The Group
Dodeska, 2008-2009
written, co-directed, and designed by Robert Quillen Campco-created and performed by Ryan Eggensperger
music by Alec Duffy
co-directed by Alexis Poledouris
presented in collaboration with Climate Theater, San Franscisco
and Triskelion Arts, New York
PRESS
"The Group is one of those parodies that's so good, you almost don't know it's a fake... Ryan Eggensperger plays the Leader to eerie perfection, performing a spot-on script by Robert Quillen Camp, who personally must have been exposed to The Secret to write lines this good..."
- SF Examiner
"The Group offers communion through buoyantly in-your-face comedy in a droll send-up of EST-like self-actualization programs. Such material is, of course, kept evergreen by the transmigration of the form into more recent incarnations like The Secret or The Landmark Forum. Nevertheless, a spoof of the subject might easily have seemed stale but for the inspired writing, sharp humor, and simple yet slick production gracefully managed by creator Robert Quillen Camp and the Dodeska Performance Ensemble. The show features a rich aural environment and a dexterous, committed performance by Ryan Eggensperger as your grinning, self-confidence-oozing and darkly monomaniacal group leader."
- SF Bay Guardian
"One of the cleverest aspects of the witty, 60-minute Dodeska Performance Ensemble piece is not taking itself too seriously while still making stinging observations about America's obsession with the self-help movement. It nails our insatiable appetite to consume enlightenment as if it were Skittles - sugary, cheap, bite-size and disposable. Gimme, gimme."
- San Jose Mercury News
"The piece is a tribute to understatement and absurdity, as the soothing voices coming through the headphones calmly lead us into the program with such confidence and reassurance that in a very short time, even something as absurd as a talking giraffe makes sense... it promotes a sense of delight through its unflappable goofiness and Eggensperger's increasingly silly leadership through the various aspects of teaching how the program works...."
- Contra Costa Times