HERE begins its 2014-2015 producing season with the premiere of the site-specific Artistic Director production, Trade Practices, by Kristin Marting & David Evans Morris. Trade Practices creates a living market where audience members, cash in hand, choose how to invest their time and money. Set in Pershing Hall, a historic building on Governors Island, Trade Practices kicks off Labor Day weekend, playing a limited engagement of 16 performances only, August 31 - September 21.
Trade Practices is an immersive site-specific theater event that examines the notion of "value" against the backdrop of the booms and busts of the past decade. The adventure begins with a ferry ride to Governors Island and continues as the audience explores room upon room of Pershing Hall, engaging in varied storylines performed by an ensemble cast and participating in intermittent trading rounds. This new work follows the fictional currency company Tender, Inc. on its journey from family business to publicly traded corporation through original texts presented simultaneously in competing episodes. Each episode centers on the same period in the life of the company, told from the perspective of a specific group: Owners, Managers, Marketers and Workers. Using a fictional currency, audience members buy '"shares" in one of these four storylines, granting them admission to that perspective's episodes. Periodic trading rounds present opportunities for swapping shares, or selling them for a profit that can be used to buy additional stock. Throughout, audience members don't just watch - they get to choose which story to follow at a given moment - exploring how we decide what something is worth, and what we value.
Kristin Marting (Co-Creator / Director) has constructed 25 works for the stage, including 12 original hybrid works, 8 adaptations of novels and short stories and 5 classic plays. She works in a collaborative, process-driven way to fuse different disciplines into a cohesive whole. Projects include Lush Valley, a live art participatory performance; Orpheus, an alt-musical co-created with
David Evans Morris; and James Scruggs's Disposable Men. She directed Sounding and Dead Tech, both of which received MAP Fund awards. Her works have toured the US. She has collaborated on several large-scale political action art events, including The Line (2004). For over 20 years, she has been developing a unique hybrid directorial/choreographic form that features a "gestural vocabulary" as an emotional signifier & as a choreographic element. She was named Person on the Year by
nytheatre.com (2011) and honored with a BAX10 Award. She is a co-founder and Artistic Director of HERE, where she cultivates artists and programs for two performance spaces-including 18 OBIE-award winners - for an annual audience of 35,000. She created and co-curates HERE's Artist Residency Program. For 19 years, she curated The American Living Room, an annual summer festival featuring works by emerging artists; and for 8 years, QUEER@HERE, an annual festival of LGBT work. She serves on panels for NEA, NYSCA, DCA, and TCG. Previously, Marting co-founded and served as co-artistic director of Tiny Mythic Theatre Company. She served as
Robert Wilson's assistant for HAMLETMACHINE and Salome. She graduated from NYU with honors in 1988. She teaches at NYU and lectures at Harvard, Columbia, Brown and Williams College, among others.
David Evans Morris (Co-Creator / Set Designer) makes original performance work and scenographic environments for the theater. He works regularly with
Young Jean Lee (scenic design for STRAIGHT WHITE MEN, UNTITLED FEMINIST SHOW, LEAR, and THE SHIPMENT, US and European tours of Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven and CHURCH), Taylor Mac and
Target Margin Theater. He co-conceived, with
Kristin Marting, and designed scenery for Orpheus - an alt-rock opera based on the Classical myth, the design of which was included in the United States pavilion at the 2007 Prague Quadrennial. Also with Ms. Marting: Erendira, Dead Tech and Possessed. With
Les Freres Corbusier (Associate Artist) he co-created and designed the Off-Broadway hit Boozy: The Life, Death, And Subsequent Vilification Of Le Corbusier And, More Importantly, Robert Moses, as well as designing the scenery for the Obie-winning A Very Merry Unauthorized Children's Scientology Pageant, The Franklin Thesis and President Harding Is A Rock Star, all directed by
Alex Timbers. As an Affiliated Artist with Clubbed Thumb he designed scenery for Quail (directed by
Kip Fagan), Demon Baby (directed by
Ken Rus Schmoll), The Typographer's Dream and The Train Play. He holds degrees from the University of Washington in Seattle and Williams College, where he teaches design. He has received a Princess Grace Fellowship, been nominated for a
Henry Hewes design award, and was a previous HARP artist when he began developing Exercises for the Body Politic, an ongoing series of theatrical events about American civic life.
Trades Practices is written by
Erin Courtney,
Eisa Davis,
Robert Lyons,
Qui Nguyen,
KJ Sanchez and
Chris Wells. Set Design by
David Evans Morris. Original Music by Xander Duell McMahon. Additional Original Music and Sound Design by
Jane Shaw. ?Video Design by Jared Mezzocchi and Gil Sperling. ?Lighting Design by
Natalie Robin. Costume Design by
Elizabeth Bourgeois. Production Stage Managed by Aislinn Curry. Assistant Directed by Tara Ahmadinejad.
Trade Practices is performed by
Bernardo Cubria, Jenniffer Diaz,
Daphne Gaines,
Megan Hill,
Brooke Ishibashi, Daniel Kublick, Peter McCabe, Mariana Newhard,
Mary Rasmussen and
Dax Valdes.
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