Ann Hamilton's THEATER IS A BLANK PAGE, Workshops, A RITE Tour and More Among SITI Company's Spring 2015 Lineup

Since its founding in 1992, SITI Company has redefined contemporary theater in the United States through an innovative approach to collaboration, cultural exchange and actor training. With the ensemble as its bedrock, SITI has served as a creative home for a core group of artists: ten actors, four designers, the director Anne Bogart, and a stunning list of international collaborators. Working together, SITI has not only reimagined what is possible both on and off the stage, but, more broadly, what it means to be a global artist in the new millennium.

World premiere of the theater is a blank page with Ann Hamilton

From April 23-26, SITI Company and renowned visual artist Ann Hamilton will premiere the theater is a blank page, an immersive performance event as part of the Wexner Center's 25th Anniversary Season. Hamilton and SITI first collaborated on the event of a thread, Hamilton's widely acclaimed, large-scale installation at New York's Park Avenue Armory in late 2012. This success triggered their interest in joining forces for their first full partnership: a special performance installation work, which will be finalized in residency at the Wexner Center. The work's title metaphorically refers to the simultaneously solitary and immersive, sensory yet imaginative experience of reading.

As an extension of this idea, Hamilton and SITI will focus their performance, in part, on the apparatus of the theater--its architecture, mechanics, and tools--as well as the transformative process of artists discovering what can be conjured there together with an audience. Hamilton and SITI Company's new work will also utilize text from Virginia Woolf's pivotal modernist novel To the Lighthouse (1927). The novel's evocative language and inventive narrative--which skillfully deploys shifting temporal and psychological perspectives alongside poignant ruminations on loss, subjectivity, and perception--make it a fertile point of departure.

Expansion of SITI's signature actor training program

An innovative approach to actor training has been a hallmark of SITI Company for over 20 years. In the fall of 2013, the Company established the SITI Conservatory, an intensive, one-year program that trains theater artists to emerge with classically trained bodies, contemporary sensibilities, and rich flexible intellects. Designed for independent artists from diverse backgrounds, the emphasis of the training is on performance and the generation of new work. The program exceeded expectations, drawing a talented and international group of 35 students in its first two years. Alumni of the program have gone on to found their own theater companies and to work with theater companies around the world. This year's program culminates in a public performance in New York City where the 2014-15 SITI Conservatory class will present their devised work, titled Here Now, on May 16-17 at the Martha Graham Studios (55 Bethune Street).

Beginning in the autumn of 2015, SITI will place the one-year conservatory on a biennial rotation, and restore its shorter term Training Studios (2-6 weeks) during non-Conservatory years to coincide with the company's busy touring calendar. In addition, SITI will offer a weekend Master Class series, new workshops in the Company's expanded New York home, and additional domestic and international intensives. SITI is currently accepting proposals from universities who are interested in bringing 1-2 Company members to their departments to lead workshops in the 2015-2016 season. In 2016-2017, SITI plans to again offer the year-long SITI Conservatory program in New York City. Applications for the 2016-2017 Conservatory class are expected to open in December of 2015 and SITI anticipates inviting up to 20 artists to participate in this program.

SITI is currently accepting applications from artists interested in participating in the following programs:

Spring Training in New York City, April 6-10, 2015
Spring Viewpoints Workshop with Anne Bogart in New York City, May 5 - 7, 2015
1 Week Workshop with Srinakarinwirot University in Bangkok Thailand, May 18 - 24, 2015
2 Week Workshop with Vertico in Madrid Spain, May 25 - June 4, 2015
2015 Annual Summer Intensive at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs, NY, June 7-July 4, 2015
2 Week Workshop at Falmouth College in Cornwall UK, July 11 - 26, 2015

To learn more about our education programs and touring activities in 2015-2017, visit www.siti.org.

Tour dates for A Rite

In their daring collaboration with the acclaimed Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company, SITI Company will continue to tour A Rite, an evening-length meditation on Stravinsky's scandalous The Rite of Spring. Described as "a serious, intricate, multidirectional centennial tribute to a work of art whose spell it deepens." by The New York Times, A Rite will tour to the Center for the Art of Performance at University of California, Los Angeles on March 6 and 7, followed by an engagement on March 17 at the '62 Center for Theatre and Dance at Williams College in Williamstown, MA.

Steel Hammer, Fall 2015

Steel Hammer, the latest collaboration from composer Julia Wolfe, SITI Company, and the New York-based international music collective ensemble Bang on a Can All-Stars, creatively explores the subject of human vs. machine and the cost of hard labor on the human body and soul. Music merges with the spoken word, woven together by movement, dance, and percussion on various surfaces-including the human body-as this new work soars beyond its origins as a Pulitzer Prize-nominated experimental music piece from acclaimed composer Julia Wolfe. Fall 2015 tour dates to be announced.

About SITI Company - SITI Company is an ensemble theater company based in New York that tours extensively throughout the United States and internationally. SITI is dedicated to the creation of new work, the training of theater artists, and to international collaboration. Founded in 1992 by Anne Bogart, Tadashi Suzuki and a group of like-minded artists, SITI seeks to redefine and revitalize contemporary theater in the United States through an emphasis on international cultural exchange and collaboration.

SITI provides a rich context where the interaction of art, artists, audiences and ideas inspire the possibility for change, optimism and hope. The company believes that through the practice of collaboration, a group of artists working together over time can have a significant impact upon both contemporary theater and the world at large.

Through the Company's performances, educational programs and collaborations with other artists and thinkers, SITI continues to challenge the status quo, to train to achieve artistic excellence in every aspect of our work, and to offer new ways of seeing and of being as both artists and as global citizens.

SITI has traveled to 22 countries on five continents and created more than 37 new productions including such iconic works as Under Construction (2009), The Medium (1994), Death and the Ploughman (2004), bobrauschenbergamerica (2001), War of the Worlds--The Radio Play (1999), Hotel Cassiopeia (2006), and a triptych of solo pieces inspired by great artists: Bob (1998), Room (2000), and Score (2002). SITI has also engaged in collaborations with other great artists such as the Martha Graham Dance Company (American Document, 2010), the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company (A Rite, 2013), and Bang on a Can (Steel Hammer, 2014).

Among the countless accolades SITI as a whole, as well as its members individually, have garnered are: seven OBIE awards; two Guggenheim Fellowships, Doris Duke Artist Award, USA Artists Rockefeller Fellowship; American Theatre Wing's Henry Hewes design award, Best Foreign Production at the Dublin Festival, and several Drama Desk Award nominations.

Pictured: Ann Hamilton and Anne Bogart. Photo by Katie Spengler.

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