Abrons Arts Center Sets 2015-16 Season of Theatre, Dance & More

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. Since becoming Abrons Director in 2006, Jay Wegman has done much more than maintain "one of the last standing locations for avant-garde performance downtown" (The New York Times, 2009). He has created an arts venue that is unique on the city's cultural landscape, presenting an international mix of cutting-edge performing and visual artists, both established and emerging, from across the country and around the world, as well as from New York City.

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 in various disciplines. Abrons Arts Center's 2015-16 season underscores the organization's increasing stature and its unique programmatic profile.

About the 15-16 season, Wegman says: "Abrons was founded in the spirit of experimentation and iconoclasm. Luminaries such as Martha Graham, Aaron Copland, John Cage, Alwin Nikolais, Paul Taylor, Twyla Tharp, Philip Glass, Meredith Monk, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed have trained, taught or performed within its walls. It has been my goal since taking over in 2006 to channel this founding energy with every programming choice I make."

The lineup, comprised almost entirely of premieres, includes:

• Queer New York International Arts Festival, (September 16-26)

• The world premiere of internationally acclaimed director/puppeteer Basil Twist's Sisters' Follies: Between Two Worlds celebrates the founders of the Abrons' Playhouse, (October 1-31)

• Travelogues: Ponydance, Abrons' Travelogues dance series, curated by Laurie Uprichard, (October 7-10)

• Just Like a Woman, Abrons' collaboration with London's Live Art Development Agency (LADA) and Chelsea Theatre to offer a three-day program of shows, debates, lectures, installations and screenings looking at the performance of feminine identity, (October 23-25)

• Ruth Doesn't Live Here Anymore is an evening-length work by the Los Angeles-based choreographer and dancer Lionel Popkin performed to a live score created by avant-garde accordionist Guy Klucevsek with Sara Parkins on violin, (October 28-November 1)

• Eliza Bent's "flushed out" Manhattan premiere of Toilet Fire: Rectums in the Rectory is a ceremony and celebration of the one thing that unites us all: our need to go. (October 28-November 15)

• With PIKE ST. Nilaja Sun continues her partnership with Epic Theatre Ensemble for her first solo show since her international hit, the OBIE Award-winning NO CHILD, (November 11- December 6)

• Transport Group's revival of the raucous musical fairy tale Once Upon A Mattress stars the formidable Jackie Hoffman (On the Town, Xanadu, Hairspray) and the iconic John "Lypsinka" Epperson (Lypsinka's The Boxed Set, The Passion of the Crawford), (November 22-January 3)

• OBIE Award-winner Juliana Francis-Kelly's newest play, The Reenactors, asks: "Are most actors idiots? Are all rich kids jerks?" (November 25-December 12)

• The seventh annual American Realness Festival, (January 7-17)

• Erin Markey's A Ride On The Irish Cream is a darkly comedic story with songs set in a fantastical Michigan backyard on a cold blue river, (January 13-31)

• DRUNKEN WITH WHAT launches Target Margin Theater's two-season exploration of Eugene O'Neill, (February 10-28)

• ¡Figaro! (90210) comes to New York following its critically-acclaimed, sold-out stage premiere with LA Opera, (March 5-20)

• The world premiere of New York City Players' /Really/ by Jackie Sibblies Drury is directed by Richard Maxwell, (March 16-April 2)

• The internationally celebrated Irish theatre company Pan Pan make their Abrons' debut with U.S. premiere of The Seagull and Other Birds, (March 23-April 2)

• North American premiere of Sven Ratzke's STARMAN features original songs written by Ratzke in collaboration with New York City's own Rachelle Garniez, (March 24 - April 3)

• The North American premiereof Skin Me was awarded Hungary's Rudolf Laban award for contemporary dance.

• Viktória Dányi, Csaba Molnár and Zsófia Tamara Vadas' Skin Me is loaded with political metaphor, irony, and a refreshing self-awareness, (April 8 & 9)

• The New York City premiere of Aaron Landsman's Empathy School is created with filmmaker and composer Brent Green, and performed by Jim Findlay, (April 20-30)

• The world premiere of Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty's Why Why Always conjures a live cine-performance through the interplay of other worldly video, music, sound and technology, (April 20-30)

• In the North American premiere of Bunny, Luke George and Daniel Kok look to macramé, sailors' knots, Chinese knots and rope bondage to suspend tension, unleash collective desires, and weave together an interactive experience of collectivity, (April 27-30)

• The world premiere of Levi Gonzalez's newest work, product fail (working title) is a movement-based work for three dancers and one choreographer/director, (May 4-7)

• In Still Standing You, Belgian-Portuguese duo Pieter Ampe & Guilherme Garrido use their bodies as instruments, exploring the lines between masculine play, tenderness, slapstick, and violence in this internationally acclaimed performance art/dance work, (May 13-14)

• The NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival showcases some of the best electroacoustic music and video art from all over the world, (June 13-19)

Show-by-show descriptions are below. Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street, on Manhattan's Lower East Side. Tickets can be purchased by calling 212.352.3101 or visiting www.abronsartscenter.org.

ABRONS ARTS CENTER 2015-16 SEASON

[DANCE/PERFORMANCE]
Queer New York International Arts Festival (North American & World Premieres)
Abrons Arts Center and other venues.
September 16-26
Experimental and Underground Theaters

Broadening the traditional concept of "queer" (in) art, the Queer New York International Festival returns to Abrons for a fourth year with a diverse slate of iconoclastic artists from around the world, including Ivo Dimchev (Bulgaria), Joshua Monten (Switzerland), Annie Sprinkle and Beth Stevens (US), Bruno Isakovic (Croatia) and Sarah Jane Norman (Australia). Curated by Zvonimir Dobrovic.

[THEATER]
Basil Twist: Sisters' Follies: Between Two Worlds (World Premiere)
October 1-31
Playhouse

Internationally acclaimed director/puppeteer Basil Twist conjures an October ghost story commissioned to celebrate the 2015 Abrons' Playhouse Centennial. Sisters' Follies: Between Two Worlds celebrates the founders of the Playhouse, Alice and Irene Lewisohn, and stars Downtown legends and Abrons favorites, Joey Arias and Julie Atlas Muz as the sisters and enduring artistic spirits of the theater. This homegrown spooktacular presents the ultimate revival, possessed by the sisters and their legacy of avant-garde performance and dance, way, way downtown, still haunting the playhouse 100 years later.

[DANCE]
Travelogues: Ponydance
October 7-10
Experimental Theater

Abrons' Travelogues dance series, curated by Laurie Uprichard, presents the ever industrious, madcap Irish collective, Ponydance. Based in Ireland and touring the world whilst drinking tea, these champions of comedy dance theatre present the award-winning Anybody Waitin'? In this 'laugh-out-loud funny' (The Scotsman) show, Leonie is waiting for Paula, Paula is waiting for a man and Bryan is waiting to be included. In short, we're all waiting for something - mostly for something to happen - and this cast knows how to fill the time better than most. A love for good dancing, good looks and a good time is what they have in common and relentless entertaining antics.

[PERFORMANCE/LIVE ART/PROVOCATIONS]
Just Like a Woman (North American Premieres)
October 23-25
Experimental and Underground Theaters

Abrons joins with London's Live Art Development Agency (LADA) and Chelsea Theatre to offer Just Like a Woman, a three-day program of shows, debates, lectures, installations and screenings looking at the performance of identity - the ways femininity can be 'performed' and representations of gender can be queered through performance. With women performing women, women performing men, men performing women, and artists who go beyond the limits of gender altogether, Just Like A Woman features a dazzling array of US and UK artists including Lois Weaver, Peggy Shaw, CHRISTEENE, Narcissister, Kris Grey, Dickie Beau, Lucy Hutson, George Chakravarthi, Harold Offeh, Lucy McCormick, The Girls, and The Famous Lauren Barri Holstein. Just Like A Woman is part of the Live Art Development Agency's Restock, Rethink, Reflect initiative on Live Art and Feminism, and follows their hugely successful Access All Areas event on Live Art and Disability at Abrons in 2014. Supported by the British Council.

[DANCE]
Lionel Popkin (NYC Premiere)
Ruth Doesn't Live Here Anymore
October 28-November 1
Experimental Theater

Inspired in part by the career of American modern dance pioneer Ruth St. Denis, Ruth Doesn't Live Here Anymore is an evening-length work by the Los Angeles-based choreographer and dancer Lionel Popkin, performed to a live score created by avant-garde accordionist Guy Klucevsek with Sara Parkins on violin. St. Denis was famed for her lavish "Oriental" dances built from her fascination with Eastern cultures and a love of elaborate costuming. This legacy allows Popkin-who is half Jewish and half Indian-to playfully wrestle with his own uncertainties and awkwardness with representations of South Asia. With wit, piles of fabric, a microphone, three dancers, two musicians, and a leaf blower, Lionel Popkin addresses acts of cultural sourcing, representation and transmission and asks: Can a century of perspective help a contemporary choreographer reach his own point of equilibrium?

[THEATER]
Eliza Bent: Toilet Fire (World Premiere)
October 28-November 15
Underground Theater

For two weeks only Abrons presents the "flushed out" Manhattan premiere of Eliza Bent's Toilet Fire: Rectums in the Rectory, a ceremony and celebration of the one thing that unites us all: our need to go. Using the structure of an ancient religious ritual to talk about matters of digestion, philosophy, and faith, Toilet Fire: Rectums in the Rectory explodes with song, audience participation, and unexpected textual twists. By the end of this tour-de-toots, the trappings of a religious service fall away and Toilet Fire reverts to a solo show with the real Eliza Bent talking and ultimately asking: How can we best relieve suffering? There will be puns. There will be poo.

[THEATER]
Epic Theater Ensemble: PIKE ST. (World Premiere)
November 11- December 6
Experimental Theater

With PIKE ST., Nilaja Sun continues her partnership with Epic Theatre Ensemble for her first solo show since her international hit, the OBIE Award-winning NO CHILD.... Featuring her trademark humor, political incisiveness, and virtuosity, she brings to life the entirety of the Lower East Side, from decorated Puerto Rican war veteran Manny, to octogenarian downstairs neighbor Mrs. Applebaum, to Candace herself. In the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge, a struggling family prepares to ride out the next big storm. Unable to move her teenaged daughter Candace, -whose mysterious aneurysm has rendered her unable to move or breathe on her own-out of their crumbling tenement, Evelyn plans for more than just survival: she fights for healing and redemption. PIKE ST. also marks Sun's return home to the Abrons Arts Center, where she took her first acting class and began her extraordinary artistic journey.

[THEATER]
Transport Group: Once Upon a Mattress
November 22-January 3
Playhouse

Transport Group's revival of the raucous musical fairy tale Once Upon A Mattress stars the formidable Jackie Hoffman (On the Town, Xanadu, Hairspray) and the iconic John "Lypsinka" Epperson (Lypsinka's The Boxed Set, The Passion of the Crawford). During a kingdom-wide search to find a princess fit for the hapless Prince Dauntless, in swims the less-than-regal Princess Winnifred the Woebegone (Hoffman). Unrefined and undeniably charming, Winnifred is like no princess Dauntless has ever seen and his heart is captured. The truly terrible Queen Aggravain (Epperson) goes on a mission to come between her son and his soul mate in this retelling of the classic story of "The Princess and the Pea". Forget everything you know about Happily Ever After. Directed by Jack Cummings III.

[THEATER]
Juliana Francis-Kelly: The Reenactors (World Premiere)
November 25-December 12
Underground Theater

OBIE Award-winner Juliana Francis-Kelly's newest play, The Reenactors, asks: "Are most actors idiots? Are all rich kids jerks?" A hard-working actress gets cast in an Equity Showcase about the sole survivor of a teenage suicide pact in suburban New Jersey. She hooks up with the play's affluent writer/director and soon discovers his play is based on a terrible true story. The Actress is curious. Trouble ensues. Directed by Tony Torn.

[DANCE/PERFORMANCE]
American Realness
January 7-17

American Realness, the magnetic two-week festival of contemporary dance and performance curated by Ben Pryor, is back at Abrons for the seventh edition.

[THEATER]
Erin Markey: A Ride On The Irish Cream (World Premiere)
January 13-31
Experimental Theater

A Ride On The Irish Cream is a darkly comedic story with songs set in a fantastical Michigan backyard on a cold blue river. A live band and original score composed by Kenny Mellman, Emily Bate and Erin Markey become the playing space for the thrills and terrors of a relationship between Reagan (Markey), a vainglorious self-made princess, and Irish Cream (Becca Blackwell), her family's pontoon boat/horse. They are in love, but when their relationship is tested by waterfalls, masculinity, dust ruffles, severe T-storms, moms and a fatally jealous best friend, the only way to stay together is to remember all the parts of themselves their bodies tried to forget. Directed by Jordan Fein.

[THEATER]
Target Margin Theater: DRUNKEN WITH WHAT?
February 10-28
Playhouse

Who was Eugene O'Neill? Genius, Blowhard, Giant of the Imagination, Ham-fisted avatar of pseudo-psychology, Geographer of the Human Spirit, was he drunk on art or just drunk? DRUNKEN WITH WHAT launches Target Margin Theater's two-season exploration of the great father of American theater. Artistic Director David Herskovits prepares a new production of the mammoth trilogy "Mourning Becomes Electra" to anchor the work. Full disclosure: we love Eugene and we think much of his work is under-estimated and overlooked.

[OPERA]
¡Figaro! (90210)
March 5-20
Playhouse

Hailed by the New York Times as "blasphemous, brilliant... realistically contemporary and timelessly comic" ¡Figaro! (90210) comes to New York following its critically-acclaimed, sold-out stage premiere with LA Opera. Contemporary debates over immigration reform, income inequality, and multiculturalism take center stage in this update of Mozart's The Marriage of Figaro, where the title character isan undocumented worker on a Beverly Hills estate. Featuring a completely new English (and "Spanglish") libretto by Vid Guerrerio that marries up-to-the-moment punch lines with a note-for-note recreation of "the most perfect opera ever written", ¡Figaro! (90210) transforms the original into an accessible musical comedy that is as funny and relevant today as when it first premiered more than 200 years ago.

[THEATER]
New York City Players: /Really/ (World Premiere)
March 16-April 2
Experimental Theater

/Really/ by Jackie Sibblies Drury is the story of a photographer and the two women who love him most: his girlfriend and his mother, who face the challenge of furthering his vision or abandoning it. As they try to part with the past, they take account of the space between making art and being defined byit. Directed by Richard Maxwell.

[THEATER]
Pan Pan: The Seagull and Other Birds (North American Premiere)
March 23-April 2
Playhouse

The internationally celebrated Irish theatre company Pan Pan make their Abrons' debut with The Seagull and Other Birds, a roller coaster reimagining of Anton Chekhov's much-loved comic masterpiece. The performance centers around a concise new version of The Seagull integrated with a number of works specially commissioned by the company. Through the wormhole of the new work, Chekhov's characters find themselves in extraordinarily different contexts: classic plays, TV shows, YouTube and stuff they've just made up. The result is playful and uncompromising - expect lots of talk about art, some action, and tons of love.

[THEATER]
Sven Ratzke: STARMAN (North American Premiere)
March 24 - April 3
Underground Theater

Inspired by the music of David Bowie, this original rock and roll theatrical sees Sven Ratzke metamorphose into an all-new incarnation, the dazzling STARMAN. The show's 70's glam rock soundtrack steers from groovy sound collages with a 3-piece band, to solos accompanied only by a rusty piano. Classics like "Space Odditty' and "Heroes' are re-interpreted by Ratzke's longtime music director Charly Zastrau, and the show features original songs written by Ratzke in collaboration with New York City's own Rachelle Garniez.

[DANCE]
Skin Me (North American Premiere)
April 8 & 9
Playhouse

Winner of Hungary's Rudolf Laban award for contemporary dance, Viktória Dányi, Csaba Molnár and Zsófia Tamara Vadas' Skin Me is loaded with political metaphor, irony, and a refreshing self-awareness. Set to a punchy rock score that's performed live, the work unfolds with brazen displays of nudity, hilarious interactions, and provocative images. Overtly sexual yet not gratuitous, it's a prime example of the bold and energetic choreography that is currently being made in Eastern Europe.

[THEATER]
Aaron Landsman: Empathy School and Love Story (NYC Premiere)
April 20-30
Playhouse

Abrons presents the New York City premiere of Aaron Landsman's Empathy School, created with filmmaker and composer Brent Green, and performed by Jim Findlay. An out-of-work bus driver riffs a layered, immersive story on an overnight ride through rural Illinois, complete with live band and haunted, scratched images that flicker by. How is the landscape you grew up in etched into the body you live with now? Commissioned by EMPAC, Empathy School was presented on a dark road outside Troy, NY in fall 2014. Performed in rep with Love Story, a monologue told by a guy who's walked every street. Love Story premiered at ASU Gammage in 2015, and features video by Janet Wong and music by T. Griffin.

[THEATER/MULTI-MEDIA INSTALLATION]
Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty: Why Why Always (World Premiere)
April 20-30
Underground Theater

It is seventeen minutes past midnight, Oceanic Time. You're sitting 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, you look down at the program in your hand, black letters spell the words Why Why Always. In this 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. Why Why Always conjures a live cine-performance through the interplay of other worldly video, music, sound and technology.

[DANCE]
Luke George and Daniel Kok: Bunny (North American Premiere)
April 27-30
Experimental Theater

In Bunny, Luke George and Daniel Kok look to macramé, sailors' knots, Chinese knots and rope bondage to suspend tension, unleash collective desires, and weave together an interactive experience of collectivity. Award winning choreographer and performer, Luke George was raised in Tasmania and is based between Melbourne and Brooklyn. His works have been presented across Australia, Europe and U.S.A., (Not About Face at The Chocolate Factory Theater and TBA Festival Portland, 2013), as well as collaborating and performing in the work of other artists (NYC's Miguel Gutierrez and the Powerful People, Luciana Achugar, Melinda Ring and K.J. Holmes). Daniel Kok is from Singapore and studied MA Solo/Dance/Authorship (SODA) at the Inter-University Centre for Dance (HZT, Berlin). His choreographic works have been presented in Asia, Europe, Australia and Africa. He is also the 2012 Singapore national pole dance champion.

[DANCE]
Levi Gonzalez: product fail (World Premiere)
May 4-7
Underground Theater

Levi Gonzalez's newest work, product fail (working title) is a movement-based work for three dancers and one choreographer/director. An attempt to resist traditional notions of theatrical and artistic product, there will be no music and no shifts in lighting, only the power of the living, breathing human body. The work explores the endless possibilities inherent in the body to express, challenge and transform the act of perception, and to reinsert sensuality, proximity and intimacy into a shared public space. Gonzalez will direct the dancers live in each performance, creating a charged sense of the "now" for both performers and audience.

[DANCE]
Pieter Ampe & Guilherme Garrido: Still Standing You
May 13-14
Playhouse

Using their bodies as instruments, this Belgian-Portuguese duo explores the lines between masculine play, tenderness, slapstick, and violence in this internationally acclaimed performance art/dance work. Sometimes seeming to be friends or brothers, other times perhaps lovers or even strangers, Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido set in motion rough-and-tumble choreography that travels from masculine movement duets to gymnastics and wrestling, to violent strokes of a leather belt and beyond. Yet humor and humanity shine throughout, as the duo achieves a delicate balance between pain and physical joy.

[MUSIC/SOUND]
NYC Electroacoustic Music Festival
June 13-19

Dedicated to showcasing the best electroacoustic music and video art from all over the world, the New York City Electroacoustic Music Festival includes electroacoustic music recorded alone and up to eight channels, works involving live electronics, works combining musical instruments or voices with recorded or live electronics, video and multimedia works, and audio and video installations.

About Abrons Arts Center
The Abrons Arts Center is the OBIE Award-winning performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. The 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.