This April 14/15, we're excited to welcome Rough & Tumble (feat. Philly-based performers Lillian Ransijn and Dylan Smythe - last seen here in 2021's Wolfthicket) as they debut a new theatre piece to Le Mondo: GOOD GRIEF!
WHERE/WHEN
Le Mondo | 406 N Howard, Baltimore $15 Pre-Sale | $20 at the door
Start: 8PM | Run Time: 60 min.
After the performance, stick around for the after-party! Hang out, have a drink, and chat with everyone to tunes spun by DJ HOUSEDRESS!
ABOUT GOOD GRIEF!
GOOD GRIEF! is an up-close-and-(hyper)personal mobilization of the joy, companionship, pleasure, rage, and vulnerability in grief. This 60-minute deeply heartfelt dance-clown-theater-burlesque performance lays bare how pain is so close to pleasure, loss so close to love, and grief an absurd mixed up process of clinging tight & letting go.
The show was created by Lillian Ransijn and Dylan Smythe and directed by Francesca Montanile Lyons.
ABOUT THE CREATORS
A production of Rough & Tumble, created by Lillian Ransijn and Dylan Smythe, and directed by Francesca Montanile Lyons, Good Grief! is an amalgamation of artistic parts developed over the past five years. This marks Rough & Tumble’s first work presented at Le Mondo, and Dylan and Lillian’s second appearance at this artist-run powerhouse venue, having previously performed as part of Lily Kind’s project, Wolfthicket in 2021.
Previous works include: Rough & Tumble, Show & Tell in Philadelphia’s SoLOwfest
(2018), Rough & Tumble as part of the ONE Movement Project Atlanta-San Diego-Philadelphia (2019), Good Grief!, an Artist-in-Residence workshop showing, Urban Movement Arts (2020), and Rough and Tumble: Pickled Peaches and Herring in Cannonball Festival in Philadelphia Fringe (2022).
MEET LILLIAN
Lillian Ransijn (Lead Artist) is a multi-modal performance artist who implores the moving body and personal storytelling to plumb the depths of grief, loss, and missed connection. Driven by what some call the 6th stage of grief—meaning-making— their works for stage and screen find beauty in the grotesque and humor in the ludicrous challenge of moving through and metabolizing every day life/inherited lifetimes. They seek to see and be seen through the power, complication, devastation, intimacy, and immediacy of the body through their work as a choreographer, teaching artist, and intimacy coordinator.
A graduate of Emory University’s Dance and Movement Studies and Theater Programs (2005) and Pig Iron/UArts M.F.A. in Devised Performance Practice (2016), Lillian has performed with The Peekaboo Revue, Fourth Quarter Ensemble, Nichole Canuso Dance Company, Eva Steinmetz Project, Wolfthicket/Lily Kind, and Urban Movement Arts in Philly, and Susan Eldridge/DENSE, Greg Catellier, The Lucky Penny, Claire Porter, David Dorfman, Dance Truck, Ellisorous Rex and the Dance Machine, Fly-By Theater, Helen Hale, 7 Stages, Theater Emory, and Out of Hand Theater in their second home, Atlanta, GA.
MEET DYLAN
Dylan Smythe (Creator/Performer) is a lover of rhythm, bodies, people, and movement. He strives to apply lessons learned as a student of music, dance, and bodywork towards moving through instead of around/over/away from. Interest in play and improvisation has led him to work with creators such as Lily Kind as a member of the Wolfthicket ensemble, and with Lillian Ransijn in their 2020 workshop showing of Good Grief!
Following a decade-long passion studying the Afro-Brazilian art of capoeira, he continues in multiple queer-rooted Afro-diasporic dance styles, including House and Waacking, at Urban Movement Arts.
MEET FRANCESCA
Francesca Montanile Lyons (Director/Outside Eye) is a Philadelphia-based director, performer, and multi-disciplinary artist. Her work across mediums seeks to disempower shame through playful honesty and voyeuristic delight.
Francesca is Co-Artistic Director of Antigravity Performance Project, a tristate devising company that makes original performance with non-theatrical texts. She conceived of, wrote, and directed Dear Diary LOL- a play made with the words of real-life diaries of teenage girls in the late 90s/early 2000s- premiered in the 2017 Philadelphia Fringe Festival, followed by a run at FringeArts and two runs at the New Ohio in NYC in 2018. She is a member of Girl Poop, a “delightfully weird” femme foursome specializing in Pussy Pop Rock: short, high-octane ditties inspired by first-person experience set to simple and catchy beats.
Other credits include directing Legal Tender by poet Kyle Dacuyan (Antigravity at AntFest 2019 and FringeArts 2020), All 100 Fires by Donna Oblongata (2019 National
Tour), Fourth Quarter (First Person Arts Festival 2018), and Rough & Tumble (2018), as
well as performing/co-creating The Hopefuls (a satirical punk-clown band, 2016), Slaughter/ette (2015), and Nellie/Nellie (2014).
Her illustrations have been published in Prickly Pear Printing’s “Rescued” issue (2022) and Sought magazine’s Holiday Issue (2021). MFA in Devised Performance from UArts/Pig Iron School (2016). BA in Theatre Arts & Performance Studies from Brown U (2011).
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