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| Abrons Arts Center's 2017-18 Inaugural Season by Craig Peterson Includes 29 Premieres Across Disciplines | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 12:56 pm EDT 08/14/17 | |
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| ABRONS ARTS CENTER ANNOUNCES INAUGURAL SEASON UNDER LEADERSHIP OF NEW ARTISTIC DIRECTOR CRAIG PETERSON Line Up of Boundary-Pushing Theater, Dance, Music, Performance and Visual Art Includes 29 Premieres On February 12, 1915, the Abrons Arts Center’s Henry Street Settlement Playhouse opened its doors on the Lower East Side. Since that day, it has remained a vital cultural resource, providing audiences with artistically bold work while offering artists opportunities to dynamically grow. The OBIE Award-winning institution has drawn a diverse audience to its historic home at the Henry Street Settlement on the Lower East Side and has garnered a wealth of critical acclaim across artistic disciplines. The work Abrons presents reflects the social and political challenges of our times in ways that are programmatically integrated into broader conversations that affect New York City and beyond. Abrons Arts Center’s 2017-18 season, the first season to be curated by new Artistic Director Craig Peterson, celebrates the idea that a community is a place of intersecting ideas and action. Peterson believes that artists push society forward in ways that challenge our assumptions, politics and social welfare; that artists make room for voices that are too often silenced or sidelined. Gun violence, gentrification, immigration, income and power inequality, freedom, gender, and race are just some of the social issues artists are grappling with this season. Peterson remarks, “Over the last 101 years, Abrons Arts Center has been a home to experimental artists, radical ideas and burgeoning social movements. Abrons is both a physical place — with three theaters, galleries and classrooms — and also a space that makes room for imagination, free expression and diverging opinions. As we launch our season, we continue our legacy of challenging the status quo by confronting the issues that are shaping our lives. Gun control, immigration and gentrification are central themes in the performances and exhibitions that will take over our stages and galleries in the coming months. We are also thrilled to present a variety of family and neighborhood events that will entertain and delight — including a Holiday show in our historic Playhouse that celebrates the vibrancy of the Lower East Side. Come to Abrons to explore, laugh and engage. You are welcome here.” The lineup, comprised entirely of premieres, includes: Eleven Groundbreaking Theatrical Works An eerily relevant drama unfolds in Brooklyn-based theater company Caborca’s adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s novel Distant Star, a wrenching tale of political protest. (September 14–October 1) Drag fabulist Dickie Beau brings icons like Marilyn Monroe to life in Blackouts, an ethereal revitalization of lip-syncing, and impersonation performance. (October 5-8) The Power of Emotion: The Apartment is the third and final iteration of a collaborative, multi-part project led by director Katherine Brook, writer Toni Enelow, and composer Taylor Brook exploring how humans watch, hear, and perform emotion. (October 11-21) Why Why Always, created by Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty and featuring Jim Fletcher, is a live cine-performance and sci-fi misadventure of secret agents and seductresses, where Alphaville meets ASMR. (October 12–29) Experience radical joy in Jack and the Beanstalk created by disabled actor and writer Mat Fraser and feminist art star Julie Atlas Muz. This riotous all-ages morality tale brings together the whole family, taking part in the 300-year-old theatrical tradition of the panto. (December 6–23) In Pollock, written by Fabrice Melquiot and directed by Paul Desveaux, the beautifully tragic relationship of infamous artists Jackson Pollock (Jim Fletcher) and Lee Krasner (Birgit Huppuch) is rendered craft fully on stage. (February 15–25) Writer and actor Modesto Flako Jimenez performs his autobiographical and uncompromising collection of poetry, Listen For My Dear Brooklyn. (March 14–31) In The Wholehearted, from co-creators Deborah Stein and Suli Holum, spectators have a ringside seat for this “dazzling tour-de-force” (Los Angeles Times), a blood pumping revenge tragedy and intimate tribute to lost love. (March 15-April 1) In Aloha, Aloha or When I Was Queen, playwright and performer Eliza Bent uses a childhood home movie along with the travel writings of Mark Twain as forensic documents to lead audiences on a journey that grapples with personal history, legacy, and cultural appropriation. (April 4-21) Written by Kate Scelsa for Elevator Repair Service and directed by John Collins, Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf features veterans of the ensemble. In this irreverent parody of Edward Albee’s iconic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, no one is left unscathed by Martha's feminist ambitions. (Late May–June 17) Harnessing the vital energies of the healing center, the motivational seminar, the telethon, and the tent revival, Month of A Million Likes from the Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble will be installed in Abrons’ Gallery and Experimental Theater, June 7-30. Nine Visceral Dance Events a canary torsi, led by choreographer Yanira Castro, presents the world premiere of STAGE, a visual and aural fantasia that positions the Abrons Playhouse as a center for spectacle. (September 14-16, 21-23) In Brand New Sidewalk, three-time Bessie Award-winning choreographer Beth Gill creates a sparse, elegant diptych that questions the value of formalism in dance. (September 28–October 1) Inspired by Moroccan trance rituals, Bouchra Ouizguen’s Corbeaux (Crows) is a hypnotic, site-specific living sculpture that interrupts and transforms public spaces. (September 30, October 1) In Staying Alive, Croatian artist Jasna L. Vinovrški and her collaborators—a book and an electronic tablet—tackle the migration debate. (November 17 & 18) Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s Séancers collapses lyrical poetry and psychic movement forms to investigate concepts of black magic, resurrection, and paranormal activity. (December 6-9) The ninth annual American Realness festival, (January) Created in response to tragic events and emotions from within Alex Romania’s personal life and the larger political climate, KLUTZ challenges the effects of mental illness within American culture through layers of calculated but nonsensical performance. (April 26–29) In Mariangela Lopez’s Colossal, the performance will become a platform for participants to share individual experiences, personal memories and perceptions of their own environments. (May 10–13) Niall Jones’s Sis Minor, in Fall follows questions and fascinations inextricably linked to notions of fantasy, seriality, and the materiality of imposed environments and minor architectures. (Early May) Two Durational Political Charged Acts of Performance Art In honor of National Constitution Day, interdisciplinary artist Maya Ciarrocchi presents A Remedy for a Constitutional Crisis, an eight-hour reading of the United States Constitution. (September 17) Performance artist George Emilio Sanchez’s BANG, BANG, GUN AMOK is a 24-hour “performance filibuster” attempting to incorporate all necessary means to expose the reality of gun violence embedded in American culture. (December 8) Two Mind-Expanding Music Events OpenICE, which aims to share the most essential elements of ICE’s creative process, features the UNcaged Toy Piano Festival and the world premiere performance of Wojtek Blecharz’ Music for Invisible Places. (September 7-10, December 14-15) Lincoln Center’s Boro-Linc performance, La Casita, an impressive lineup of artists convenes to explore the far-reaching social, political, and expressive powers of oral and visual tradition. (September 16) Six Diverse and Innovative Gallery Exhibitions Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars: Quilt Installation by Emily Johnson/Catalyst and Makwa Studio (September 1 – October 8) Volley with participating artists Nadia Ayari, Ben Browne, Mira Dayal, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Ellie Krakow, Emily Kohl Mattingley, Russell Perkins, Amanda Turner Pohan, & Edwin Smalling (September 1 – November 17) An extension of performing artist Aaron Landsman’s Perfect City project, The Original New Yorkers is an ongoing portrait series of New York natives who have been affected by gentrification. (October 14 – November 17) Abrons’ AIRspace curatorial residents Christian Camacho-Light & Alexis Wilkinson present collaborative and independent projects. (October 14 – November 17) IMPERCEPTIBLE with participating artists Irini Muga, Daniel Cerrajón, Victor Esther, Cristina Camacho, & Claudia Peña Salinas. Curated by Xavier Acarín (November 22 – December 26) SAYS WHO? SEZ ME! is a live-format extension of the SEZ ME web series, designed for combating anti-queer pundits who try to use children to justify discrimination against queer people. (November 22 – December 26) Details on the 2017-18 season can be found below. Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Tickets are now on sale can be purchased by calling 212.352.3101 or visiting abronsartscenter.org. Media Contact: John Wyszniewski at Everyman Agency, john@everymanagency.com, 347-416-3881. ABRONS ARTS CENTER 2015-16 SEASON [EXHIBITION] Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars: Quilt Installation by Emily Johnson/Catalyst and Makwa Studio September 1 – October 8 An installation of 84 hand-sewn, community-made quilts designed by Makwa Studio textile artist Maggie Thompson that served as a platform for Emily Johnson/Catalyst’ performance of Then a Cunning Voice and A Night We Spend Gazing at Stars. Inscribed with answers to “What do you want for your well-being? For the well-being of your chosen friends and family? For your neighborhood? For your town, city, reserve, tribal nation, world?” The blankets hold the visions and intentions of hundreds of quilting bee participants. [EXHIBITION] Volley Participating artists include Nadia Ayari, Ben Browne, Mira Dayal, Cindy Ji Hye Kim, Ellie Krakow, Emily Kohl Mattingley, Russell Perkins, Amanda Turner Pohan, & Edwin Smalling September 1 – November 17 Conceived as a series of overlapping two-person exhibitions, Volley is an experiment that foregrounds conversation and collaboration as essential aspects of artistic production. Volley’s dynamic structure formulates the exhibition as an active site, aiming to stimulate dialogue between the participating artists as they engage each other’s work over three months. The open-ended evolving format allows for a fluidity that, like a conversational tangent, inflects subsequent iterations. Each exhibition in progress will be punctuated by programming staged as a series of public dialogues. [CONTEMPORARY MUSIC] International Contemporary Ensemble [ICE] OpenICE Fall Series September 7-10, December 14-15 This September, the International Contemporary Ensemble celebrates four years since their first OpenICE concert at Abrons and the launch of their FIFTH OpenICE season. ICE activates Abrons’ various spaces with interactive performance and education events looking to the past with a retrospective and into the future with premieres of new works. December's residency features ICE pianist's brainchild, the UNcaged Toy Piano Festival, as well as the world premiere performance of Wojtek Blecharz' Music for Invisible Places. The International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE) is an artist collective committed to transforming the way music is created and experienced. As performer, curator, and educator, ICE explores how new music intersects with communities across the world. The ensemble’s 35 members are featured as soloists, chamber musicians, commissioners, and collaborators with the foremost musical artists of our time. Works by emerging composers have anchored ICE’s programming since its founding in 2001, and the group’s recordings and digital platforms highlight the many voices that weave music’s present. [PERFORMANCE] Lincoln Center’s Boro-Linc La Casita September 16 For Lincoln Center’s Boro-Linc performance, La Casita, an impressive lineup of artists convenes to explore the far-reaching social, political, and expressive powers of oral and visual tradition. Here, wordsmiths share the stage with musicians and dancers to uncover how poetry, song, movement and storytelling can unleash personal truths, construct identity, and fundamentally alter historic narratives. The event includes performances by Lahore-born, Brooklyn-based musician Arooj Aftab, the Mariachi Academy of New York, and Latinx poetry collective El Grito de Poetas. [PERFORMANCE ART] Maya Ciarrocchi A Remedy for a Constitutional Crisis (world premiere) September 17 at noon; 8-hour performance In honor of National Constitution Day, interdisciplinary artist Maya Ciarrocchi will hold an eight-hour reading of the United States Constitution. Read in multiple languages by multiple performers, and the document will be interwoven with text from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace, whose ideals of individual liberty and separation of powers is thought to have influenced the founders. This celebration of we the people will take place in Abrons’ outdoor amphitheater and will include food and drink, participatory writing and political discussion. Maya Ciarrocchi is a New York City based interdisciplinary artist whose work addresses identity, outsiderness and the body as a site of history. Her focus is on unseen and underrepresented populations including communities living in the coal fields of Appalachia, formerly ultra-Orthodox Jews, and Trans* and gender non-conforming people. She is influenced by her previous career as a dance artist not only formally and compositionally, but also in her focus on physicality as a form of expression that can convey meaning outside of language. A Remedy for a Constitutional Crisis is conceived and created by Maya Ciarrocchi in collaboration with Clarinda Mac Low and George Sanchez. [THEATER] Caborca Theatre in Distant Star (world premiere) By Javier Antonio González, adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s novella Distant Star Director Shira Milikowsky Sep 14–Oct 1 The year is 1973. In Chile, a group of young poets meet to write, argue, critique and flirt. Days later, the government collapses and the president is shot. Amidst the brutality, one poet rises to fame as a skywriting daredevil—and, possibly, as a killer. The drama unfolds in Brooklyn-based theater company Caborca’s adaptation of Roberto Bolaño’s novel Distant Star, a wrenching tale of political protest. The work weaves the author’s memories of life (and death) under Pinochet’s American-backed dictatorship into a perverse, seductive noir of urgent political necessity. Hailing from Puerto Rico, US America and beyond, Caborca makes sprawling, adventurous works in theatre and film. Combining epic auteurship with a tuned ensemble of actors and a flux of collaborators, we bridge language, background and media, inviting our audience, guest artists and members alike, to delve into the pleasure of seeing anew. We began working together in 2002 at the University of Puerto Rico, continued collecting at Columbia’s MFA Theatre Program, and officially became a company in 2009. Caborca steals its name from the novel The Savage Detectives, by Roberto Bolaño, in which a magazine of the same name is the official organ of visceral realism. [DANCE] a canary torsi STAGE (world premiere) September 14-16, 21-23 Part of a trilogy CAST, STAGE, AUTHOR Co-presented by the Chocolate Factory Theater + Invisible Dog Theater a canary torsi, led by choreographer Yanira Castro, presents the world premiere of STAGE, a visual and aural fantasia that positions the Abrons Playhouse as a center for spectacle. As a live improvised sound score accompanies choreographed stage machinations, this collaborative work reveals the manipulative possibilities of theatrical devices to determine what we perceive. STAGE is part of a trilogy of works premiering concurrently, including CAST (The Chocolate Factory) and AUTHOR (The Invisible Dog), that examines how we re(present) ourselves. Formed in 2009, a canary torsi‘s work examines the moment of encounter between public bodies: performer and audience. We investigate issues at the foundation of performance: what brings us together, the nature of the space we inhabit, and how every aspect of our convergence is loaded with cultural, social, historical and personal choices that inform who we are, how we form meaning and how power is structured. The indeterminate performative systems we develop often utilize technology as a catalyst of spontaneous structures, patterns, and instructions to complicate authorship, ensure multiplicity and to impart the work with unpredictability. [DANCE] Beth Gill Brand New Sidewalk (New York premiere) September 28–October 1 For Brand New Sidewalk, three-time Bessie Award-winning choreographer Beth Gill teams up with composer Jon Moniaci and lighting designer Thomas Dunn to create a sparse, elegant diptych that questions the value of formalism in dance. An evocative new work for four dancers, Brand New Sidewalk explores themes of alienation, erasure, fantasy and power through the lens of abstraction. Beth Gill is a choreographer who has been making contemporary dance and performance in New York City since 2005. Her body of work examines issues within the fields of contemporary dance and performance studies through a focused exploration of aesthetics and perception. Gill's works include Untitled (2006), Eleanor & Eleanor (2007), what it looks like, what if feels like (2008), and Electric Midwife (2011). [DANCE] Bouchra Ouizguen / Compagnie O Crows (Corbeaux) (New York Premiere) September 30 at 12 pm + 4 pm; October 1 at 3pm Co-presented by Crossing The Line Festival + Movement Research + Brooklyn Museum Brooklyn Museum, Beaux Arts Court, FREE A group of women in black dresses and white headscarves silently fans out across the Brooklyn Museum’s Beaux-Arts Court before erupting into an immersive chorus of rhythmic cries. Moroccan performers are joined by a local cast of New Yorkers for this frenzied, full-body performance. Inspired by Moroccan trance rituals, Corbeaux (Crows) is a hypnotic, site-specific living sculpture that interrupts and transforms public spaces. Major support provided by the Hermès Foundation within the framework of the New Settings Program. Moroccan dancer and choreographer Bouchra Ouizguen lives and works in Marrakech where she has championed and developed dance since 1998. A self-taught performer with a background in traditional dance, she worked with choreographers including Mathilde Monnier, Bernardo Montet, Boris Charmatz, and Alain Buffard before founding her own company, O. Her interest in societal issues and the visual and popular arts in her country inform her body of work, which encompasses sound, performance and video. [THEATER] Blackouts (New York premiere) Created and performed by Dickie Beau Oct 5–8 Co-presented by Crossing The Line Festival For his first major U.S. solo show, Dickie Beau conjures the wayward spirits of Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and journalist Richard Meryman. In uncanny impersonations performed to a shadowy soundscape of their own voices, Beau merges reality with illusion and his identity with those of his idols. The result is an ethereal portrait of icons in exile and a reflection on the lingering impressions they’ve left behind. Drag fabulist Dickie Beau embodies counter-cultural figures and movie stars alike. Miming to spoken word rather than song, Beau has revitalized the tradition of lip-syncing, performing with the showmanship of a drag artist and the melancholy of a clown. At home on the stages of clubs, theaters and cabarets, he has received awards including the Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award. [THEATER] Katherine Brook / Tele-Violet The Power of Emotion: The Apartment (world premiere) October 11–21 Co-Presented with Mount Tremper Arts The Power of Emotion is a collaborative multi-part project led by director Katherine Brook, writer Toni Enelow, and composer Taylor Brook exploring how humans watch, hear, and perform emotion. The Apartment—the project's third and final iteration—is informed by an Alexander Kluge film of the same name, the director’s experience as a juror on a criminal trial, various operas including Wagner's Ring Cycle, and an ongoing exploration of acting style and method. Musicians and actors take center stage in this story of a fight between two women that leads to an apartment fire. Tele-Violet is a theatre and performance group led by director Katherine Brook that uses dramatic texts and real-world content to experiment with acting and dramatic form in a collaborative context. Past Tele-Violet work includes Tragedy in Spades: A Crime Documentary (University Settlement) Pink Melon Joy (Brave New World Rep and Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival), Lady Han (Incubator Arts Project), and American Realism (Invisible Dog and The San Diego Museum of Art). Tele-Violet has been featured at Prelude, Little Theater, Catch, The Working Theater, and Under the Radar. [THEATER / PERFORMANCE] Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty Why Why Always (New York premiere) Featuring Jim Fletcher October 12–29 It is seventeen minutes past midnight, Oceanic Time. In a theater of sorts, a show is about to begin. There is an occasional flicker of light, a sonic shudder, an atmosphere of electronic energy. Conjuring a live cine-performance through the interplay of otherworldly video, music, sound and technology, Why Why Always is a sci-fi misadventure of secret agents and seductresses, where Alphaville meets ASMR. Mesmeric whispers fill the air, lighters flash, linens are folded, and a super computer is foiled. Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty are Brooklyn based multi-platform artists who make multidisciplinary performances, multimedia installations, documentaries and interactive video scores for live performance. In 2014, Shaun and Lauren created a multidisciplinary performance called Keep Your Electric Eye On Me, which was commissioned by HERE (NYC) through their Artist Residency Program. Shaun and Lauren previously made the horror, the horror (in collaboration with Brian Rogers and Madeline Best), a large-scale dance for a face, which was seen at Abrons Arts Center and Danspace in 2011. Recently, they completed Standing By: Gatz Backstage a feature-length documentary portrait of Elevator Repair Service's acclaimed 8-hour theatrical event Gatz. This award-winning film has screened at multiple venues including Anthology Film Archives (NYC), The Segal Film Fetival (NYC), Z Space (San Francisco), REDCAT (Los Angeles) and SESC (São Paolo, Brazil). [EXHIBITION] Perfect City Presents The Original New Yorkers: Haruka Sakaguchi October 14 – November 17 An extension of performing artist Aaron Landsman’s Perfect City project, The Original New Yorkers is an ongoing portrait series of New York natives who have been affected by gentrification. Subjects are photographed in their homes or workplaces and asked to submit a handwritten note, either depicting the way gentrification has affected them personally or in an “open letter” addressing newcomers to New York City. The unedited note is then positioned next to the portrait, in diptych format. Haruka Sakaguchi is a Japanese photographer currently residing in Brooklyn, New York. Her work focuses on cultural identity and sense of place. [EXHIBITION] AIRspace Curatorial Resident Project Christian Camacho-Light & Alexis Wilkinson October 14 – November 17 Abrons’ AIRspace curatorial residents Christian Camacho-Light & Alexis Wilkinson will present collaborative and independent projects exploring the practice of exhibition-making throughout 2017 and 2018. Emerging from research and writing, themes will range from investigating form as a vessel for political content to the (controlled) mobilization of bodies by power structures. [DANCE] Jasna L. Vinovrški Staying Alive (U.S. Premiere) Nov 17 & 18 In Staying Alive, Croatian artist Jasna L. Vinovrški and her collaborators—a book and an electronic tablet—tackle the migration debate. In a humble demonstration of community, the book is passed around for the audience to touch and read while Vinovrški experiments with the iPad’s potential for eye contact. Teetering between the heartfelt and the absurd, Staying Alive is a precarious situation—one that gradually becomes a state of emergency. Jasna L. Vinovrški is performer, choreographer, and teacher. She grew up in Zagreb and lives in Berlin. Next to her artistic work she is working closely as a dramaturgic and choreographic assistant with Clément Layes, with whom she is also running together, since 2008, the company Public in Private. In 2012, Vinovrški earned a Master of Arts degree at the HZT Berlin, and in 2014 she started her PhD at the Institute of Applied Theater Studies at the Justus-Liebig University in Gießen. In 2014, she co-organized the artists’ performance event “3AM,” that regularly takes place at the artists’ house Flutgraben in Berlin. [EXHIBITION] IMPERCEPTIBLE Participating artists include Irini Muga, Daniel Cerrajón, Victor Esther, Cristina Camacho, & Claudia Peña Salinas. Curated by Xavier Acarín November 22 – December 26 IMPERCEPTIBLE is an exhibition that exposes fragility and correlates objects and subjects to address precariousness, working conditions and the un-visible circumstances behind creative work. Fragility has become one of the features of contemporaneity: a state of precariousness that spreads from objects to labor conditions, defining personal relations and affecting connectivity with one’s surroundings. As semio-capitalism champions flexPerfectibility and adaptability of immaterial producers, the artist becomes the model of the entrepreneur, a freelancer valued for their innovative creativity. The resulting economy is a model that appropriates progressive values (sharing, hosting, inventing) while reducing the rights and benefits of workers. [EXHIBITION] SAYS WHO? SEZ ME! November 22 – December 26 The SEZ ME web series is all about breaking down stigma when it comes to children and the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) community. This exhibition will be a live-format extension for combating anti-queer pundits who try to use children to justify discrimination against queer people. Abrons’ galleries will become a platform for children to meet with members of the queer community who will act as mentors in fun, casual settings and engage in dialogues about queer issues that affect kids. Performances will be hosted by drag queen Charmin Ultra, aka Jeff Maras, and created by Mor Erlich with soundscapes provided by Lee Free. [PERFORMANCE ART] George Emilio Sanchez Bang Bang Gun Amok (world premiere) 24 Hour Performance Filibuster Dec 8 at 6pm Amid the contemporary political noise, the sounds of gun violence continue to ricochet throughout the U.S. Performance artist George Emilio Sanchez’s BANG, BANG, GUN AMOK is a 24-hour “performance filibuster” attempting to incorporate all necessary means to expose the reality of gun violence embedded in American culture. Uniting art making with activism, BANG shines a light on the glorified pain of gun culture. [DANCE] Jaamil Olawale Kosoko Séancers (world premiere) Dec 6-9 Jaamil Olawale Kosoko’s Séancers collapses lyrical poetry and psychic movement forms to investigate concepts of black magic, resurrection, and paranormal activity. Interrogating issues related to American history and terrorism, Séancers journeys into the surreal and fantastical states of the Black imagination to traverse the ‘fatal’ axis of abstraction, illegibility, and gender multiplicity. Performed by IMMA, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste and Jaamil Olawale Kosoko with writings by Kosoko, Indira Allegra, Audre Lorde, and Ruby Sales. Jaamil Olawale Kosoko, originally from Detroit, MI, is a Bessie Award nominated Nigerian-American curator, poet, and performance artist. He is a 2017 Princeton Arts Fellow, a 2017 Jerome Artists in Residence at Abrons Arts Center, a 2017 APAP Leadership Fellow, and a 2017 Cave Canem Poetry Fellow. He is a 2016 Gibney Dance boo-koo resident artist and a recipient of a 2017 and 2016 USArtists International Award from the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. His work has been presented throughout Europe and the United States. Visit jaamil.com or philadiction.org for more information. [THEATER] ONEOFUS [Julie Atlas Muz & Matt Fraser] Jack and the Beanstalk (world premiere) Dec 6–23 This holiday season is the time to experience a radical, joyful, uproarious family spectacle promoting equality in all forms. Written by disabled actor and writer Mat Fraser and directed by feminist art star Julie Atlas Muz, Jack and the Beanstalk brings tap-dancing animals, pie fights, cross-dressing characters and the most glittery of sets to the Lower East Side. This riotous all-ages morality tale brings together the whole family, taking part in the 300-year-old theatrical tradition of the panto. Now more than ever, New York City needs family theater that is inherently irreverent and lightly political—with good eventually triumphing over evil. Get ready to cheer the heroes, boo the villains, and look out behind you! ONEOFUS is Julie Atlas Muz and Mat Fraser. We live just down the road and are integrated members of the Abrons Arts Center Community. We got married in the Playhouse 2012, performed “Beauty and the Beast” in 2014 to critical acclaim, and consider Abrons our artistic home. Let’s celebrate surviving 2017 together and bring the whole family to this all ages spectacular, Jack and the Beanstalk! We are outsiders, with inclusivity at the heart of what we do. Traversing the world as radical artists looking for alternative ways to be inside, the main thrust of our work is to highlight, question and poke fun at the absurdity of normality, using a loving cup of artistic agitation. We accept you, one of us [DANCE/PERFORMANCE] American Realness January American Realness, the magnetic festival of contemporary dance and performance curated by Ben Pryor, is back at Abrons for the ninth edition [THEATER] POLLOCK (New York premiere) Written by Fabrice Melquiot A production of Compagnie L’héliotrope With Jim Fletcher and Birgit Huppuch Directed by Paul Desveaux, Compagnie L’Héliotrope Translated in English by Kenneth Casler & Myriam Heard Feb 15–25 In Pollock, the beautifully tragic relationship of infamous artists Jackson Pollock (Jim Fletcher) and Lee Krasner (Birgit Huppuch) is rendered craft fully on stage. It is impossible to fully understand the brilliance and madness of Jackson Pollock without studying his marriage to Lee Krasner, a talented artist in her own right. Pollock exists in the charged empty space between Pollock and Krasner; between his genius and her spirit; between the inhibitions of the former and the frustrations of the latter; between the inherent difficulty of conceptualizing “abstraction” and the painter’s own instinctive gestures. The play might be called “a contemporary tragedy” but underlying such a vague classification is one fundamental inquiry which gives the piece meaning: the question of artistic creation. Fabrice Melquiot (playwright) has published about forty plays with L’Arche Editeur. Melquiot has received many awards including two from the Syndicat National de la Critique, France. He has worked closely with director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota for many years, and continues to collaborate with Demarcy-Mota as current Director of Theatre de la Ville, Paris. In 2008, Melquiot received the Prix Théâtre de l’Académie Française for his entire body of work. His texts have been translated and performed in a dozen languages. Since 2012, he has served as director of Théâtre Am Stram Gram in Geneva, International Center of Creation for Children and Youth. Paul Desveaux (director) is the Director of the Company l’héliotrope founded in 1997. Desveaux has staged a large repertoire of works by authors including Frank Wedekind, A. Ostrovski, A. Tchekhov, Nathalie Sarraute, and Fabrice Melquiot. He has also directed trans-disciplinary projects such as Philip Glass’ opera Les Enfants Terribles (2007), worked with Ensemble Intercontemporain on the opera Hypermusic Prologue (2009) by Hector Parra, and collaborated with scientist Lisa Randall and filmmaker Santiago Otheguy on Vraie Blonde et autres by Jack Kerouac (2002/2004). Desveaux has developed a regular collaboration with the choreographer Yano Iatridès and the composer Vincent Artaud. [THEATER / SPOKEN WORD] Modesto Flako Jimenez & Oye Group Oye For My Dear Brooklyn (world premiere) March 14–31 Writer and actor Modesto Flako Jimenez performs his autobiographical and uncompromising collection of poetry, Listen For My Dear Brooklyn. Hiding out in his last remaining safe space - abuelita’s bathroom, Flako, a young Dominican man, escapes into the memories of losing his culture and self to the gentrified blocks of Bushwick. Oye For My Dear Brooklyn is performed in both English and Spanish through a series of poems, video projections, and music. Lyrical and savage, Flako’s poetry is populated with immigrants, drug dealers, condoritos, tiguerasos, mothers and sons, all asking the same questions, “What's my safe space & What’s my moral worth?” Modesto Flako Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised theater director, writer, poet, actor, producer, and educator. Flako is best known for original productions and three signature festivals – Ghetto Hors D’Oeuvres, One Catches Light, and Oye! Avant Garde Night! – produced with his company Brooklyn Gypsies Collective. Flako has appeared on TEDxBushwick, Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Early Shaker Spirituals (Wooster Group), Last Night At The Palladium (Bushwick Starr/3LD), Yoleros (Bushwick Starr/IATI theater), Conversations Pt.1: How To Make It Black In America (JACK). Take Me Home (3LD/ Incubator Arts Project), and Richard Maxwell’s Samara (Soho Rep.). Modesto received the 2016 Princess Grace Award Honorarium in Theater. [THEATER] Stein | Holum Projects present The Wholehearted (New York premiere) March 15-April 1 Spectators have a ringside seat for this “dazzling tour-de-force” (Los Angeles Times), a blood pumping revenge tragedy and intimate tribute to lost love. Once a championship boxer, Dee Crosby was taken down in her prime by her own husband. Now that Charlie is freshly released from prison for her attempted murder, Dee is hell-bent on revenge, no matter the cost. But only Dee's true love, Carmen, can provide her with redemption. By turns “potent and enigmatic” (San Diego Union Tribune) and “boldly arresting” (Boston Globe), THE WHOLEHEARTED is an unsettling ride through the human heart. Acclaimed co-creators Deborah Stein and Suli Holum (CHIMERA, Under the Radar) infuse THE WHOLEHEARTED with a pulse-pounding cinematic design and an original rockabilly score (by Obie winners James Sugg and Heather Christian). Performed by Holum, the creative team also includes sound designer Matt Hubbs (INDECENT), video designers Kate Freer and Dave Tennent (CHIMERA) with live camera operator Stivo Arnoczy, set designer Amy Rubin (QUIET, COMFORT), costume designer Angela Harner, lighting designer Stephen Arnold, associate director Kate Hopkins and stage manager Lisa McGinn. [THEATER] Aloha, Aloha or When I Was Queen (world premiere) Written and Performed by Eliza Bent April 4-21 In 1993, at the age of 11, a young Eliza Bent, along with a friend, co-created, directed and starred in an amateur historical film for a school project. In it, Bent portrayed Hawaii’s last reigning monarch, Queen Liliuokalani. 25 years later Bent uses her home movie along with the travel writings of Mark Twain as forensic documents to lead audiences on a journey that grapples with personal history, legacy, and cultural appropriation. Eliza Bent is a playwright and performer based in Brooklyn, NY. Bent has been a “Working Farm” resident writer at SPACE on Ryder Farm, a MacDowell Colony fellow, a Target Margin Institute Fellow, the recipient of an LMCC Process Space grant, a Bay Area Playwrights Finalist, and is currently a New Georges Audrey Residency artist. Bent has developed and presented work at Abrons, JACK, the Bushwick Starr, ICE Factory and the Brick. Bent is a former senior editor at American Theatre magazine, where she still writes, a frequent performer with the Obie-award winning company Half Straddle, and an adjunct lecturer at Brooklyn College where she received an MFA in playwriting. [DANCE] Alex Romania KLUTZ (world premiere) April 26–29 Created in in response to tragic events and emotions from within Alex Romania’s personal life and the larger political climate, KLUTZ challenges the effects of mental illness within American culture through layers of calculated but nonsensical performance. KLUTZ works to place the mundane and extraordinary day-to-day elements side by side to bring the audience’s attention to the finer and overlooked details. Romania is constructing this multidisciplinary dance performance using an array of apocalyptic locations, costumes made of disposed items, broken televisions, and candid and staged footage of Romania’s family to create a complete theater experience of unraveling spectacle. Alex Romania is a multidisciplinary performance-maker, visual artist, organizer, and teacher based in NYC who has taught and shown work nationally and internationally. His work pivots between the worlds of dance and performance art, often involving installation and video elements. He uses his choreography to create an unattainable pathway for the performers, where they must navigate boundaries and create friction that is both premeditated and spontaneous. Romania has performed in works by Luciana Achugar, Kathy Westwater, Catherine Galasso, Andy de Groat, De Facto Dance, Eddie Peake, Jacob Slominski, Ishmael Houston-Jones, Simone Forti, Steve Paxton and has collaborated with a handful of performance art collectives, amongst other artists. [DANCE] Mariangela Lopez Colossal (world premiere) May 10–13 Mariangela Lopez is a Brooklyn based choreographer and performer from Caracas, Venezuela. Her work is known for enabling the participation of performers from various disciplines and backgrounds to take part of her creative process. In Colossal, the performance will become a platform for participants to share individual experiences, personal memories and perceptions of their own environments. Utilizing the power of the group Colossal will be a seductive collective experience challenging the boundaries between self and surroundings. [DANCE] Niall Jones Sis Minor, in Fall (world premiere) Early May Niall Jones is a dance artist and educator working as a visiting professor in the Performance + Performance Studies graduate program at Pratt Institute and as Assistant Director for the School of Dance at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Niall’s research slips between performance and visual art practices engaging disorientation, pleasure, and materiality as multiple frameworks for considering the structures of time and exhaustion. Sis Minor, in Fall will follow questions and fascinations inextricably linked to notions of fantasy, seriality, and the materiality of imposed environments and minor architectures. Niall is a true auteur, creating each piece of the production scenery, costumes, lighting and sound. [THEATER] Elevator Repair Service presents Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf (world premiere) by Kate Scelsa for Elevator Repair Service Directed by John Collins Late May–June 17 In this irreverent parody of Edward Albee’s iconic Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, no one is left unscathed by Martha's feminist ambitions. Rubbing alcohol will be consumed, imaginary pregnancies will be indulged, and gender constructs will be destroyed once and for all. Written by Kate Scelsa, longtime ERS company member, and directed by John Collins, Everyone’s Fine with Virginia Woolf features a cast of Elevator Repair Service veterans. Now celebrating their 25th season, Elevator Repair Service is an OBIE Award-winning company known for their original theater pieces built around a broad range of subject matter and literary forms, best known for Gatz, their verbatim staging of The Great Gatsby. Kate Scelsa’s debut novel Fans of the Impossible Life has been translated into nine languages and was an Indie Next and Rainbow List Top Ten Pick. Kate is a 2016-2017 New Georges Audrey Resident, and her writing for theater has been seen at the Bushwick Starr, Dixon Place, BAX, and Five Myles. She has been an ERS company member since 2002, and has performed with the company in Gatz, The Sound and the Fury and The Select (The Sun Also Rises). [THEATER / PERFORMANCE] Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble in Month of A Million Likes (world premiere) June 7-30 Harnessing the vital energies of the healing center, the motivational seminar, the telethon, and the tent revival, Month of A Million Likes will be installed in Abrons’ Gallery and Experimental Theater for the month of June. Month of a Million Likes seeks to create a devotional space for the amplification of Like-Energy and an open-ended examination of the spiritual potential of digital connectivity. By day the space will be open to the public as an immersive installation; at night it becomes an event space for ritual performances, healing sessions, seminars, panel discussions, and screenings by ROKE and curated guests. Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble (Tei Blow and Sean McElroy) is a musical priesthood that explores the mythologies of love and courtship at the end of the 20th century. By appropriating strategies of installation art, opera, and theater, ROKE creates multimedia installation-performances with original music to create modern-day rituals out of found text and video sources. About Abrons Arts Center The Abrons Arts Center is the OBIE Award-winning performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. Abrons supports the creation and presentation of innovative, multi-disciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their practice with educational programs, mentorships, residencies and commissions; and serves as an intersection of engagement for local, national and international audiences and arts-workers. Each year the Abrons offers over 250 performances, 12 gallery exhibitions and 30 residencies for performing and studio artists, and 100 different classes in dance, music, theater, and visual art. The Abrons also provides New York City public schools with teaching artists, introducing more than 3,000 students to the arts. For more information: www.abronsartscenter.org. |
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