The cast of The Show and the other artists/owners of Cool Life KY Productions after the performance at the Tuska Studio on April 20. Not pictured is Cool Life KY CEO, Seth Tuka.
What is ... THE SHOW!
Part rock/folk/gospel/punk opera. Part poetry reading. Part art show. ALL created and performed by Lexingtonians! THE SHOW! is a one hour lesson on finding the courage and freedom to live the life you were meant to live. It is the story of a young rock star who loses everything, and in the process awakens to a path of spiritual purpose more fulfilling than he could have ever imagined.
There are six main characters in THE SHOW!
THE ALL SEEING EYE: The narrator. The voice of the universe. It is the ancient wisdom that we are all born with. Played by Sally Evans.
THE ARTIST SPIRIT: A cross between Karma and your intuition at work. It’s the creative muse that provides crucial objectivity to those fluid subjective boundries of life. Played by Theo Edmonds.
KOKO: The hero that lives inside us all. The hero that is hidden by ego and lives in a place of fear until the hero finds the passage back home and returns to love. Played by Collin Deatherage.
JEANIE: A siren. A temptation. A false savior. The embodiment those people and things that we attach our lives to in hopes that they can provide the answers that we are seeking for our lives and fill the emptiness that we feel inside. Played by Rachel Hanna.
THE RECORD EXECUTIVE: The personification of our ego. The embodiment of those forces at work inside of us that have but one goal in mind… to keep us separate from each other. That ugly and false voice that we hear that says…you’re not good enough to be loved… you don’t deserve happiness. Played by Charley Baker.
MAMA BREEZE: She is Mother Earth. She is Faith. She is Hope. She is the guardian angel that hovers above each of us. Played by Andrea Johnson.
How it began…
by Theo Edmonds
Four years ago… I moved home to Kentucky after being away for 13 years. The very night I moved home, I wrote a poem called “A Quiet Moment in Thunder”. This began a series of writings over the next two years on which The Show is based… entitled “The Serious Calling of an Optimistic Rebel Prophet” SCORP... the first live concert of the music from The Show was April 20, 2008 which was a full moon in Scorpio.
1 year ago, on a whim on a Thursday night, I went to a poetry group meeting at Common Grounds called the People of Poezia. That night, I met musician and poet Collin Deatherage. Immediately, we seemed to interact as if we had known each other all of our lives. Though we came at it in very different ways, though were at very different places in our lives, and though we had very different artistic talents… Collin and I shared a creative soul. We began collaborating over the next several months and almost effortlessly, THE SHOW! was born.
Also last fall, we began having the Cool Rooster Events over at the Old Tarr Distillery. The Cool Rooster events were based, in concept, on The Happenings which occurred in New York in the 1950's. It was at the Cool Rooster event during the astrological month of Scorpio last November that Vitale Buford brought this tall guy - with a lot of hair - up to me while I was covered in paint from a performance and said “Theo… I want you to meet Charley Baker.” A phenomenal guitar player, arranger and just all around one of the best guys I have ever met in my life. Charley took the raw music material that Collin and I had created and beautifully arranged the songs and score with us.
It was also at the same Cool Rooster Event that this beautiful and exotic woman came up to me and said “Hello, my name is Soryeda… I’m a fashion designer”. Soryeda was married to a guy named Chris Begley who I had gone to Transylvania University with in undergraduate school. Chris is now a Professor of Anthropology at Transy. Chris and Soreyda met while Chris was in Honduras on an anthropology project. They married and made Lexington their home.
It was also at this same Cool Rooster Event, that Seth Tuska and I first announced that we had this idea about a “creativity incubator” where all types of artists could collaborate on original cross-disciplined artistic projects.
It was at this same Cool Rooster event that Collin was the musical entertainment for the evening.
Last year, I had performed in a Paragon Music Theatre show at the Opera House. I met two gals in that show who I just adored… Rachel Hannah and Andrea Johnson. I loved their stage presence and voices. Their voices were actually the muses for two of the characters in The Show. So, I gave them a call in December and they came on board.
Also in December of last year, I did a live painting during the peace Sunday service at my church, Woodland Christian. The following Monday, I got an email from a gal named Sally Evans who had seen the performance and asked me to be on her WRFL radio show about people who are living their passion. I eagerly accepted and another beautiful friendship was born.
Add a few months and introductions to Charley’s musician friends Jordan, Sully and Jake, and here we are the cast of The Show! We are now also the artist/owners of our own creativity incubator…Cool Life KY Productions.
CLKY is an artists-owned commercial arts production company dedicated to forging new collaborative relationships between talented people with exciting ideas and classic business practices in order to create exhilarating projects of significant artistic and commercial value. Our exclusive focus is the promotion of Lexington-based creative professionals with original and contemporary approaches to the visual and performing arts who use their art to deliver spiritual messages of hope, courage and love.
Cool Life KY Productions is composed of three distinct entities:
Cool Rooster Studios: a 7500 sf, multi-faceted, visual and performing arts production facility located at 1151 Manchester Street
Tuska Studio: a multi-venue museum and fine arts foundry
Marketing KY: an investment, marketing and agency business unit being developed specifically to fund, promote and manage the intellectual property and creative portfolio of CLKY projects
The early defined goals of CLKY are:
To support and invest in people with vision who are innovative voices looking to build reputations and in supporting the economic development of Lexington’s creative industries.
To develop new and original culturally significant works and projects necessary for developing a national reputation in visual and performing arts production. Cool Life KY’s Production criteria for selection will be commercial potential, originality of concept and message.