The Brick Presents
Das Ersatz
By Cosimo Pori and Travis Amiel
June 6-16, 2024

In Das Ersatz, Travis Amiel and Cosimo Pori star as two run-of-the-mill clowns going to work, getting fired, losing friends, and making new ones. They just want to do their best, but they fail every time! It feels like everything is replaceable, them most of all. But is everything truly expendable or is expendability the essence of being alive?

Das Ersatz combines electrifying dance sequences with the ancient wisdom of memes as our (un)loveable clowns embody their dizzyingly contradictory desires…if only they’d listen to their mothers! A prismatic assemblage of Bob Fosse, Vaporwave, and Pina Bausch, among many others; Das Ersatz exists at the intersection of tofu, margarine, and immaterial labor.

Through Amiel and Pori’s unique blend of misquoted pop culture and queer 😜 dance theatre, Das Ersatz challenges the binary of free will and determinism: for you can always make a change if you know that you’re terrible…but what if you just don’t know how terrible you’ve become? Are we living in the best of times or the blurst of times?

Lighting design by Connor Sale
Set design by Joe Burt
Illusions by Reuven Glezer
Makeup Consulting by Nina Lucia Rodriguez
Stage Manager Mack Fuentes
Poster by Abbie Preston @abbietpreston

cw: Contains fog/haze, cigarette smoke, bright colored flashing/strobing lights, and loud music. Includes content related to sex, eating habits, drug use, and features partial nudity.

Find them:
@heytravistravis
@cosimopolitan