Incubator Arts Project Announces Other Forces Festival

The Incubator Arts Project presents Other Forces, an annual festival of work from some of independent theater's most innovative artists.
More information: http://www.incubatorarts.org/otherforces.html

Daniel Fish
Tom Ryan Thinks He's James Mason Starring in a Movie By Nicholas Ray in which a Man's Illness Provides an Escape from the Pain, Pressure and Loneliness of Trying to be the Ultimate American Father, Only to Drive Him Further Into the More Thrilling Though Possibly Lonelier Roles of Addict and Misunderstood Visionary.

80 minutes?
Premiere

Thurs, Jan 6: 6p.m.
Fri, Jan 7: 4p.m.
Sat, Jan 8: 2p.m.
Sun, Jan 9: 8p.m.
Mon, Jan 10: 2p.m.
Thurs, Jan 13: 8p.m.
Fri, Jan 14: 8p.m.
Sat, Jan 15: 8p.m.
Sun, Jan 16: 8p.m.

note: Tom Ryan Thinks He's James Mason.... will extend beyond the Other Forces festival. Additional dates are:

Tues, Jan 18: 8p.m.
Thurs, Jan 20: 8p.m.
Fri, Jan 21: 8p.m.
Sat, Jan 22: 8p.m.

Inspired by mid-century Hollywood melodrama, specifically the films of Nicholas Ray and Douglas Sirk, this work re-imagines the genre to explore the pain, pressure and isolation of America's addiction to heroism. Through the intimate story of one man's struggle against society's conventional demands, it depicts a family and a nation coming apart at the seams---a people that aspire to heroism only to become beastly. FeatuRing Thomas J. Ryan (The Little Foxes, In the Next Room or The Vibrator Play) and Christina Rouner (Coram Boy, The Duchess of Malfi), with set design by Peter Ksander and costumes by Kaye Voyce.

Daniel Fish has created and/or directed new work for theatre throughout the U.S. and Europe. In addition to being known for his daring productions of plays by William Shakespeare and Moliere, Fish has created work from sources as varied as the music of Elliott Smith and Rodgers and Hammerstein, and texts by David Foster Wallace, Oscar Wilde, Clifford Odets, Charles L. Mee, Sarah Ruhl, David Rabe, David Mamet, Roland Schimmlepfenning and Sheila Callaghan.

Recent work includes After David Foster Wallace: Brief Interviews With Hideous Men, Der Menschnefeind for Staatstheater Braunschweig, Clifford Odets' Paradise Lost for The American Repertory Theater and Paradise Park by Charles L. Mee for Signature Theater. Among the venues Daniel Fish's work has been seen are Düsseldorf Schauspielhaus, American Repertory Theater, in New York at Signature Theatre, CSC, and The Zipper which opened his production of True Love in 2001, The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College, Yale Repertory Theatre, McCarter Theatre, Shakespeare Theatre/Washington DC, The Juilliard School, Court Theater, HERE, California Shakespeare Theater and Great Britain's Royal Shakespeare Company. He has taught directing at The Yale School of Drama, Princeton University, University of Southern California at La Jolla and Bard College.

Preview video: https://www.youtube.com/antonzeitz#p/u/0/DXmbA_qgQtE
Ticketing info:
Janurary 7-9: $15 general
January 10-22: $18 general

Purchase in advance at incubatorarts.org or by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101.
Cash only at the door.
Incubator Arts Project (located inside St. Mark's Church) • 131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Ave.)
L to First or Third Ave; R, W to Broadway/8th St.; 6 to Astor Place; N,Q, 4, 5 to Union Sq.

bluemouth, inc.
Dance Marathon

150 minutes?
Presented in collaboration with The Performance Project at University Settlement

Thurs, Jan 6: 7:30p.m.
Fri, Jan 7: 7:30p.m.
Sat, Jan 8: 7:30p.m.
Devised by bluemouth inc. in collaboration with Elijah Brown, Sandrine Lafond, & Daniel Pettrow
Music Composition & Sound Design by Ciara Adams & Richard Windeyer

Award-winning interdisciplinary theatre collective, bluemouth inc., presents an ecstatic and intimate duration-based performance event inspired by the physically grueling spectator sport from Depression-Era North America. A genuine endurance contest and staged performance, hopeful amateurs mix with bluemouth inc. performers under the direction of floor judges and the merciless movement of the clock to shape participation theatre. Those with two left feet can simply sit back to enjoy the fancy footwork.

Historically, the economic success of the dance marathon relied on promoters hiring and embedding eccentrically skilled performers among the actual dance contestants to create unusual and exciting situations. Using this model, selected audience members are each paired with a different performer, as if they were dance partners set within the larger framework of the dance marathon.

Known for its heightened performance style and bold design, bluemouth, inc. explores themes of endurance, competition, survival, and voyeurism in Dance Marathon, while enwrapping the audience in a wildly joyous, deceptively crafted experience.

Dance Marathon features Ciara Adams, Cass Bugge, Clayton Dean Smith, Billy Hiscoke, Stephen O'Connell, Richard Windeyer and Lucy Simic. Video Design by Cameron Davis with additional footage by Douglas O'Connell, lighting by David Duclos and choreography by bluemouth inc.

bluemouth inc. was created in 1998 in Montreal when four artists came together through a shared interest in developing hybrid performance. Today the company splits its time between Toronto and New York City, working with collaborators from across North America and the UK.

Past performances include American Standard (Ted's Wrecking Yard, 2000), Lenz (The Gladstone Hotel, Toronto, 2001), Something About a River (site-specific, Toronto, 2003, Dora Award for Outstanding Independent Production), How Soon Is Now (Theatre Centre, Toronto, 2004, nominated for 5 Dora Awards).
United States: Lenz (The Carlton Arms Hotel, (What the Thunder Said (Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Site Lines Festival), American Standard (Freeman's Barbershop), Death By Water (Fort Greene Park) and How Soon Is Now (The Irondale Center).
Dance Marathon premiered in Toronto as part of Harbourfront Centre's 2009 World Stage. It has since been presented at The Cork Midsummer Festival, the Vancouver Cultural Olympiad and is scheduled to travel in March 2011 to the Dance Massive festival in Melbourne and 10 Days on the Island Festival in Tasmania. Dance Marathon was created through a commission from Fresh Ground new works Harbourfront Centre Toronto national commissioning programme.

Ticketing info: General: $20
Registration starts at 7p.m; the show begins promptly at 7:30p.m.

Purchase in advance at incubatorarts.org or by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101.
Cash only at the door.
PLEASE NOTE: The performance takes place at University Settlement
184 Eldridge Street (at Rivington Street), New York, NY 10002
F, V to 2nd Avenue; B, D to Grand Street; N, R, W to Prince Street; 6 to Spring Street

Object Collection
Innova

60 minutes?
preview performance

Thurs, Jan 6: 9p.m.
Fri, Jan 7: 1p.m.
Sat, Jan 8: 8p.m.
Sun, Jan 9: 2p.m.
Mon, Jan 10: 8p.m.
Tues, Jan 11: 8p.m.

Written/Directed by Kara Feely
Composed by Travis Just

Innova is an experimental opera set within an urban grotto that evokes a cosmopolitan vision of decay and resonantly colliding languages. Five vocalists maintain an extensive live/work space that functions as a site for invented and revised topographies. Sifting through a baroque landscape of objects, tools, and scale models of unusual landmarks, the performers transform the stimulus around them into intricate sequences of action, diagrammatic displays, and a vigorous instrumental score.

Dissolving the boundary between the innovative and the residual, the text is constructed from a collage of sources, from gangster films to architectural theory, plagiarized performance art, and Chinese cooking ingredients. While the performer/vocalists engage in a range of pastimes, projects, and unconventional vocal techniques such as notated speech and rhythmic whispering, live projected video refracts their activity across the greater room.

The score is influenced by a range of music subcultures, from hip-hop/dancehall's booming sub-bass to updated musique concrete, noise-rock and experimental improvised music. In addition to the five vocalists, Innova will be performed by three musicians on cello, guitar, bass, woodwinds, percussion, piano, samples, field recordings, and assorted objects. Featuring an international cast of performers, Innova includes text in English as well as Turkish, German, French, Spanish and Hebrew, with English subtitles.

Innova is Object Collection's third experimental opera, after Problem Radical(s) (PS122, 2009) and The Geometry (the Chocolate Factory Theater, 2010). Following the one-hour preview at the Incubator Arts Project, Object Collection will premiere the full three-hour version at Abrons Arts Center in May 2011.

Innova features Doug Barrett, Avi Glickstein, Eric Magnus, Fulya Peker and Deborah Wallace, with musicians Travis Just, Taylor Levine and Jessie Marino. The set is designed by Peter Ksander, with lighting by Miranda Hardy, costumes by Stacey Berman and sound by Jamie McElhinney.

Object Collection was founded in 2004 when founding artistic directors Kara Feely (writer/director) and Travis Just (composer/instrumentalist) presented a concert of John Cage's seminal theater and music composition, Song Books, at the Kunst-Station Sankt Peter in Cologne, Germany. This landmark work, that pairs experimental music and theater together within a single interdisciplinary performance, became an inspirational model for the genesis of the company. Now entering into its seventh year, Object Collection puts these ideas into practice by presenting hybrid music-theater performances, which take the shape of large-scale projects, duo performances, and curated performance series. Based in New York City, the company collaborates with musicians, actors, composers, designers, and visual artists, actively combining techniques and methodologies from different mediums in order to generate new artistic work in unchartered forms.

Object Collection's work has appeared at a variety of theaters, concert venues, galleries, art spaces, and festivals, including: Performance Space 122, Chocolate Factory Theater, Prelude Festival, Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, Experimental Intermedia, Chez Bushwick, Issue Project Room (New York); Podewil/TESLA, KuLe, REM/Reihe Elektronischer Musik (Germany); Loop-Line, SuperDeluxe, Urbanguild, Art Space Tetra, Gallery Soap (Japan); 15febbraio, Phoebe Zeitgeist Teatro (Italy) and Art Basel (Miami). Their major projects include The Geometry (2010), Problem Radical(s) (2009), Gun Sale (2009), Famous Actors (2007), Evoke memories of a golden age (2006) and Is this a gentleman? (2005). Additionally, Famous Actors was recently published in Play A Journal of Plays Issue 4, and excerpts from Is this a gentleman? were published in Antennae No. 7. More information at www.objectcollection.us

Ticketing info: General: $15

Purchase in advance at incubatorarts.org or by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101.
Cash only at the door.
Incubator Arts Project (located inside St. Mark's Church) • 131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Ave.)
L to First or Third Ave; R, W to Broadway/8th St.; 6 to Astor Place; N,Q, 4, 5 to Union Sq.

 

The Incubator Arts Project supports independent, experimental performing artists through a series of programs aimed at offering production opportunities and help with long-term growth and artistic sustainability. Its programs primarily support world premieres of original work and also include a concert series, work in progress opportunities and artist salons and roundtables.

The Incubator Arts Project grew out of the Incubator, a project of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater. In 2010, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater announced that it would leave its permanent home, St. Mark's Church, and that the Incubator would take over the space and operate year-round. Since 1993, the Ontological-Hysteric Theater, in addition to its primary support of the work of Richard Foreman, opened its doors to emerging, independent artists. Since then the programs took many forms, including the Obie-winning Blueprint Series for emerging directors. In 2005, the OHT reorganized the programs under the name Incubator, creating a series of linked programs to provide young theater artists with resources and support to develop process-oriented, original theatrical productions. By 2010, the program had quadrupled in size, involving a range of artists and increased support. The programs included the centerpiece Residency program for premieres, two annual music festivals, a regular concert series, a serial work-in-progress program called Short Form, and roundtables and salons aimed at keeping Incubator artists involved year-round. In May, 2010, the Incubator received an OBIE grant.

The Performance Project @ University Settlement provides established, emerging and young artists and local audiences with opportunities to connect and enrich each other's lives. Our aim is to encourage greater participation in the live arts and to help cultivate diverse creative communities on the Lower East Side. Our seasons offer diverse selections of dance, live music, original theater and multimedia performance, but what pulls it all together is a strong commitment to artists who are philosophically aligned with the spirit of the Settlement House movement. The artist we present are conscious of the multi-layered communities that co-exist in New York City and want to reach beyond existing audiences to invest in building new audiences for the live arts.

University Settlement is a dynamic community service organization that has been serving the Lower East Side of Manhattan since 1886. With an impressive legacy as the first settlement house in the United States, University Settlement has been an incubator for progressive ideas and innovative programs since its inception. The Settlement's mission is to improve the life circumstances of people in need and the communities in which they live. Each year, our diverse programs and integrated services help over 20,000 low-income people, many of them new immigrants, build better lives for themselves and their families.