Multimedia, Site-Specific Art Event INTER-ACTIONS Comes to FPTC This Weekend

Boston, MA -- INTER-ACTIONS: Performance Art x Art That Performs; presented by Fort Point Theatre Channel. Performances run tonight, July 18 and tomorrow, July 19, at 8-9:30 pm. to and open to all. Channel Center Garage, 116 West First St., Boston. For further information: www.fortpointtheatrechannel.org/inter-actions, 617.750.8900.

When the Channel Center Garage opens its gates to INTER-ACTIONS: Performance Art x Art That Performs, dozens of musicians and actors, poets and performance artists will collaborate with an inter-active art installation that billows and changes light and color patterns in response to their movements and sounds. A plus is that Fort Point's new Channel Center Garage is also a monumental work of art to be appreciated.

INTER-ACTIONS centers on a three-piece, kinetic installation created by Fort Point Theatre Channel artistic co-director Rick Dorff. Performers manipulate, rearrange, rotate, and interact with or react to the installation's sculptural pieces, each of which is activated by motion and sound sensors. The installation is constructed from fabric, mirror, wire mesh, wood, lighting, and various other materials.

INTER-ACTIONS, #14 in FPTC's free Exclamation Point series of short new works, includes a wide breadth of artistic genres, such as drama, dance, conceptual performance, music, film, video, opera, acrobatics, and more. Each piece is brief, ranging from a minute or less to ten minutes. Selected pieces will also be presented on the Boston Common earlier in the week (July 16-17) in conjunction with Outside the Box.

The complete INTER-ACTIONS schedule of performances will be finalized shortly. The following is a taste of the multi-disciplinary works to be presented:

· Betrayal & Lies: Kevin Price plays bass clarinet while moving among the Inter-Actions installation pieces, coaxing them into reacting to the tango music of Mark Warhol.

· Black Birds, Red Hills: Penny Benson's non-verbal, metaphorical telling of the life of Georgia O'Keeffe uses puppets and performing objects to explore the essence of a life, love and art.

· Bridge: A play excerpt performed by Kria Sakakeeny combines a yellow scarf, a dressmaker's dummy, a backgammon game, and modern dance gestures.

· Conversation: Jason Fitz-Gerald, an actor, director, photographer writer and artist, will join poetry, drum, harmonica, and himself in a musical, verbal, and movement conversation.

· Duck That: Led by Angela Saywer, this improvising, experimental music group uses hunting calls, extended techniques on instruments, and much more.

· Forked Road: Rae Marie Luna's performance poetry tells the story of a lost hiker who stumbles upon an abandoned graveyard at the fork in the road, where a repository of those without a path ended up. The hiker (audience) bears witness to an array of outcast women who realize their lost voices can be heard during an enchanted moon. The installation serves as a distorted cemetery of headstone monoliths, a symbol of the women's oppression in life and death, which soften in a moment of freedom.

· Holding On: A Marriage of Poetic Verse and Movement synthesizes excerpted text from OWLL's projects expresses the pain and resilience of youth who live in the shadow of incarceration; compilation and narration by Mary Driscoll, movement by Zahra A. Belyea, and flute by Peggy Friedland.

· Playful Play-Palindrome, Punctuation Play, and more: The ensemble of Amelia Lumpkin, Melissa Nussbaum Freeman, Brookes Reeves, and friends are generating short plays that join the spoken word, movement, and percussive stomps, snaps, claps, vocal sound, and gibberish.

· Il y avait une fois: Susan Dorff tells of visiting the prehistoric Stonehenge-like alignments in Carnac, France, reciting while winding in and out of the sculptures on a two-wheeler.

· inner EXCHANGE: Improvisational music joining classical and world music, with Molly Exten on violin, Nicolas Sterner on cello, and Keiichi Hashimoto (cornet), in a group newly formed for this project.

· Catfishing: A virtual social experiment in which Heather Kapplow will attempt to force the appreciation of public art on people who would prefer to have an extremely casual sexual encounter, hopefully answering the age-old question of whether an art experience is a good substitute for a sexual one.

Also:

· Suzanne Mercury, performance poet and interdisciplinary artist, presents improvisational short poems that respond to the installation using meditative somatic poetry exercises, a compositional technique that emphasizes presence and spontaneity.

· Jaime Carrillo strands two souls on an unknown planet possessing extraordinary features. As its rock formations cause the survivors to age at vastly different speeds, what will become of their connection and relationship under these extraterrestrial circumstances?

· Peter Snoad offers My Name Is Art, a short play in which people react to an art installation-with a twist, of course.

Additional pieces choreographed by Nicole Pierce and Junichi Fukuda. Musical contributions by Mitchel King Ahern (designs instruments using industrial materials and electronics, playing them using traditional techniques for resonant sounds), Peggy Friedland (classical flute and other instruments), and Keiichi Hashimotto (trumpet).

INTER-ACTIONS: Performance Art x Art That Performs is presented free, thanks to the generosity of FPTC's donors, including the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Boston Cultural Council, and CV Properties.

Fort Point Theatre Channel (FPTC) (www.fortpointtheatrechannel.org) is dedicated to creating and sustaining new configurations of the performing arts. FPTC brings together an ensemble of artists from the worlds of theater, music, visual arts, and everything in between as a forum for collaborative expression while enriching the Fort Point community, Boston, and beyond. FPTC serves as an anchor for the Fort Point arts community, but also enjoys presenting their material in various venues throughout the city.

FPTC artistic directors are: Mario Avila, Olivia Brownlee, Jaime Carrillo, Rick Dorff, Mary Driscoll, Ian W. King, Anne Loyer, Marc S. Miller, Sally Nutt, Hana Pegrimkova, Nick Thorkelson, Douglas Urbank, Daniel J. van Ackere, and Mark Warhol.

Pictured: Channel Center Garage designed by Spalding Tougias Architects.