entertaining and emotional journey for audiences, but also be noted by theatre scholars as an important step forward in the integration of digital technology, performance, and audience interactivity. It’s going to leave a giant Zeus-sandal sized footprint in theatre textbooks to come.

Robert Matney is a reliably awe-inspiring theatre-maker and thinker. His technology designs straddle the line between art and wizardry, and leave audiences both theatrically satisfied, and logically challenged. “How did he do it?” is the question I get more often in regards to Matney’s designs. The answer is, in very un-magician-like fashion, readily shared, as Rob is a great believer in sharing the wealth of his life’s work, and in doing so, he is recognized as a wildly influential in this burgeoning field. It’s an honor to work with him at every opportunity.

Liz Fisher is as sharp, intuitive, smart, and as strong a director as anyone I know. Her instinct and skill as a playwright, sublime.

Fisher and Matney together are a power team, a whirligig indeed of theatrical pleasure, excitement, and dizzying talent. That’s a ride that I want on.

From Barbara Chisholm Faires:

There is simply nothing like the breathtaking collision of the ancient and the future in the minds and hands of Liz Fisher and Rob Matney. Liz’ passion for the ancient and classic texts stands in contrast to her very modern, badass sensibility. But Liz’ deeply probing mind is able to ferret out and reveal the relevance that classics lend to our us in the 21st century. Meanwhile Rob’s mind is way ahead of where we live, breaking boundaries with technological applications and creations that awaken possibilities few of us have the capacity to imagine, much less implement. The heady combination of these two, looking way back and far ahead with a new and thoroughly original lens is nothing short of thrilling.