Photo Flash: Mallory Catlett's Award-Winning THIS WAS THE END Returns to the Mabou Mines Theater

Since 2004, director Mallory Catlett has worked across disciplines to expand the boundaries of theater. Through original works with her own company, Restless NYC, and collaborations with some of today's leading artists-composer Mika Karlsson (The Echo Drift), Dread Scott (Decision), Aaron Landsman (City Council Meeting & Perfect City)-Catlett creates theater that The New York Times calls "lurid, feverish and powerful." She has been called a "downtown treasure" by Time Out New York.

As part of their inaugural season in the newly renovated 122 Community Center, Mabou Mines is proud to co-produce a remount of Catlett's This Was The End, a multiple award-winning, multimedia reconstruction of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya. In the play, Vanya asks, "What if I live to be 60?" In This Was The End, Catlett, along with four luminaries of avant-garde theater, answers that question to great and moving effect.

The cast includes Black-Eyed Susan (Ridiculous, John Jesurun, Obie for Sustained Excellence) as Sonya, Paul Zimet (Open Theater & Talking Band) as Vanya, James Himelsbach (Obie for The Foundry's Talk) as Astrov, and Rae C. Wright (Obie for Sustained Excellence with The New York Street Theatre Caravan) as Yelena.

The Was The Endis a visceral exploration of memory and aging, expressed in multiple ways. In addition to featuring actors over sixty, this encore engagement marks a return of This Was The End to the building, now transformed, where it was originally developed from 2009-2011 during the Resident Artists Program of Mabou Mines. The set, a long classroom wall complete with sliding chalkboards, is also the actual 7 x 14 foot wall from the original Mabou Mines studio in the historic schoolhouse. This relic was salvaged by Catlett and set designer Peter Ksander before 122CC closed in 2013 for renovations.

The sound and video design of This Was The End features a score of voice and image that converge with the live performers. Keith Skretch's video, which projects the wall onto itself, creates a temporal blur from which the past emerges and recedes. The sound design includes fragments of Chekhov's text mixed live onstage by analog tape DJ and sound artist G Lucas Crane, who also manipulates the video as he plays, in a game that allows the performers to improvise with past versions of themselves.?? "The result is a work of unparalleled technical integration," said Helen Shaw in Time Out New York. "The whole thing functions as a musical sculpture, a wayback machine dedicated to the material quality of memory, the way it codes itself into grooves and fissures."

Following its premiere in 2014 at The Chocolate Factory, This Was The End received a Special Citation Obie Award, a Bessie award for best visual design and a Henry Hewes award for its interactive sound and video design. This Was The End was developed under the mentorship of the late Ruth Maleczech.

Since then, Catlett has continued to develop and re-imagine This Was The End as an interactive sound and video installation that premiered March 20 at EMPAC in Troy, NY. This standalone installation is a work of portraiture that explores the ideas of memory and aging as a performative and architectural archive. Like the performance, the installation features the architectural façade of the original Mabou Mines studio in the 122CC building. The installation will be on view at the Mabou Mines Theater June 11-15, hours to be announced.

Rounding out the creative team for This Was The End are Oliver Gajic (costumes), Chris Kuhl (lighting), Ryan Holsopple (programming), Johanna Meyer (choreography), Bill Kennedy (technical director) and Kelly Allen (Production Stage Manager).

Performances of This Was The End will take place June 7-16 at the Mabou Mines Theater (122CC, 150 First Avenue, Manhattan). Critics are welcome as of Thursday, June 7 for an official opening on Sunday, June 10 at 3pm. Tickets, priced at $25, be purchased at maboumines.org or by calling 866-811-4111.

About the Artists

Mallory Catlett (Director/Creator) is the Artistic Director of Restless NYC, which excavates the theatrical and literary record as a source for contemporary performance - to engage the past in a dialogue about its life in the present. Her current project, M/F Future, is a pair of pieces: Decoder 2017 a three-part concert series based on William S. Burroughs' Nova Trilogy; and Dead Time of Plenty a performance installation inspired by Doris Lessing's novel Memoirs of a Survivor. Catlett is also making an installation of This Was The End and co-writing a libretto with composer Aaron Siegel called Rainbird, being co-produced by Experiments in Opera. Restless NYC's work had been commissioned and co-produced by The Chocolate Factory, Gibney Dance, Mount Tremper Arts, Vancouver's PuSh Festival, Theater Conspiracy, CultureHub and LaMama. Residencies include Yaddo, MacDowell, Mabou Mines, The Performing Garage, Women's Interart, Baryshnikov Arts Center, EMPAC; and funded by Creative Capital, NYSCA and The Foundation for the Contemporary Arts.

Outside of the company, Catlett works with visual artists on installations including Nene Humphry'sCircling the Center (2016) and Dread Scott's Decision (2012). She spent four years developing and touring City Council Meeting, a work she created with Aaron Landsman and Jim Findlay, about participatory democracy that the audience performs. Catlett also directs opera including Mika Karlsson's The Echo Drift(Prototype Festival 2018), Stefan Weissman's The Scarlet Ibis (Prototype Festival 2015), and Aaron Siegel's Brother, Brother (Experiments in Opera 2014). She is a member of the multi-disciplinary artist led performance venue The Collapsable Hole. In New York, her work has premiered at 3LD, HERE, Ontological-Hysteric, PS122, Abrons Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory; and been featured at PS122's COIL, Prelude, Prototype and BAM's Next Wave; and has toured internationally to Canada, France, UK, Ireland & Australia. She is a 2015 recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Art Artist Grant and a Professor at Stony Brook University.

Black-Eyed Susan (Sonya) was a founding member of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. She has earned a Villager Award, Obie for Lifetime Achievement. Collaborators include: Jim Neu, John Jesurun, Mabou Mines, Ethyl Eichelberger, Sheila Callaghan, among others. Film work includes Black Maria, Stuart Sherman's A Portrait of an Actress, and Ironweed, among others. From 2006-09, she collaborated with Mallory Catlett and Latitude 14 on Red Fly/Blue Bottle, which premiered at HERE and toured to the Noorderzon Festival in the Netherlands and to EMPAC in Troy, NY. She is also currently working on Dead Time of Plenty with Catlett, a performance installation based on a Doris Lessing novel. She is the 2014 recipient of the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts Grant and the Mabou Mines' 2017 Ruthie Awardee.

G Lucas Crane (sound) is a sound artist, performer, and musician whose work focuses on information anxiety, media confusion, and new performance techniques for obsolete technology. In New York City, he has lately haunted/performed at The Stone, Museum of Art and Design, Pioneer Works, Roulette, Issue Project Room and the Brooklyn Museum. He was a 2011 LMCC Swing Space Resident Artist and received the NYSCA Individual Artist Commission for sound design for the theater piece This Was The End, for which he received a Henry Hewes Award and a Bessie nomination. He is a co-founder of the Silent Barn, an experimental art and performance space in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Nothing here now but the recordings to be infinitely decoded. Visits nonhorse.com for more information.

James Himelsbach (Astrov) was most recently seen as Horace Ohm in Stephanie Fleischman's Sound House at The Flea Theater, as William in The Talking Band's production of The House Sings, written and directed by Paul Zimet, as The Great Man in The Assembly's production of I Will Look Forward To This Later. For the Foundry Theater, Himelsbach appeared as Mr. Snow/Prospero in W. David Hancock's Deviant Craft, directed by Melanie Joseph, the play nominated for a Drama Desk Award. Also for The Foundry, Carl Hancock Rux' Talk, directed by Marion McClinton, in which he played Ion and received an Obie Award. For the Alien Play Festival at the McCarter Theater in Princeton, NJ, he appeared in Carl Hancock Rux' Not The Flesh of Others, directed by Karen Coonrad, and Mr. Rux's Smoke, Lilies and Jade at The Public Theater's New Play festival, directed by Daniel Alexander Jones. He was seen as the Reverend in Denis Johnson's Shoppers at The Sundance Theater Institute, directed by David Levine. As an occasional playwright, James' one-act play, Zero King won the New England Theater Conference Play of the Year, and was subsequently produced in regional theaters across the US and was presented twice in New York City.

Rae C Wright (Yelena) is a performer and writer. This year, Wright played a 1920's racist African art dealer in The Forever Tree, directed by Alrick Brown, that opened the Bentonville Film Fest; was the lead in Later Life at The Portland Stage Co.; and reprised her roles in Critical Mass at a benefit performance for Dixon Place in NYC - where much of her solo was developed. Wright is a two-time MacDowell Fellow, a proud Fulbright Fellow, and a recipient of commissions, grants, and awards including those from NYFA, NYSCA & Franklin Furnace. She developed The Breaks with Deb Margolin, which was seen at The Culture Project & PS122, and had has produced four performance-works that she's authored and starred in. She received an Obie for Sustained Excellence in the Theatre for her work as principal actor and lyricist in The New York Street Theatre Caravan, and is the French Ambassador on the CBS's 'Madame Secretary'. She's appeared in countless obscure independent films including Borders with Steve Buscemi by dir. Joe Tripician, Joe's Apartment, and award-winning shorts by Madeleine Olnek, Juliet Lashinsky-Revene and Roy Eventov. She's played Bernie Madoff for Jennifer Miller/Circus Amok at PS122, Mum in Family for Half Straddle at the Ontologic Hysteric Theater, and was in Taylor Mac's OBIE-winning The Lily's Revenge. She teaches in NYU's Film & TV Department. Visit raecwright.com for more information.

Paul Zimet(Vanya) is Artistic Director of Talking Band. Born and raised in New York City, he studied clarinet and voice at the High School of Music and Art, comparative literature at Columbia College, and medicine at Harvard Medical School. Zimet wrote and directed The Room Sings, The Golden Toad (with Ellen Maddow) Marcellus Shale, New Islands Archipelago, Imminence, Belize, The Parrot, Star Messengers,Bitterroot, Party Time, Black Milk Quartet and New Cities. He has directed many new works for Talking Band including Burnished by Grief (Ellen Maddow) and The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (Taylor Mac). He also directed Part I of The Lily's Revenge by Taylor Mac. This season, he performed in Talking Band's Fusiform Gyrus a Septet for Two Scientists and Five Horns and David Byrne's Theater of the Mind (work-in-progress). He has received an Obie award for direction and three Obie awards for his work with the Open Theater and Winter Project, both directed by Joseph Chaikin. Other awards include The Frederick Loewe Award in Musical Theater and a Playwrights' Center National McKnight Fellowship. He is a playwright alumnus of New Dramatists and an Associate Professor Emeritus in Theatre, Smith College.

Photos by Brian Rogers/Mick Bello