Extra Gluten Required __

Ferdinand Lewis, American Theater, March 1995, "How to Sledgehammer Theatre" as part of the "The Bad Boys of San Diego Theatre" issue.

"...the company hit the bleak landscape of San Diego's low-chic galleries and loft-culture desperadoes, mostly hidden from view in that white-collar Navy town. They produced in storefronts, a parking garage, a 20,000 square foot industrial space, a canyon, literally dodging the fire marshal at every step."

Allan Havis, TheatreForum, 1991

"...living helter-skelter, Sledgehammer survived by tenacity, bravado and street smarts. Like ornery alley cats, they outlived fires, eviction, casting calamities and other natural disasters. More miraculously, Sledgehammer slowly won the hard-earned esteem of Southern California's critical establishment...a Sledgehammer cult emerged. One Friday night preview of their world premiere of Mac Wellman's 7 Blowjobs turned into a happening as excitement buzzed the crowd as at a rock concert. The Wellman production played to sold out houses and went in to an extended run of several months. Moreover, the author (and the press) praised the production for its nasty comic brio and blistering precision."

Sept 1, 2015
James Hebert, San Diego Union-Tribune

“The sprawling Without Walls Festival — the second La Jolla Playhouse celebration of immersive and site-based theater — just got a little bigger, with several newly announced additions… Also added …Heaven on Earth, presented by San Diego's own Sledgehammer Theatre, a pioneer of alternative theater here.

Sledgehammer, which has its roots at UCSD, returns with Charles Mee’s Heaven on Earth, a site-specific presentation around the Powell Structural Lab

The piece, a play with music and movement, reunites Sledgehammer co-founders Scott Feldsher (who will direct) and Robert Brill (who is designing), along with a team of fellow Sledgehammer veterans as well as newcomers.

Feldsher, now a San Diego-based educator and director, and Brill, a Tony Award-nominated designer (and recent Playhouse resident artist), launched Sledgehammer in the 1980s with the now L.A.-based tech expert Ethan Feerst, who directed many of the company's early shows. (Last year, the rebooted Sledgehammer mounted a production of Samuel Beckett's Happy Days, the company's first project in six years.)

The Playhouse blurb on the WoW work: "In Heaven on Earth, the apocalypse is nigh, but there is a sense time has run its course and something new is about to emerge from the spent fuel of what’s gone before.

"Like his Man with the Gas Can who quietly smokes a cigarette while reminiscing about past love, what will be left if he drops the cigarette into the can? Mee seems to suggest he won’t do it because there is still hope, and there always has been. Hence, Heaven on Earth offers the promise of a future, perhaps even a Utopia, if we plant the right seeds; seeds based on human goodness, love, and community, not the seeds of mass production."