HERE Announces Culturemart Festival Line-Up, 1/24-2/11

The OBIE-winning HERE announced the line-up for its annual CULTUREMART festival, this year running January 24 – February 11. CULTUREMART makes process the focus, presenting work in various stages of development from the boundary-breaking artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). CULTUREMART provides a platform for HARP artists to blur the lines between dance, theatre, music, multimedia, puppetry and visual art, on their journey to mainstage productions. CULTUREMART 2012 features 12 workshop performances spanning topics as varied as civic engagement, human error, music of the spheres, war gaming and everything in between.

HERE's unique producing residency programs (HARP & Dream Music) commission and develop cross-disciplinary performance work through long-term relationships (1-3 years) with mid-career artists. While in residence, artists have opportunities to present work during various stages of development through work-in-progress showings and more fully developed, beautifully produced workshops during CULTUREMART, offering a vital step in the evolution of new work in a vibrant festival setting.

Resident artist projects seen at CULTUREMART culminate in mainstage productions at HERE. This year's festival features 5 works by the newest resident artists, 5 works that have been seen in past CULTUREMART festivals, and 2 productions by HERE residency alumni back with new projects in development. CULTUREMART alumni include Young Jean Lee, Taylor Mac, Lisa D'Amour, Faye Driscoll, Erin Orr, Troika Ranch, Corey Dargel and Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf.

CULTUREMART 2012 takes place in both of HERE's theaters, the Mainstage and the Dorothy B. Williams Theater. 

HERE is located at 145 Sixth Avenue (entrance on Dominick Street). Tickets for all Culturemart productions are $15.00. For tickets and more information call (212) 352-3101 or visit www.here.org.

CULTUREMART 2012 SCHEDULE:

Tuesday, January 24 & Wednesday, January 25 @ 8:30 PM
YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. / Christine Evans, Joseph Megel, Jared Mezzocchi
In You Are Dead. You Are Here., the charged encounter between an American soldier and female Iraqi blogger plays out through the lens of the technologies that aid and connect them. Inspired by the convergence of video-game environments, virtual technologies and military research, the show melds live action with animated landscapes from "Virtual Iraq," a virtual-reality program used in veterans' P.T.S.D. therapy. Written by Christine Evans. Directed by Joseph Megel. Media design by Jared Mezzocchi. With additional support from The Ensemble Studio Theatre/Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project. This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

Thursday, January 26 @ 8:30 PM
CITY COUNCIL MEETING / Aaron Landsman
Come to the theater and make a choice about whether and how to participate. Please base all judgments on empathy and listening; we may ask you to voice someone you're not. City Council Meeting is performed participatory democracy, combining text from half-a-dozen cities where we've sat in on government meetings, as well as original writing and testimony from you the viewer. Come early and you might end up in the Mayor's chair. Come late and you might lose your voice. Directed and dramaturged by Mallory Catlett. Designed by Jim Findlay.
With support from The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, and by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Theater Pilot, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. City Council Meeting is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by DiverseWorks Art Space, in partnership with HERE, Zspace and NPN. The Creation Fund is supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts (a federal agency).

Saturday, January 28 & Sunday, January 29 @ 8:30 PM
BOTCH / Joe Diebes
Botch is a hyper-administrated performance system made of bodies and voices. Multitasking with microphones, loudspeakers, paper and charcoal, an agile ensemble of performers play with and against a matrix of procedures drawn from the field of corporate "performance management." Someone draws a bold line to the rhythm of a metronome, another fast-forwards her partner's live voice like a tape machine, a third sings a bureaucratic duet with a small loudspeaker. Botch lifts the lid off the apparatus to find a torrential sewer of sound and brain leaks that point up the power of human error. With additional support from the Franklin Furnace Fund supported by the Lambent Foundation Fund of Tides Foundation, Jerome Foundation, and Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Swing Space Residency. Project space is donated by Capstone Equities. A preliminary workshop was sponsored by STEIM (Studio for Electro-Instrumental Music) in Amsterdam, funded by The Netherland-America Foundation.

Tuesday, January 31 @ 8:30 PM / Accompanying gallery exhibition Jan 4-Feb 11
A MARRIAGE: 1 / Jake Margolin & Nick Vaughan
A man and his husband sit in a motel room watching Fox News for 24 consecutive hours, repeating the newscast into clear plastic bags, creating a mountain of captured breath that ultimately engulfs the couple; the two walk into the sunrise in the high Nevada desert, gradually disappearing against the magnitude of the Silver Island Mountain Range; and then there's the spray paint… A Marriage: 1 is an immersive mixed-media installation using performance, video, sculpture, text, and drawings to create a constantly evolving environment; a multifaceted double self-portrait of the artists. Accompanying gallery exhibition Jan 4 – Feb 11, 2:00-9:00 PM. With additional support from Experimental Television Center.

Thursday, February 2 & Friday, February 3 @ 7:00 PM
Saturday, February 4 @ 2:00 & 7:00 PM & Sunday, February 5 @ 2:00 PM
EPYLLION / Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith
Carnal and spiritual collide in this search for what nourishes the infinite possibilities of our hearts' desires. In the world premiere of Epyllion, the story we are becoming unfolds through puppetry, movement and song, developing new rituals that tap into the innate intelligence of the body and reawaken this understanding in those who bear witness to it. Through everyday practices we identify ourselves in the moment but also touch upon an ancient, visceral subconscious.
A Dream Music Puppetry Production. NOTE: This special presentation of Epyllion within Culturemart, 5 performances, marks a full production and HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) culmination for Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith. Epyllion IS open to review.
With additional support from The Jim Henson Foundation. Subsidized studio space was provided by the A.R.T./New York Creative Space Grant, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Thursday, February 2* & Friday, February 3 @ 8:30 PM
WEIGHTS AND BALANCES / Bora Yoon (shared bill with Parts Are Extra)
A constellation of sound-makers, stories and poetic observations trace common laws of physics, cause and effect, and the zeitgeist of an ever-changing world; illuminating how the world may be held together by invisible knots. Weights and Balances is a one-woman narrative musical event, performed by composer and live art chanteuse Bora Yoon. Artist and programmer Luke DuBois designs custom instrument The Body Electric using infrared technology to control audiovisual elements, illuminating the micro-world of personal experience, shifting importance and the dreaming body. *February 2: Post-show Panel Discussion with the Composer and other composers in Culturemart. With support from Harvestworks Digital Media & Art, The Hermitage Artist Center, the Ringling Museum of Art, the Sorel Organization for Women Composers, New York Foundation for the Arts, Asian American Arts Alliance, and the HERE Artist Residency Program.

Thursday, February 2* & Friday, February 3 @ 8:30 PM
PARTS ARE EXTRA / Christina Campanella & Peter Norrman (shared bill with Weights and Balances)
HARP alumni Peter Norrman and Christina Campanella (the sound-video team behind Latitude 14's Red Fly/Blue Bottle and Tinder) perform live music in concert with short, experimental films taken from their 12-part series Parts Are Extra, an art platform through which to investigate the elusive language of cinema. Driven by a live score of deconstructed electronic art songs, the duo creates a starkly fantastical universe of dystopian landscapes and eerie, dreamlike worlds in which fractured narratives of uncharted journeys, spaces of transition and the fragility of the natural world are subtly revealed. *February 2: Post-show Panel Discussion with the Composer and other composers in Culturemart. A HARP Alumni Presentation. With support from the New York State Council on the Arts Film, Media and New Technologies program 2011.

Saturday, February 4 & Sunday, February 5 @ 8:30 PM
THE STRANGER / Betty Shamieh
Midway through Camus's classic "The Stranger," an unnamed Arab is killed. Leaping from this moment and working backwards through possible histories of tangled romance, ethnic conflict and random violence, Betty Shamieh has crafted a new play inspired by this unknown character. The Strangest is an absurdist murder mystery about three Algerian brothers who vie for the love of the same woman, one of whom will be inexplicably gunned down by a French stranger. Infused with elements of Middle Eastern storytelling traditions, audience members enter into a simulation of an Algerian coffeehouse where masters of the oral tradition once told tales. A workshop production directed by May Adrales.
Additional development support provided by the Lark Play Development Center, New Dramatists with support from the Creativity Fund, and Noor Theatre, currently a Company-in-Residence at New York Theatre Workshop.

Tuesday, February 7* & Wednesday, February 8 @ 8:30 PM
SCIENCE FAIR / Hai-Ting Chinn (shared bill with The Scarlet Ibis)
Science Fair is an opera singer's lovesong to the scientific worldview and the scientists who practice and promote it. Conceived and performed by mezzo-soprano Hai-Ting Chinn, Science Fair consists of actual scientific texts, both current and historical, turned into art songs by various new music composers. Each song is sonically tied to a live demonstration, and they are strung together as a staged cycle that uses both elegance and humor to illuminate the processes of science. *February 7: Post-show Panel Discussion with the Composer and other composers in Culturemart.

Tuesday, February 7* & Wednesday, February 8 @ 8:30 PM
Feb 8 @ 5:30 PM: Free Reading of Full Libretto
THE SCARLET IBIS / Stefan Weisman & David Cote (shared bill with Science Fair)
When Doodle was born, no one expected him to live. But he did. He can't walk, so his older brother has to lug him around in a red wagon. One day, a scarlet ibis appears in the "bleeding tree" behind the house. Their fate is intertwined with this exotic bird, which has flown far off course. The Scarlet Ibis is an opera about nature, family and survival. David Cote's libretto (based on the beloved 1960 story by James Hurst) explores the cruelty and wonder of childhood, set to lyrical and evocative music by composer Stefan Weisman. Director Mallory Catlett stages a scene with music and a libretto reading. Part of startHERE: innovative performance for young people. *February 7: Post-show Panel Discussion with the Composer and other composers in Culturemart.
A project with American Opera Projects.

Friday, February 10 & Saturday, February 11 @ 8:30 PM
KEEP YOUR ELECTRIC EYE ON ME / Shaun Irons, Lauren Petty, Mei-Yin Ng (shared bill with other stories)
A solitary woman – messianic rock star, space explorer, spectral guide – dwells in an otherworldly landscape where she inhabits a defunct satellite adrift in a decaying technological oasis. In this hermetic dream world, quiet moments are punctuated with bursts of raucous energy as cryptic signals are transmitted via live feed cameras, projections and sound devices. Part video installation, interactive media lab and live performance, Keep Your Electric Eye On Me explores the malleable conception of self in an era of cyber communication, engaging notions of loneliness, paranoia and desire for the unattainable.

Friday, February 10 & Saturday, February 11 @ 8:30 PM
OTHER STORIES / ALEXANDRA BELLER / DANCES (shared bill with Keep Your Electric Eye On Me)
other stories is a collection of interwoven movement events highlighting the friction between stories. When we are confronted, particularly within an intimate relationship, with a story that diverges from ours, how do we deal with that friction against our reality? Further, what does it mean to believe that there is no single reality, and give ourselves over wholly to our stories? Created in collaboration with legendary rock musician/composer Robert Poss and celebrated dramaturg Katherine Profeta, other stories is a layered multimedia performance that triggers memory, emotion and heightened awareness through deeply personal and evocative movement.
A HARP Alumni Presentation.