Following a successful run in Los Angeles, performer and writer Christopher Vened brings his one-man show Human Identity to the 2014 United Solo Theatre Festival today, September 27 at 2:00pm.
This inventive, funny and eye-opening piece of monodrama is nothing less than a quest to figure out the meaning of human identity. What does it mean to be human? Who am I? Christopher Vened explores the essential human predicament of being alive without entirely knowing who we are and how we were created. He relentlessly pursues answers and what he cannot explain in words, he shows in mime. "Vened's skill as a mime enables him to intricately reveal the complex physical organization that makes us human and how it transcends all other life forms on Earth," praised reviewer Julio Martinez in Arts in LA.
Vened premiered Human Identity at The Lounge Theatres in Hollywood on January 5, 2014 as a work in progress. However, the show was already in good enough shape to present to a paying audience and invite reviewers. Attracted by the subject matter they came-and the show created a great stir. Vened received enthusiastic responses from his audiences and some quite good reviews. It encouraged him to go on with it. So he polished up both his script and performance, and now he wants to present Human Identity on a larger scale. He believes that The 5th Annual United Solo Theatre Festival is a desired vehicle for him to catapult his show onto the word stage. He is thrilled to perform in New York, a great theater town and center. His intention is to take Human Identity on a world tour.
Christopher Vened embraces the formula of monodrama theatre because it invites freedom of individual expression with no limits. To stand alone on front of the audience and express oneself is something liberating, there is no other authority but "I." Well, it is, of course, easy to make a fool of one-self. So, one better have a good script, staging, and rehearsed it well to deserve to be there, on the stage. The audience is hungry for revelations, or at least entertainment. The performer has to deliver it. And that requires skills, talent, and to have something to say and/or show, a message they are awaiting for. Christopher Vened is aware of this responsibility. In his one-man show Human Identity he hopes to stir people's minds, he wants the audience to get excited by the ideas in the show, to take those ideas home with them and discuss them, talk about them for many days to come, so to speak, to go on their own quest for human identity.
Christopher Vened was born in 1952 in Poland. He was an actor-mime in the Wroclaw Pantomime Theatre. In 1977, he was awarded the Brown Spire for the best performance for the dual role of Guest-Dionysus in the production of Arriving Tomorrow. In the end of 1981, he defected to the West while on tour with the company in Germany because martial law was declared in Poland. He was the founder and director of Impulse-Movement Theatre in West Berlin and Drama Studio in Seattle. In 1985, he was awarded a Drama-Logue Award for best choreography for his work in the production of A Voyage to Arcturus at the Odyssey Theater. He has choreographed and directed shows and taught acting in various studios, universities, and theaters in the United States. He is the author of the acting book In Character: An Actor's Workbook for Character Development.
Rebecca Robertson-Szwaja (producer) has been a script supervisor for the last fifteen years, whose films include "Nebraska", "Enough Said", "Sideways", "Savages" and "The Italian Job", to name a few. She met Christopher Vened years ago when she was an actress and he was the choreographer on A Voyage to Arcturus at the Odyssey Theater.
For more about the show, viist
http://unitedsolo.org/us/2014-humanidentity/ or go to
http://christophervened.com/HumanIdentity/.
2014 United Solo, the world's largest solo theatre festival, celebrates its 5th anniversary season and its dynamic expansion in scope and popularity. Over 130 shows from six continents are staged at Theatre Row: 410 West 42nd Street, New York City. TICKETS, with a price of $19.25 (including a $1.25 theatre restoration charge) are available at Theatre Row box office, 410 West 42nd Street, New York, NY 10036, as well as over the phone at 212.239.6200 and online at
telecharge.com. More details can be found at
www.unitedsolo.org.
Photo by Merie Weismiller Wallace.
