The Rise and Fall Of Jean Claude Van Damme

Timothy Haskell’s The Rise and Fall, Then Brief and Modest Rise Followed By A Relative Fall Of… Jean Claude Van Damme As Gleaned by a Single Reading of His Wikipedia Page Months Earlier is told largely through puppets that beat the crap out of each other. Stylistically inspired by the writing of Kurt Vonnegut, especially Breakfast of Champions, this production is about the life and times of 80’s/90’s action icon Jean Claude Van Damme, the Muscles from Brussels, kind of. It can easily be about Steven Segal or Dolf Lundgren or Wesley Snipes or… It’s a redemption tale, or a cautionary tale, or a comedy of manners, or hard-hitting melodrama, and mostly absurd.