Companies
My Favorite Leg Theatrical Company (previously Jynormous Theatre Company) is a “virtual” performance group founded in 2004 by writer and theatre artist John Crutchfield. MFL is committed to bringing together multi-talented artists for the creation and promotion of new, interdisciplinary performance, with an empasis on fusing high-energy poetic language with arresting imagery, live music, and dynamic movement. Company members change from project to project, and have included Derek Gagnier, Lara Marshall, Andrea Koch, Julia Horn, Emily Daughtridge, Alex Smith, Joe Sturgeon, Anne-Marie Welty, Julie Gillum, and Claire Elizabeth Barratt. MFL’s inaugural project was the premier of a new full-length, two-actor version of Crutchfield’s The Songs of Robert, an original lyric drama with live music, which opened at Watauga High School before moving to Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church in Boone, North Carolina. See the home page of this website for current projects.
Poison Frog Theatre was formed in 2006 by John Crutchfield, Joe Sturgeon, and Josh Yoder, for the purpose of creating new, collaborative, interdisciplinary, low-budget theatre in traditional American popular forms, such as the medicine show. Committed to an aesthetic of minimalism and presentation, Their inaugural project, The Flowers of Evil: An Immorality Play, uses the poems of Charles Baudelaire and the setting of a post-apocalyptic dust-bowl medicine show to re-imagine the story of Cain and Abel.
Blue Shift Theatre Ensemble is a group of multi-talented artists committed to the production of new plays and to expanding the forms of theater through interdisciplinary collaboration. Along with these artistic aims, Blue Shift was founded with the social purpose of making professional theater available at low cost to schools and communities. The company began in 1994 as a collaboration between actor Eric Johnson and writer John Crutchfield. Their first project was Brother John, a full-length one-man show about John Keats, written by Crutchfield, performed by Johnson, and directed by Sarah Miller. Keith Rokoske was technical director. The company went on to produce ur-versions of Crutchfield’s verse plays The Songs of Robert and Ruth, as well as the physical comedy SPORT, and The Fatherhood Project. Other members have included designer Chris Todd, actor Brandon Roberts, manager Tamara Hubbard, and cinematographer Adam Larsen. The company is currently on hiatus.