An Avalanche of ‘No’

Overview

A solo theatrical performance highlighting an actors driving ambition to play Macbeth, Shakespeares man of ambition, par excellence. Complicating factor: the actor happens to be black.

33 years ago, Jeffrey Cousar witnessed the great Andre Braugher play Macbeth at the Philadelphia Drama Guild. He has been gripped by a desire to perform the role ever since. This drive has endured through thick and thin, through ups and downs, weathering the obstacles many encounter on an artistic journey. Braugher died in 2023. Therefore, Cousar now feels compelled to jump the life to come, as Macbeth puts it. Now or never.

Combining Shakespeares language with events from Cousars picaresque life, with its absurd calamities and unexpected glories, Avalanche of No will interweave DJ culture, the life of a real-life porter, custody battles, physicalized images of Jean-Michel Basquiat, and 3-card monte into a frank display of bravura storytelling. It will lead audiences into a confrontation of dream with reality, of destiny with real-world circumstance, all filtered through a lens of Afropessimism – experienced by many, recognizable by all. Finally, Cousar plays some of Macbeth, enough to reflect on the Scottish King as a brother of sorts, victim to the fickle mechanisms of destiny.

Co-written with and directed by veteran experimentalist Whit MacLaughlin, and produced by Squaroots and New Paradise Laboratories.

Trigger warning: the piece ends in a casual self-beheading, the actor slowly buried in a tiny but powerful avalanche of fluffy white snow.

About the Artist

New Paradise Laboratories is an ensemble, an experience design studio, and an imaginarium that has been producing theater and other experiences since 1996. We have examined the utopian legacy of Philadelphia with pieces such as Planetary Enzyme Blues and Rrose Selavy Takes a Lover in Philadelphia. We have gazed at parties as events that caretake our dreams, wishes, and stories, with pieces such as Batch, Prom, and Mort. We have enhanced our understanding of pop idols with The Fab 4 Reach the Pearly Gates, Gold Russian Finger Love, 27, and This Mansion is a Hole: Hugh Hefner Throws a Party at the Center of the Universe. We explored the limits and value of indeterminacy in a series of works: The Adults, O Monsters, and Hello Blackout! We explored the expressive possibilities of the Internet with Fatebook, Extremely Public Displays of Privacy, and our one-of-a kind web-based exhibition space, The Frame. We have initiated a series of immersive experiences with Gumshoe at the Free Library of Philadelphia, Specter Vivant for Opera Philadelphia, and an ecology-minded experience design for the Academy of Natural Science called How To Get To The River. We sustained several generations of performers and designers, with two separate ensembles, trained from scratch, who have gone on to become some of the premiere artists launched from Philadelphia. We teach, we mentor, we reach out to newcomers, we continue to create new work. We have initiated a one-of-a kind Producer Training Fellowship, designed to help multi-disciplinary artists find their way as producers with broad interests not bound by the normal categories of siloed knowledge. Now we are creating and exploring solo performance as a viable medium of expression with works such as 707 Hazardous Moves and the current Avalanche of No. Upcoming: Celestial Vacation.Jeffrey Cousar, from Logan was enamored as a child with the boys who gathered to dance on the street corners. Not being allowed to hang out with them, he imitated