Monica Bill Barnes & Co's ONE NIGHT ONLY Sets Dates, Tickets Now On Sale
By: A.A. Cristi Aug. 08, 2017
Tuesday, August 8, 2017) Tickets are now on sale for the first production of WP Theater's 40th Anniversary Season, the world premiere of One Night Only (running as long as we can) by Monica Bill Barnes & Company (The Museum Workout; Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host with Ira Glass), produced in association with New Neighborhood. The show begins performances at WP Theater (2162 Broadway) on Saturday, September 9 with opening night set for Tuesday, September 19.
Tonight the clock is running... and so are they! Longtime performing partners Monica Bill Barnes and Anna Bass will leave it all on the field in this world premiere production. It's got just as much heart (and potential for failure!) as last year's World Series, except there are no balls, no bats, and it's only 63 minutes long. Everyday movements will be taken to monumental new heights as Barnes and Bass summon a night of unexpected joy from manic finger snapping, competitive spinning, and non-stop athleticism. Don't be fooled by the title, One Night Only happens seven times a week and they'll be making up the rules as they go.
"They're vaudevillians, they're tragedians, they're magicians, and on top of it all their work has a combination of technical precision and emotional depth unlike anything else I've ever seen," says Producing Artistic Director of WP Theater, Lisa McNulty.
Following The Museum Workout, which led audience members through a choreographed workout routine in the hallowed halls of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and became the hottest ticket in town - Monica Bill Barnes & Company now joins forces with WP Theater in association with New Neighborhood for One Night Only (running as long as we can). Known for bringing dance where it doesn't belong, this company makes its Off-Broadway debut with this hilarious and heartbreaking new show celebrating the ephemeral nature of everything, including our own abilities. Created by Monica Bill Barnes, Anna Bass, and Robert Saenz de Viteri; One Night Only (running as long as we can) is choreographed by Monica Bill Barnes and designed by Kelly Hanson and Jane Cox.
"There's been one common question in every show I've ever made over the last 20 years and probably even back to when I was nine years old and just started dancing - what kind of female characters should we put on the stage?" says Monica Bill Barnes. "It is such an honor to continue this line of creating and questioning in an Off-Broadway theater that is dedicated to the same pursuits."
Creative Producing Director of Monica Bill Barnes & Company, Robert Saenz de Viteri says, "An off-Broadway show is a completely new way of working for us. But it supports something we've always privileged in our work for the past four years that I've been around - creating characters and situations on stage as a way for audiences to recognize some piece of themselves. A lot of people in theater do this with language. We tend to do this with movement, but maybe we'll try to meet the theater world on its terms a little bit."
Tickets for One Night Only (running as long as we can) are now on sale via http://wptheater.org/tickets/(212) 765-1706. The performance schedule is as follows:
From September 9-18: Saturday September 9 & Sunday September 10 at 8PM; Tuesday September 12 & Wednesday September 13 at 7PM; Thursday September 14 - Saturday September 16 at 8PM; Monday September 18 at 7PM. From September 21-October 8:
Wednesday - Saturday at 7PM; Friday & Saturday at 9PM; Sunday at 3PM.
@mbbandco @wptheater @newneighborhood
BIOGRAPHIES
About Monica Bill Barnes & Company
Monica Bill Barnes & Company is a contemporary American dance company that brings dance where it does not belong. We create and produce each work entirely from its own rulebook - dancing to radio interviews on the biggest stages in the world, hosting a weekly show in a crowded office party, or leading a choreographed exercise routine in an art museum. Within each of these new contexts and borrowed environments, we constantly find humor in our awkward, everyday triumphs and failures. Their most recent works include Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host with Ira Glass and their immersive office party turned performance piece, Happy Hour.
The company consists of a team of collaborators: Artistic Director/Choreographer, Monica Bill Barnes; Associate Artistic Director/Performer, Anna Bass; Creative Producing Director, Robert Saenz de Viteri; designers Kelly Hanson (Set/Costume) and Jane Cox (Lighting). Together, this team creates the most unlikely experiences for every kind of audience.
About Monica Bill Barnes
Monica Bill Barnes is a choreographer, performer, and the Artistic Director of Monica Bill Barnes & Company. Barnes founded MBB&CO in 1997 with the mission to celebrate individuality, humor, and the innate theatricality of everyday life. Her work has been performed in venues ranging from Upright Citizen's Brigade to The BAM Opera House, and has been presented in more than 75 cities throughout the US. Current projects include a collaborative show with radio host Ira Glass that combines radio stories and dance, Three Acts, Two Dancers, One Radio Host, a collaboration with author/visual artist Maira Kalman creating The Museum Workout, and Happy Hour, the world's only office party turned dance show, and the company's first long-running show with recurring performances in NYC.
About Anna Bass
Anna Bass has worked with MBB&CO for 15 years, performing all over the world on stages ranging from public fountains and city parks to Comedy Clubs and Carnegie Hall. She collaborated on all of the company's curreNT Productions, and also served as Assistant Choreographer for productions at The Atlantic Theater, The Public Theater, and Yale Repertory Theater.
About Robert Saenz de Viteri
Robert Saenz de Viteri has created performances and toured productions throughout the world with the Obie Award winning Nature Theater of Oklahoma. He has created, produced, and performed in Happy Hour and The Museum Workout with Monica Bill Barnes & Company. Some of his other favorite projects include producing This American Life Episode 528, "The Radio Drama Episode" live on stage at BAM, directing Rachel Bonds's Michael & Edie, and working in Norway to create The Spiritual Life of Modern America, based on Knut Hamsun's mostly unread book of the same title and the experiences of foreigners traveling in America today.
About Jane Cox
Jane Cox has designed with MBB&CO for more than a decade, and her collaboration with the company is central to her creative life. Recent theater includes Color Purple, Amelie, and Jitney (TONY nomination) on Broadway, Othello at NYTW, and Hamlet at the Barbican in London. Other designs include The Flick, The Ambassador, All The Way, and Machinal (TONY and Drama Desk nominations). Jane has a long-standing relationship with The Oregon Shakespeare Festival, and is the director of the Program in Theater at the Lewis Center for the Arts at Princeton University.
About Kelly Hanson
Kelly Hanson has worked with MBB&CO on every company show since she first met Monica in 2001. She is also a Production Designer for The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon, where she does approximately 220 live shows a year. She has been nominated for an Emmy and an Art Department Guild award. Kelly was born in Bryan, TX and earned her MFA in set design at University of California San Diego. She lives in Queens with her husband and two amazing kiddos, who support her more than they know.
About WP Theater
WP THEATER (Formerly known as Women's Project Theater) is the nation's oldest and largest theater company dedicated to developing, producing and promoting the work of female-identified theater artists at every stage in their careers. For nearly four decades we have served as leaders at the forefront of a global movement towards gender parity, and the example we set and the artists we have fostered have grown into to a robust and thriving community of female writers and directors in theater and beyond.
WP empowers female-identified artists to reach their full potential and, in doing so, challenges preconceptions about the kinds of plays women write and the stories they tell. As the premiere launching pad for some of the most influential female theater artists today, our work has had a significant impact on the field at large. Nearly every prolific female theater artist has been through our doors, including Eve Ensler, María Irene Fornés, Katori Hall, Pam MacKinnon, Lynn Nottage, Leigh Silverman, and Anna Deveare Smith. These powerful female artists found an early artistic home at WP, and are a testament to our role as a driving cultural force.
WP was founded in 1978 by visionary producer, Julia Miles, to address the significant under-representation of women in theater. Today, WP accomplishes its mission through several fundamental programs, including: the WP Lab, a two-year mentorship and new play development program for women playwrights, directors, and producers; the Playwright In Residence commissioning program; the Developmental series; and the Main Stage series, which features a full season of Off-Broadway productions written and directed by extraordinary theater artists.
About New Neighborhood
New Neighborhood is a theater/TV/music company whose sincerity and authenticity are so combustible they cannot be housed under one roof for too long without doing severe structural damage. With new work, bruised work, all-singing, all-dancing, foul-mouthed musical work, New Neighborhood finds a show, produces the shit outta it, and disappears into a cloud of train smoke. Recent projects include the world premiere of Suzanne Heathcote's I Saw My Neighbor on the Train and I Didn't Even Smile (co-produced with Berkshire Theatre Group), the west coast and New York premieres of Rolin Jones's These Paper Bullets! (produced in association with Geffen Playhouse and Atlantic Theater Company), and simultaneous productions of Chekhov's Three Sisters and the world premiere of Aaron Posner's No Sisters (co-produced with Studio Theatre); Season One of Fox Television's "The Exorcist" (produced in association with Morgan Creek Productions and 20th Century Fox Television); and the debut album of Honus Honus, Use Your Delusion. Upcoming: a reimagining of "Perry Mason" starring Robert Downey, Jr., as part of an exclusive two-year deal with HBO. newneighborhood.net
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