ABOUT AHONEN
Ahonen is an internationally celebrated playwright, theater director, and filmmaker.
Ahonen, a world-weary malcontent, has been through both the nonsensical crap and the creative joys that are associated with the art game. From self-financing to selling his soul to corporate ghouls to mutual understandings with nefarious "businessmen", Ahonen continues to do whatever it takes to bring his art to the people.
AHONEN 101: Ahonen, along with rebellious actors James Kautz and Matthew Pilieci, created THE AMORALISTS, indisputably the finest community theater company of the 21st century. The Amoralists were FAR MORE than just a physical and intellectually dangerous producer of plays who gifted the public with touching anti-establishment work. The Amoralists were a friggin scene... a personality disorder... a group of good-looking-misfits that were tenderheartedly brazen. Their plays NEVER just ended when the curtain dropped! The plays spilled out into the streets, the bars, the apartments, the drug dens, the political protests - where conversations would flow from art to politics to theology to gambling to motherhood. My god, it was a beautiful scene -- the likes of which hadn't been seen in theater since the 1960's.
Okay, so about Ahonen's work. What do we got?
What we got is a shitload of cult classics such as the theatrical gems: The Pied Pipers of the Lower East Side, Happy in the Poorhouse, The Bad and The Better, and The Qualification of Douglas Evans. And then of course we have the cinematic achievement, THE TRANSCENDENTS, a masterpiece by any measure of modern taste.
And what do the ruling-class-manufacturers-of-consent have to say about Ahonen's work?
The New York Times gushes that "Mr. Ahonen has a showman's sensibility. He brings the populist instincts of a born entertainer." The New Yorker gushes that "Ahonen is very funny, original and refreshing." The New York Post gushes that Ahonen's shows are "Like no other -- A distinctive mix of hyper-realism, satire, brash violence, and unexpected tenderness." Associated Press gushes over his "Dark, funny, and chaotic" tales. Time Out New York gushes that "Nobody else weds old-fashioned realist structure and working-class-hero lunacy quite this way." The Village Voice gushes over his "Scathing and frequently hilarious portraits of the American dream gone wrong." New York Magazine gushes how Ahonen is a "brass-knuckled absurdist" while The Connecticut Post correctly gushes over the "Part journalist, part philosopher and part saloon poet." that he objectively is. Finally, New York Press gushes on and on and on about his "Carefully stylized mayhem" that is "A complex symphony that should be marveled at."
And that's that. I'm sure you'll run into him someday. Maybe at a park… Maybe at a zoo… Maybe he’s sitting to the left of you right now…