CHIMERA Opens at HERE, 1/8

HERE proudly presents Chimera, a HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) production, as part of the 2012 Under The Radar Festival. Created by Suli Holum (co-creator, performer) and Deborah Stein (co-creator, writer), Chimera is a multimedia theatrical work integrating sophisticated video into a dramatic story. This production plays January 5 – 28 in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue) as a featured presentation within HERE's 2011-12 Season. Official Opening Night is set for Sunday, January 8 at 7:00pm.

Welcome to the world of Jennifer Samuels, who has just discovered that she is her own twin. A high-tech voyage charged with emotion and mystery, Chimera is a thought-provoking examination of medical chimerism, the phenomenon of containing two different sets of DNA within one body. Inspired by a true story, this new play journeys from the frontiers of modern science back to the roots of ancient mythology while exploring what happens when technology shatters one's notion of identity.

Chimera was commissioned and developed through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). It also underwent development at the Workhaus Collective in Minneapolis. Further support was provided by the Playwrights' Center PlayLabs Festival of New Plays, the Perry Mansfield New Works Festival with support from Actors Theatre of Louisville; New Dramatists with support from the Creativity Fund, and the Swarthmore Project at Swarthmore College. An excerpt from Chimera was shown as a work-in-development in HERE's Culturemart festival in January 2011.

Suli Holum (Co-creator, Performer) is a performer, playwright, director and choreographer based in Brooklyn. As a founding member and former Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company, she established herself as a collaborative playmaker. With diverse training that includes Lecoq, Viewpoints, puppetry and various dance forms, Holum creates work that is highly physical and transformative. Acting credits include Off-Broadway: Hot 'n' Throbbing, Courting Vampires, Live Girls, Lebensraum; Regional: Arena Stage: Born Yesterday; Humana Festival: At the Vanishing Point, Phoenix and work with The Talking Band and The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf. Her first original solo show, The Lollipop Project, was developed through an Independence Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship and a Shell Fellowship in Drama from the National Institute of Education in Singapore. She co-created and performed in Joseph Chaikin's collaboration with Pig Iron, Shut Eye, with text by Deborah Stein, at The Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), Dance Theatre Workshop (NYC), the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, the Wilma Theatre (Philadelphia), Theatre Artaud (San Francisco), and throughout Poland. She received a Drama Desk Award for her performance in Israel Horowitz's Lebensraum, and was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday at Arena Stage. Holum is a recipient of a 2011 TCG Fox Resident Actor Fellowship.

Deborah Stein's (Co-Creator, Writer) work has been produced and developed nationally at Actors' Theatre of Louisville, the Theatre @ Boston Court, the Guthrie, Seattle Rep, Stages Rep, the Women's Project, the Wilma Theatre, Live Girls!, Bay Area Playwrights' Festival, and Theatre Artaud; in New York at The Public Theatre, Dance Theatre Workshop and Ars Nova; and internationally in Poland, Ireland, Edinburgh (the Traverse) and Prague. As a playwright, producer and director, Stein has collaborated on original ensemble works and site-specific installations with artists including Joseph Chaikin, Dominique Serrand, Lear deBessonet, and most frequently the Pig Iron Theatre Company, with whom she has collaborated since 2000 on six original works and was nominated for three Barrymore Awards. Her writing is published in Theatre Forum, Play: A Journal of Plays, and The Best American Poetry of 1996. She has been a resident artist at Hedgebrook, Swarthmore College, Princeton University, and the Tofte Lake Center for the Arts. Stein has taught writing at Yale, NYU, Northeastern, St. Olaf, Parsons, and Brown University, where she received her MFA. Recipient of the 2009-2011 Bush Artist Fellowship, two Jerome Fellowships, and a 2010-2011 McKnight Advancement Grant at the Playwrights' Center in Minneapolis. In addition to her residency at HERE, she is a resident playwright at New Dramatists.

Chimera features Set Design by Jeremy Wilhelm (Thaddeus Phillips, Guthrie Theatre, Workhaus Collective), Lighting Design by James Clotfelter (Pig Iron Theatre Company, Mark Bamuthi Joseph, John Jasperse), Costume Design by Tara Webb (Cynthia Hopkins' Accidental Nostalgia, Young Jean Lee's The Shipment, Theatre of the Two-Headed Calf, The Wooster Group) and Sound Design by James Sugg (Obie winner for performance in Pig Iron's Chekhov Lizardbrain; member Pig Iron Theatre Company; Sound for Rainpan 43's all wear bowlers and machines machines machines machines…, Sound for Actors Theatre of Louisville, Woolly Mammoth, Arena Stage). Video Design is by Room 404 Media / Kate Freer and Dave Tennent (Woodshed Collective's The Tenant, 3LD, PS 122, Liz Lerman).

Since 1993, the OBIE-winning HERE, Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director, has been one of New York's premier arts organizations and a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art. Standout productions include Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist, Hazelle Goodman's On Edge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Corey Dargel's Removable Parts, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge and Yoav Gal's Mosheh, among others. HERE's work is challenging and alternative and offers audiences the opportunity to feel that they are part of something new and fresh.
HERE's core program is the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), through which HERE commissions, develops and produces new hybrid theater performances, which are cross-disciplinary works that challenge existing boundaries among media and forms of expression, creating a seamless integration aimed at reflecting the complex age of imagery and information in which we live. As part of the HERE community of artists and audiences, the mid-career Resident Artists show works-in-progress and develop workshop productions (shown in CULTUREMART) over a three-year developmental period, finally mounting full–scale productions. Through HARP, HERE grows innovative artistic work, while offering artists resources and hands-on training in areas such as production planning, marketing, budgeting, grantwriting and touring. Each season, HERE produces four-to-six Resident Artist productions as mainstage works.

About Under The Radar:
Now in its eighth year, Under The Radar is an explosively diverse festival of new theater from around the world and the U.S. that spotlights artists ranging from emerging talents to masters in the field. Located at The Public Theater as well as partner venues, Under The Radar offers a crash course in theater that is exciting, independent, and experimental, created by some of the most dynamic artists working today.

Chimera plays January 5 – 28 as follows:
Thursday, January 5 3:00 PM / 7:00 PM
Friday, January 6 7:00 PM
Saturday, January 7 2:00 PM / 7:00 PM
Sunday, January 8 2:00 PM / 7:00 PM
Wednesday, January 11 – Sunday, January 28 as follows:
Wednesday through Sunday at 7:00 PM, with late shows on Friday & Saturday at 10:30 PM.
Performance runs 80 minutes.

Tickets are $20.00 and can be purchased at www.here.org or by calling (212) 352-3101 or at the HERE Box Office (5PM until curtain on show days). HERE is located at 145 Sixth Avenue, one block below Spring Street. For more info, visit www.here.org.

PLEASE NOTE: In editorial, HERE should be referred to as HERE (formerly HERE Arts Center).
Chimera has received additional support from the McKnight Advancement Grant, and the Bush Foundation.

Suli Holum and HERE are participants in the Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowships, funded by the William & Eva Fox Foundation and administered by Theatre Communications Group.
HERE's 2011-12 Season is generously funded in large part by: The NYC Department of Cultural Affairs; The New York State Council on the Arts; The National Endowment for the Arts; American Express; Bloomberg; Bloomberg Philanthropies; Robert Sterling Clark Foundation; CEC Artslink; Joseph and Joan Cullman Foundation; Doris Duke Charitable Foundation; The Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; The Greenwall Foundation, Jim Henson Foundation; Jerome Foundation; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; LuEsther T. Mertz Advised Fund; MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital, supported by the Rockefeller Foundation; Andrew Mellon Foundation; Mental Insight Foundation; Mertz Gilmore Foundation; Rockefeller Cultural Innovation Fund; Peg Santvoord Foundation; The Scherman Foundation; The Shubert Foundation; Theatre Communications Group; Lila Acheson Wallace Theater Fund of The New York Community Trust, and HERE's generous community of individual donors.

Chimera is a part of The Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival.
Major funding for Under The Radar Festival is provided by The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Ford Foundation. Under The Radar Professional Symposium 2012 is a program of the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, and is held in conjunction with APAP/NYC 2012 Conference. www.undertheradarfestival.com

Photo by Richard Fleischman