HERE presents Keep Your Electric Eye On Me, by HERE Resident Artists Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty, as part of its 2013-2014 producing season. This multimedia dance-theatre performance features Madeline Best and Carlton Ward, Choreography by Tara O'Con and Original Music by Brian Rogers. This premiere engagement plays 8 performances, beginning tonight, April 30 - May 10, at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street).
Part live performance, video installation, and interactive media lab, Keep Your Electric Eye On Me is an interwoven exploration of transformation, dual realities, hysteria, and the desire for the unattainable. A poetic narrative reverberates through choreographed movement and spoken text, as cinematic mirages meld and collide with complex sonic vistas, which activate and transform the space -- centering on two performers alongside live feed cameras, multi-screen video projections, microphones, monitors and sensors.
Utilizing high-tech and lo-tech methods, creators Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty are active and visible participants throughout the piece as they live-mix and process media to create a complex visual world that blurs the lines between analog/digital, live/pre-recorded, and reality/dream.
Keep Your Electric Eye On Me is performed by Madeline Best (Selective Memory, Hot Box) and
Carlton Ward (Then She Fell, 69°S). This production features Choreography by Tara O'Con (Then She Fell); Original Music by
Brian Rogers (Selective Memory, Hot Box); Props, Costumes and Candies by Amy Mascena; Set Design by Brad Kisicki and Lighting Design by Chris Kuhl (The Elephant Room, This Was The End).
Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty are Brooklyn-based media artists who make multi-disciplinary performances, media installations, single-channel works, documentaries, and interactive video scores for live performance. Their work has been exhibited in diverse locations in New York and internationally including BAM's Next Wave Festival (in collaboration with Phantom Limb Company, Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, Governors Island Arts Fair and Anthology Film Archives. Awards include two NYFA Fellowships, multiple grants from the NEA, NYSCA, Jerome Foundation, Greenwall Foundation, Experimental TV Center and Asian Cultural Council, as well as residency fellowships from The MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, LMCC, Harvestworks, The Bogliasco Foundation, and the Tokyo Wonder Site. They actively design video for multimedia performance and have collaborated with a wide range of artists. Their video design work has been seen at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, St. Ann's Warehouse,
The Public Theater, HERE, PS 122, The Pompidou Center, The Holland Dance Festival, Abrons Arts Center, PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival, and the Venice Biennale. This premiere marks the culmination of their three-year residency in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP).
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
Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues,
Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist,
Hazelle Goodman's On Edge,
Trey Lyford and
Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers,
Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Alexandra Beller's US,
Corey Dargel's Removable Parts, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, and Faye Driscoll's 837 Venice Boulevard, among many others.
The HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) has been HERE's core program since 1998. HARP commissions, develops and premieres new hybrid performances. Productions developed at HERE challenge existing boundaries between disciplines -- theater, dance, music, opera, puppetry, media, visual arts, installation, spoken word and more. Through HARP, the Resident Artists are given the unique opportunity to develop their projects for up to three years through free works-in-progress showings, workshop presentations in HERE's annual CULTUREMART festival, culminating in full-scale productions.
Each season, HERE premieres several Resident Artist productions as mainstage works. These innovative projects are grown in a diverse artistic community where artists receive career development resources and hands-on training. HARP has been widely recognized as a unique model for artistic development for the field to emulate. In honoring HERE with the 2009 Ross Wetzsteon Award, the OBIE Committee noted, "it's become increasingly hard for artists to find a place to take risks, a safe haven where they can develop daring new work. One theater has regularly bucked the trend, making its mission to ensure that artists have a home for their research and development, and that theatregoers can sample the exciting results."
Additionally, HERE is home to the Dream Music Puppetry Program (Artistic Director,
Basil Twist; Producing Director, Barbara Busackino), startHERE: Innovative Theatre for Young People, productions and presentations aimed at young audiences, and the opera-theater and music-theater festival, PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now, co-produced with
Beth Morrison Projects.
Keep Your Electric Eye On Me plays April 30 - May 10 as follows: Wednesday through Saturday at 8:30pm. Tickets are $20. Tickets 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). For more, please visit www.here.org. Performance runs 70 minutes.
