BROADWAY GIVES SQUONK ROOM TO MOVE.

SQUONK OPERA doesn't have a corps de ballet--or a tenor. And vocalist Jana Losey is the only one of its performers with formal dance training. Directed by stage designer/flutist Steven O' Hearn, the Pittsburgh-based experimental musical theater group does have a multidisciplinary artistic vision that blends original music with comedy, puppetry, art, film, and movement.

The Squonk Opera show BigsmorgasbordWunderWerk, which relies on precisely that mixture, could be the five-member ensemble's recipe for Broadway success. While the intermissionless production, with its phantasmagoric kitchen set and pastiche of new and repertory material, plays the Helen Hayes Theatre, O'Hearn and musical director Jackie Dempsey are collaborating on a dance-driven production with choreographers Michele de la Reza and Peter Kope of Attack Theatre. Its premiere is slated for April 7 at Pittsburgh's Byham Theatre.

"Broadway is ready for a major upheaval, but hasn't figured out what that is," said O'Hearn, noting that the revival musical "has had its heyday. Shows such as Oklahoma! are only of archival interest," he said. "It's exciting to be doing this on Broadway right now. It's the first program of its kind--a harbinger of the future."

Shown in workshop format last summer at Manhattan performance space P.S. 122, Werk was slated for a November run at the Salon, an off-Broadway venue, but a scheduling glitch nixed the deal. "We couldn't open when we planned," said William Repicci, Squonk's producer. No other off-Broadway house was available. Via a phone tip, "I'd heard that closing notices for the comedy Epic Proportions had just been posted. I sent the material to the owner of the Helen Hayes, Martin Markinson. I learned that no closing notice had gone up--and it was many, many weeks before it did," he said. Markinson's positive reaction to the material led to the booking, however.

En route to Broadway, Werk--initially presented on the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's 1996 Voices for a New Millennium Series--has been "re-werked." There are new costumes, props and sets that take advantage of the Broadway house's fly space. "We've got the best level of production that we can have. The show has been totally re-staged and re-choreographed by Michele (de la Reza) and Peter (Kope)," O'Hearn said.

One of the biggest projects was to choreograph a dance for three three-headed puppets, in Dance of the Jawbone Glee Club, a new number. While performers interact with props and musical instruments throughout, "we're not using dance in a traditional sense," O'Hearn said.

But for neck & neck, the new ninety-minute multimedia odyssey, which is about to premiere in Pittsburgh, "dance is used as the subject (of the work), as opposed to as a support," said de la Reza.

Featuring four dancers--Rebecca Stenn, Dennis Birkes, Kope, and de la Reza--and freelance musicians David Eggar and Jay Weissmann, neck & neck is a three-part foray between reality and fantasy with a loose road-trip theme. It overlays pre-produced music (played by Dempsey and O'Hearn) and video (contributed by video artist Nick Fox-Grieg) with live performance.

At the invitation of O'Hearn and Dempsey, the choreographers joined the neck & neck project, which like Werk was commissioned for the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust's Voices for a New Millennium Series.

"We began (in early 1999) with four very strong personalities and unique aesthetics," de la Reza. The creative process has "been energetic, evocative, and chaotic," de la Reza said. Squonk's Broadway gig necessitated artistic rerouting, as rehearsals moved from artistic rerouting, as rehearsals moved from Pittsburgh to New York, but, she said, "we had to rise to the challenge and it pushed us in a new direction."