Sláva Teater (Sweden) and Pig Iron Theatre Company (USA) will present 8 performances of an American Premiere original work, SWEET BY-AND-BY, at the Arts Bank in Philadelphia as part of the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival.. SWEET BY-AND-BY, conceived and performed by Slava's Daniel Rudholm, directed by Pig Iron's Dan Rothenberg, and co-written by Dito van Reigersberg, weaves together the stories of two Swedish emigrants to early twentieth-century America: Labor activist and songwriter Joe Hill and Seventh Day Adventist Georg Rudholm, Daniel's great-grandfather. Sláva and Pig Iron's SWEET BY-AND-BY will premiere on August 29, 2008, and will run through September 13 at the Arts Bank, located at Broad and South Streets on the Avenue of the Arts in Philadelphia. Tickets are $25 and can be purchased at www.livearts-fringe.org or by calling 215-413-1318.

The performance:
SWEET BY-AND-BY is part folk concert, part biography, part rough-hewn multi-media presentation. Multi-instrumentalist Daniel Rudholm reprises the rousing union songs of Joe Hill on banjo, accordion, and harmonica, coupled with the story of the labor activist's life, work, and execution on trumped-up charges in Utah in 1914. Rudholm, a fourth-generation socialist, weaves together letters from his great-grandfather Georg Rudholm, another Swede who left his homeland to look for work in America. The result is a work of passionate folk songs and highly physical characters, performed partly in Swedish and partly in English, contrasting the strong religious convictions of Rudholm's family with Joe Hill's idealism and activism. Accompanied by Rudholm's hand-made animations, collages of historical cartoon and pen-and-ink drawings, this one-man-show is a poignant tale of Swedish emigrants at the turn of the twentieth century, and Rudholm's own search for meaning in the passions of his family and his musical forebears.

A Brief History of Joe Hill:
Joe Hill was born in Gavle, Sweden, on 7 October 1879, Joe Hill, also known as Joseph Hillstrom and Joel Hagglund, was an American labor songwriter and martyr who was executed in Salt Lake City on 19 November 1915.

He immigrated to the lower east side Bowery section of New York City via Ellis Island in 1902. His naive idealism about American society was soon shattered by the harsh conditions and exploitation of immigrant workers that he witnessed. He became an itinerant laborer, working in mines, the lumber industry, and as a longshoreman. He also developed skills as a hobo, traveling on freight trains and living off the land. Hill joined the IWW (Industrial Workers of the World or Wobblies) around the year 1910. He wrote songs based on the experiences of the working man of his day which were published in the IWW's Little Red Song Book.

His most famous songs, including "Rebel Girl," "The Preacher and the Slave," and "Casey Jones," became world-famous and were used in labor organizing drives and in rallies supporting strikes. Joe Hill came to Utah in 1913 and found employment in the Park City mines while becoming acquainted with the Swedish community in Murray, Utah. In 1914 he was accused of the murder of a Salt Lake City store owner, John A. Morrison, and convicted on circumstantial evidence.

There ensued an international battle to prevent his execution by the State of Utah. Hill's supporters claimed that the business interests of the West, especially the "Copper Bosses" of Utah, had conspired to eliminate him. While there was no direct evidence that this was true, the climate of opinion in the West and in Utah was decidedly hostile to the IWW and to Joe Hill. It is clear that, under today's laws, Hill would not have been executed on the evidence presented at his trial. President Woodrow Wilson intervened twice in an attempt to prevent the execution, but Hill was executed at the Utah State Prison in Sugar House, Utah, on 19 November 1915.

The Artists
Two physical theater companies from different countries - Pig Iron Theatre Company from Philadelphia, USA, and Sláva Teater from Stockholm, Sweden - came together in Berlin in 2000 at a creative residency hosted by Fabrik Dance Theater. The companies met again in 2002 and 2004 at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, where each group was receiving critical acclaim for their unique, ensemble created performances. A collaboration began to take shape.

Daniel Rudholm, one of the four artistic directors of Sláva Teater, had a proposal for a very personal project that would bring together his intense interest in American folk music and the early 20th-century labor movement. Already, director Dan Rothenberg and performer-playwright Dito van Reigersberg had received excellent critical response for the one-man-show they created about Federico Garcia Lorca, POET IN NEW YORK. Rudholm began to research his great-grandfather's letters, and to look for musical material from Joe Hill's life at Izzy Young's Folk Music Center in Stockholm. With Rothenberg directing, and van Reigersberg and Rudholm collaborating on a script, the piece began to take shape, with residencies in Philadelphia and at the Orchard Project, an artists' retreat in the Catskill Mountains of New York.

About Pig Iron Theatre Company:
Pig Iron Theatre Company has been kicking around Philadelphia since 1995, making plays about live music, dead people, neuroscience and thwarted love affairs through a unique method of collaborative creation and with a signature physical approach to character. Past collaborations have included work with the legendary director Joe Chaikin, playwright Adriano Shaplin, choreographer David Brick, and composer Cynthia Hopkins. Recent tours included trips to the Public Theater, Montclair State University, Utah State University, and the Ukraine. In October, Pig Iron will present the New York premiere of CHEKHOV LIZARDBRAIN, with James Sugg, Dito van Reigersberg, Quinn Bauriedel and Geoff Sobelle at the Ohio Theater, NYC. Then in February, HELL MEETS HENRY HALFWAY tours to Woolly Mammoth Theater in Washington, DC. Keep up with our peregrinations at www.pigiron.org.

About Teater Sláva
Theatre Sláva is a physical theatre company based in Sweden but with an international outlook. Founded in 1993, the company's work is rooted in Rudolf Steiner's pedagogics and finds additional inspiration from the work of various Polish physical theater companies and artists. Theatre Sláva is known for its high-energy performances, which thrive on group dynamics, visual effects, and human ritual. At the core of Sláva's interest is an exploration of the connection between voice and movement, which is often manifested in work and training that engages with highly physicalized choral singing. The company keeps itself busy training adults and teaching children as well as maintaining a repertoire of performances that include installation pieces, concerts, and community theatre works. Theatre Sláva has toured throughout Sweden, Europe and has traveled as far as India and Bangladesh.

Support for the American Premiere of Sweet By-and-By comes from the Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation, the American-Scandinavian Foundation, and the Consulate General of Sweden.

The creation of Sweet By-and-By is made possible in part by a grant from a professional development grant from the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, a program of the Philadelphia Center for Arts and Heritage, funded by the Pew Charitable Trusts and administered by the University of the Arts.

Sweet By-and-By was developed with support from the Orchard Project Theatre Residency Program . www.orchardproject.com

Venue:
The Arts Bank
Broad and South Streets, Philadelphia, PA

Performances:
August 29, 7 PM OPENING
August 30, 7 PM
August 31, 7 PM
Sept. 3, 7 PM
Sept. 4, 9 PM
Sept. 5, 9 PM
Sept. 6, 10 PM
Sept. 7, 3 PM
Sept. 10, 7 PM
Sept. 11, 7 PM
Sept. 12, 10 PM
Sept. 13, 10 PM

Box Office:
(215) 418-1318 or www.livearts-fringe.org

Ticket Prices:
$25

Go to www.pigiron.org or www.livearts-fringe.org for further information.

SWEET BY-AND-BY was developed, in part, at the Orchard Project in Hunter, New York, and at Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia, PA. Support for the development of this work came from the Independence Foundation and the Philadelphia Theater Initiative.