PhysFest founder/director Becky Baumwoll introduces the first show of the PhysFestNYC 2026 Festival!
The Marble In My Mouth is a visually arresting piece of devised movement theater that transforms abstract emotion into startling physical form.
Through precise choreography and fearless physical commitment, this production asks: What happens when love has nowhere to go? If grief could take shape and speak back, what would it become?
Enter the Squonk—a strange, tender, relentless creature born of sorrow, brought to vivid life through extraordinary physicality. This guide doesn’t comfort but moves—nudging, pushing, eventually shoving Glen through the depths of his mourning in a display of controlled theatrical force.
Performers Lyra Butler-Denman, Graham Cook, Elizabeth Feinschreiber, and Tyler Leif Catanella from Pig Iron Theater Company at Rowan University demonstrate remarkable technical mastery and ensemble precision. As multiple versions of Glen materialize on stage, the performance unfolds through striking visual compositions: memories dissolve into kinetic tone poems, love manifests as an intricate hand dance of remarkable dexterity, and frustration erupts into full-bodied cabaret spectacle.
What’s revelatory here is how the simplest tools—a gesture, a shift in weight, an object transformed—conjure an entire world free from theatrical cliche. The four performers tackle loss and emptiness with precision, humor, theatrical joy, and rigor, proving that the smallest physical choices can generate the biggest emotional impact. Every gesture carries weight, every movement tells a story, and the physical vocabulary achieves what words cannot—transforming grief from concept to unmistakable presence.
This is movement theater at its most essential and alive.
# # # # #
The PhysFestNYC 2026 is hosted at the legendary Stella Adler School of Acting in New York City.
