WROUGHTLAND
2016
Created for the 2016 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, WROUGHTLAND transformed Philadelphia’s historic Latvian Society into an overgrown fairy tale world where familiar stories had lost their innocence.
The experience started before the audience even entered the theater. Guests stepped through a wardrobe that opened into a fully immersive magical forest. The entrance became one of Montana’s most effective transformations of a space, immediately removing the audience from the outside world and placing them inside WROUGHTLAND.
Montana reimagined familiar fairy tale characters inside this world. He starred as Cinderella, emerging as a total mess before transforming into a bombastic queer Cinderella who was no longer waiting for a prince and was ready to take her shoe back.
Another part of the production explored Beauty and the Beast from a much more adult perspective. Instead of a story about falling in love with a beast who eventually becomes a man, Montana looked at what happens when the man you love turns out to be the beast. The story became an exploration of love becoming violent once the fantasy of romance disappears.
-
The final number brought the fantasy to a sudden halt. The magical forest closed in around a hospital bed, where one man sat beside his dying partner. What began as a world built from the hope and fantasy of childhood ended somewhere much more real. Montana used the fairy tales he grew up with to explore something they could never prepare him for, the grief of losing someone you love.
WROUGHTLAND became one of Montana’s most critically recognized productions at that point in his career. DC Theater Arts awarded the production five stars and named it “Best of the 2016 Philadelphia Fringe.” The publication called Montana’s set design “phenomenal” and described the show as “one of the most impressively orchestrated performances I have ever seen.”
The Philadelphia Inquirer also selected WROUGHTLAND as one of twelve Fringe productions not to miss.
WROUGHTLAND began with the promise of happily ever after and ended with the understanding that growing up means learning how to navigate life even after the fairy tale falls away.
