For Immediate Release

Contact: Phillip Bannowsky, 302-981-9941 or This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it Photo available.

WILMINGTON, DE, AUGUST 27—UD English part-time faculty Phillip Bannowsky will bring Chrysler’s now closed factory in Newark back to life in his Autoplant: A Poetic Monologue at this year’s Fringe Wilmington.

Performances are scheduled for October 1^st at 8:30 p.m., October 3^rd at 6:00 p.m., and October 4^th at 3 p.m. at the 4W5, a former café at 4 West 5^th Street in Wilmington.

Bannowsky was employed 31 years at the plant, taking leaves along the way to gain degrees from UD and teach in Ecuador. He retired in 2001 and since then has taught in Lebanon and now at UD, where his courses include a 60s-based honors writing class.

Set in an era of both spiritual yearning and political revolt, Bannowsky’s tale of redemption and rebellion recounts how the poet and his shop mates, Big man, Billy Goat, Warthog, and Gravy, torment each other to pass the time and then come together one thirsty summer night in a wildcat strike. Describing the nightmares and hazards of factory life, Bannowsky digresses into anecdotes about student activism and popular culture, including Popeye cartoons and the film Soylent Green. In that Charlton Heston movie, an overpopulated world recycles its workers into a food called Soylent Green, a process that reminds Bannowsky of the flesh- and soul-consuming labor of the assembly line.

Bannowsky augments his presentation with old-fashioned Foley to mimic factory sounds, electronic music, and slides of factory life. Journalist and critic Gary Soulsman said that Autoplant could be called “performance art, an epic comic monologue, or high-tech narrative poetry.”

Bannowsky draws on his labor and travel experiences often in his works. In 2005, he performed Arabia and the American Dream: an Autoworkers Lebanon Sojourn at the Philadelphia Fringe and in 2007 he published a novel, The Mother Earth Inn (Broken Turtle Books LLC and iUniverse), based on events in Ecuador. Autoplant was published by Broken Turtle Books in 2007. It was first performed at the UD Bacchus Theater in 1992, just before Bannowsky left for Ecuador, and it was reprised for the 2007 Philadelphia Fringe.

Sponsored by Wilmington Mayor James M. Baker’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the Wilmington Fringe will feature 26 acts plus a 24-hour Filmmaking Competition. All Tickets are $10 and will be available on line at fringewilmingtonde.com in September or at the box office at 605 N. Market Street in Wilmington during the October 1^st through 4^th festival.

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