| Theater in Quarantine presents Heather Christian's I AM SENDING YOU THE SACRED FACE, Musical Portrait of Mother Teresa Performed in Drag | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 04:37 pm EST 12/03/20 | |
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| THEATER IN QUARANTINE PRESENTS WORLD PREMIERE OF HEATHER CHRISTIAN'S I AM SENDING YOU THE SACRED FACE Expressionist Musical Portrait of Mother Teresa Performed in Drag From East Village Closet Expands Limits of Live Pandemic Performance "Some of the new medium's most imaginative work." - Jesse Green, The New York Times "Makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination." - Helen Shaw, Vulture Theater in Quarantine, a pandemic performance laboratory from writer, director, and performer Joshua William Gelb and choreographer Katie Rose McLaughlin, is proud to present the world premiere of I Am Sending You the Sacred Face by Obie Award-winner Heather Christian. Written by Christian for Theater in Quarantine, this evocative one-act musical charts the spiritual journey of nun and missionary Mother Teresa. Set to premiere on December 14, I Am Sending You the Sacred Face is directed and performed by Gelb in drag live from his 2' x 4' x 8' East Village closet. The 40-minute work features choreography and additional direction by McLaughlin and is presented in partnership with Theater Mitu's Expansion Works. In this soaring world premiere, Heather Christian, "a composer of blazing creative ambition" (Ben Brantley, The New York Times), paints an expressionist musical portrait of Mother Teresa highlighting the humanitarian's internal struggles. Christian uses her unique blend of blues, gospel, jazz, and soul to evoke the Saint's righteous calling and quest. I Am Sending You the Sacred Facefeatures a sonically rich score by Christian who pre-recorded all vocal and musical tracks from her home studio. Gelb, with the aid of drag dramaturg Dito van Reigersberg of Pig Iron Theatre Company and Martha Graham Cracker fame, not only embodies Christian's "unforgettable voice that somehow bridges Carol Channing and Joanna Newsom," (Time Out New York) but also channels multiple spirits in a highly physical performance. As Christian muses in the work, "Being the change you wish to see in the world is kind of a drag." The additional creative team for I Am Sending You the Sacred Face includes Kristen Robinson (scenography) Stivo Arnoczy (video design), Ada Westfall (sound design and mixing), Justin Nestor (production manager), Ada Zhang (stage manager), and Brian Bose (social media). Live streamed performances of I Am Sending You the Sacred Face will take place on Monday, December 14 at 7pm and 9pm on Theater in Quarantine's YouTube page. Following the live broadcast, the on-demand recording of I Am Sending You the Sacred Face, along with the complete Theater in Quarantine archive, will be available at https://www.youtube.com/joshuawilliamgelb in perpetuity. Shortly after the coronavirus pandemic closed all theaters, Joshua William Gelb transformed a 2' x 4' x 8' closet inside his East Village apartment into a white-box theater. Starting on March 30, Gelb and his collaborators began releasing pre-recorded studies in movement, clown, camera orientation, and perspective - building towards more complex theatrical experiences. On April 23, they premiered Theater in Quarantine's first live-stream performance: an adaptation of Kafka's The Neighbor which was followed by an unauthorized edit of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and collaborations with artists like Scott R. Sheppard (Underground Railroad Game), Nehemiah Luckett (Jazz Singer), and Ellen Winter (36 Questions). Theater in Quarantine'srecent productions, The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy and Footnote for the End of Time, were met with critical acclaim. Jesse Green in his New York Times critic's pick review declared that Theater in Quarantine has produced "some of the new medium's most imaginative work from some of its simplest materials." Helen Shaw in Vulture wrote that Theater in Quarantine "makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination." Maya Phillips in The New York Times noted, "These small-scale, digitally savvy productions have matched the texts in their idiosyncratic approaches." Most recently, CultureHub and La MaMa presented Mute Swan written by Pulitzer-prize finalist Madeleine George for Theater in Quarantine. Please visit joshuawilliamgelb.com for more information and youtube.com/joshuawilliamgelb to stream all of the Theater in Quarantine original works. About the Artists Heather Christian is an Obie Award winning composer/performer and 2018 Sundance Institute Time Warner Fellow. Recent composing/performing credits include her own work Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova), Prime: A Practical Breviary (Playwrights Horizons Soundstage, named #1 podcast episode of 2020 by Vulture) Animal Wisdom (The Bushwick Starr, set to come out as a theater/film hybrid at Wooly Mammoth and ACT in 2021) in addition to being a lead artist on devised works Mission Drift Nat'l Theater London, The World Is Round BAM). Film composition credits include The Craft: Legacy (Sony Pictures/Blumhouse 2020), Lemon (2017 Sundance Film Festival and SXSW), Gregory Go Boom (Sundance Grand Jury Prize), The Shivering Truth (Adult Swim), and all four films in the Criterion Collection's Retrospective of Janicza Bravo. She writes incidental music for plays, most recently A Winter's Tale (Public Theater NY), and the entire 2016 season at Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival (Macbeth, As you Like It, Measure For Measure). She was named one of Time Out New York's Downtown Innovators To Watch and is a 2019 Harold and Mimi Steinberg Trust commissionee. She has released 11 records, has taught vocal-based music composition at NYU and Princeton, owns and operates her own recording studio in Beacon, NY, and can be seen regularly in concert halls and dive bars as Heather Christian & the Arbornauts. www.heatherchristian.com Joshua William Gelb is an East Village-based director, performer, and librettist currently building theater out of his converted closet christened the Theater in Quarantine. Prior to the pandemic, Gelb created the musical interrogation of the 1927 Al Jolson film Jazz Singer (New Yorker critic's pick) which was commissioned and built-in residence at Abrons Arts Center with Nehemiah Luckett. Previously in residence at Abrons, Gelb conceived and directed the sesquicentennial anniversary reimagining of America's supposed first musical The Black Crook (NYT Critic's Pick), about which he lectured at Harvard University's Houghton Library. His Drama Desk-nominated adaptation of A Hunger Artist, created with Sinking Ship, continues to tour. Other work has been presented at Ars Nova, LMCC Process Space, New Ohio, Joe's Pub, Polyphone Festival, and Target Margin. Gelb participated in the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, is an associate artist with Sinking Ship, and teaches Theater Collaboration at Cooper Union. Visit joshuawilliamgelb.com for more information. Katie Rose McLaughlin is an NYC-based choreographer originally from Minneapolis, MN. Katie Rose is the Associate Choreographer of the Tony-award winning Broadway show Hadestown directed by Rachel Chavkin and choreographed by David Neumann. Her choreography has been presented by The Chocolate Factory, Catch, the Invisible Dog Art Center, HERE Arts Center, newMoves Contemporary Dance Festival, Movement Research at Judson Church, and the International Festival of Art & Ideas. She was an artist-in-residence at LMCC's Process Space, Dance Lab New York, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, the Barn Arts Collective, and LMCC's SPARC program. Notable theater credits include Orlando (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Indecent (Weston Playhouse), Bear Slayer (Ars Nova), and The Black Crook (Abrons Arts Center). In 2013, she co-founded and became the Artistic Director of Designated Movement Co., a dance/theater company interested in blurring the lines between forms. Visit Katierosemclaughlin.com for more information. |
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| Link | https://www.youtube.com/joshuawilliamgelb |
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