Event

You Don't Know Jack

The Carpetbag Brigade adds a jungian twist with a dash of PTSD to Jack and the Beanstalk. YOU DON'T KNOW JACK is the surreal tragic comedy of an alcoholic dead man and the shadow of his wild dysfunctional family. Inspired by Robert Bly's The Sibling Society, this funny nightmarish fairy tale excavates the echo of trauma created by the casual and constant contact soldiers have with war. Young Jack grows up in a world overshadowed by the ghosts of his grandfather's death from alcohol and war-induced Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Trying to make sense of a mother who sings disturbing lullabies, teachers who eat children and a puzzling world of contradictory voices and dreams emerging from the grave, Jack plunges into a parallel inner world. Here, amidst a crew of grotesque characters shipwrecked between myth and reality, for whom life is a struggle not to become monsters, Jack penetrates the upside-down fairytale world enveloping him.

With original and traditional music played live onstage by the performers and a rich tapestry of objects and poetry, YOU DON'T KNOW JACK is a theatrical response to the moral and emotional wars that soldiers return home with. It invites us to dig in the dirt of our own imaginations and plant new seeds, stories and songs.

"The immensely talented cast of five are such strong performers that they imbue their dark, deliciously odd tale of a dead alcoholic and his messed-up family with a hypnotic intensity; it's impossible not to enter their dysfunctional, fragmented worlds"
- Tina Jackson, The Metro, Glasgow, Scotland