A rehearsal between two actors turns into explosions of angst, politics, literature, motherhood, forgiveness, and love—with snatches of song, a handful of dances, rants about life, and impassioned appeals to both the moon and Jane Austen. This play by Billy Siegenfeld explores deep themes through rehearsal, movement, song, and dance, embodying the energetic, rhythm-driven style of Jump Rhythm, a form of jazz dance focusing on raw physical and emotional energy and syncopation. Co-produced by Actors' Theatre and Jump Rhythm Productions

For Immediate Release:
JUMP RHYTHM RETURNS TO SANTA CRUZ WITH FORTITUDE AND GENTLENESS AT RIPPLE EFFECT ARTS FESTIVAL | SANTA CRUZ, APRIL 24-26, ACTORS’ THEATRE

Renowned theater company Jump Rhythm returns to Santa Cruz for the Ripple Effect Arts Festival with their two-person play, Fortitude and Gentleness, starring Billy Siegenfeld and Jordan Batta. Three performances will take place at the Actors’ Theatre: 7:00 PM on Friday, April 24, 7:00 PM on Saturday, April 25, and 2:00 PM on Sunday, April 26. Ticket Information: advance purchase available online at https://www.santacruzactorstheatre.org/.

Written by Emmy® Award-winning artist Billy Siegenfeld, the performances are full of rhythm, comedy, dance, and connection. Audiences will witness a rehearsal between two actors that turns into explosions of angst, politics, literature, motherhood, forgiveness, and love—with snatches of song, a handful of dances, rants about life, and impassioned appeals to both the moon and Jane Austen. All performances are based on Siegenfeld's concepts of the Standing Down Straight® method and the Jump Rhythm® technique, a vocally accompanied rhythm-driven approach to singing, moving, and dancing.

Audience Comments:
"The piece pulses with alternating moments of insecurity, joy, ego, trust, reassurance, loss, and friendship. The piece’s greatest strength lies in its transparency; these actors know what they’re talking about because they’ve lived it."

“BILLY SIEGENFELD AND JORDAN BATTA HAVE SO MUCH talent and electricity that it seems to spill out into the audience.”

“They (Batta and Siegenfeld) use a fluent mix of talking, singing, and dancing as a way to dig feet deeper into the ground and open their hidden hearts.”

Artist Bios:
Billy Siegenfeld - Billy Siegenfeld is a former rock and jazz drummer; a rhythm-charged actor-mover-singer; the founder, director, playwright, movement-maker, and music-arranger of the theatre company Jump Rhythm®; a Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence in Northwestern’s theatre department; and an author of essays and two books-in-progress, Democracy’s Energy and How to Make Gravity Our New Best Friend.

His teaching state-side and abroad is guided by an idea he calls Standing Down Straight® or SDS. SDS’s nature-made, gravity-grounding, anatomically fact-based approach to moving and vocalizing, whether onstage or in daily life, explores using the body and voice to produce speech-song-motion out of the endorphin-giving, bouncingly rhythmic behavior we did when kids, stopped doing when adolescents, and can delight in doing again when adults.

His most recent theatre piece is a two-hander he wrote and performs in with Jordan Batta titled Fortitude AND Gentleness aka Enough IS Enough – a play about a rehearsal for a play on the old theme: how awful and wonderful life is. He received a B.A. in literature from Brown University and an M.A with a thesis on African-American-originated swinging jazz from New York University.