A.R.T. Announces April / May OBERON Programming

American Repertory Theater (A.R.T.) at Harvard University announces April and May 2019 programming at OBERON, its club theater space for cutting-edge performance and a thriving incubator for local and emerging artists. Upcoming events include A.R.T. Breakout, Live @ OBERON, and Afterglow @ OBERON series, A.R.T. presentations, and independently produced events.

OBERON is located at 2 Arrow Street at the corner of Massachusetts Avenue in Harvard Square, Cambridge.

Tickets are available online at americanrepertorytheater.org, by phone at 617.547.8300, in person at the Loeb Drama Center Ticket Services Offices (64 Brattle Street, Cambridge), and 30 minutes before curtain at OBERON. Prices vary per event. A.R.T. subscribers and members receive discounts to A.R.T. Breakout, Live @ OBERON, and Afterglow @ OBERON series productions, as well as The Donkey Show.

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DRACULA

Thursday, April 11 at 8PM

Sunday, April 14 at 3:30PM and 8PM

Tickets from $15

Local neo-burlesque and multimedia art gang, The Slaughterhouse Society, is back at OBERON to invite you into a dark evening of immersive theatre, unabashed queer romance, and reimagined occult horror...Their largest, most diabolical, and truly experimental event to date!

Do not hesitate! Get your claws on tickets for this limited TWO NIGHT ONLY re-imagined retelling of the undead classic, Dracula!

You've never seen Dracula like this: a completely immersive, three-act play told through movement, film, live foley sound effects, and custom cocktails inspired by each horrific and hot-blooded act to help submerge you into our gothic Victorian fantasy! We are abandoning type casting and gender roles for truly exciting new adaptations of the classic cast. Witness the unholy union of desire, madness, obsession, and eternal life as only Dracula can conjure...

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WALTER SICKERT & THE ARMY OF BROKEN TOYS

Live @ OBERON

Friday, April 12 at 8PM

Tickets from $10 in advance/$15 at the door

Nominated Boston's BEST LIVE ACT and VOCALIST of the YEAR by the Boston Music Awards 3 years running; Walter Sickert & The Army of Broken Toys is "The most diverse band in Boston in membership, style, and substance" - The Boston Globe. They constantly push beyond traditional genre boundaries and their live shows are "marked with a barely constrained chaos, most times spilling from the stage into the crowd into some frenzied near orgy." - bostonbandcrush.org

Celebrate a sneak peek of their upcoming release of War Gospel, set to debut in late 2019, which is best summed up as a dystopian guerrilla opera. War Gospel is a visual song-cycle that speaks to our times, both reflecting the current political climate and transcending the divisive us vs. them mentality that debilitates progress. With shades of early Alejandro Jodorowsky, War Gospel could easily be described as Walter Sickert's Holy Mountain.

Come experience the beautiful, dystopian chaos in a night meant to foster community, resistance to oppression, and revolution!

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RESISTANCE MIC!

Tuesday, April 16 at 8PM

Tickets $10

The 2016 election inspired a broad-based Resistance not seen in the United States in decades. People from all walks of life have been protesting, marching, mobilizing, and organizing in an effort to take back the country and create a more compassionate and just world. Artists are vital to this work. This spring, the American Repertory Theater, in collaboration with the literary magazine Pangyrus, welcomes the second season of Resistance Mic!, a series of intimate, curated evenings where a diverse collective of artists will take the stage to perform truth to power in these troubled times.

Launched on November 9, 2017-the one-year anniversary of the day after the 2016 election-Resistance Mic! is part of the A.R.T. of Human Rights series, an ongoing collaboration between the American Repertory Theater and Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center for Human Rights Policy. The host is Timothy Patrick McCarthy.

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THE STORY COLLIDER

Wednesday, April 17 at 8PM

Tickets $12

From finding awe in Hubble images to visiting the doctor, science is everywhere in our lives. Whether we wear a white lab coat or haven't seen a test tube since eighth grade, science affects and changes us. We all have a story about science, and at The Story Collider we want to hear those stories.

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Tori Scott IS PICKLED!

Afterglow @ OBERON

Thursday, April 18 at 8PM

Tickets $25

"The Bette Midler of the New Millennium" (Provincetown Magainze) is back and she still hasn't learned from her mistakes! Known for her cabaret shows that take true stories from her life and turn them into musical celebrations, Tori Scott returns to OBERON with her new show Tori Scott is Pickled!, a shameless musical journey with blackouts and belting. As she crawls deeper into her thirties, Tori has decided to examine her life, one martini at a time. Tori Scott is Pickled! will take you on a slurred autobiographical adventure of her biggest regrets, her most recent shame spirals, and her life surrounded by too many gay men. Pickled includes music from Lady Gaga, Madonna, Dolly Parton and more!

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MORTIFIED

Friday, April 19 at 7PM & 10PM

Saturday, April 20 at 7PM

Tickets from $15

Hailed as a "cultural phenomenon" by Newsweek and celebrated for years by the likes of This American Life, The Today Show, The A.V. Club, and Entertainment Weekly, Mortified is a comic excavation of teen angst artifacts (journals, poems, letters, lyrics, home movies, schoolwork) as shared by their original authors - in front of total strangers. Want more Mortified? Listen to The Mortified Podcast in between live events.

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CLAIRVOYANCE

A.R.T. Breakout

April 24 - 26 | 7:30PM

April 27 | 7PM

April 28 Tree Planting | TBD

Diana Oh is a witch. She knows it. So do her closest friends. Clairvoyance runs in her family. She went to a spiritual counselor in the jungle in Thailand, and the spiritual counselor told her to sing and go wild in Boston. Everything else the spiritual counselor said came true, so Diana is doing it. After their extended run of Infinite Love Party at Bushwick Starr and a year after staging a national call to action with {my lingerie play}, Diana Oh (she/they) returns to A.R.T. with Clairvoyance, The Concert and Tree Planting, the culminating concert of her year-long Artist-in-Community Residency with A.R.T. creating and staging Clairvoyance installations throughout Cambridge and the Greater Boston Area that began in summer 2018.

In Clairvoyance, The Concert and Tree Planting, Oh performs her original music from journal entries and the beyond. It's a concert, it's a museum, it's a party, it's a tree planting, with moments of divination. The concert is Love Doctored by Diana Oh and Mei Ann Teo. Clairvoyance, The Concert and Tree Planting ties together several installations created and staged by Oh, including Installation #3: The Artist in Their Element, to be held April 20, 2019 at the Institute of Contemporary Art / Boston.

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THE MOTH

Tuesday, April 30 at 8PM

Tuesday, May 21 at 8PM

Tickets $15

The Moth StorySLAMs are steadily spreading all over the map, gathering people and stories from all over the country. New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Boston have multiple shows each month. The Moth is open to anyone with a five-minute story to share on the night's posted theme. The brave of heart, or those with stories they're aching to tell, prepare personal, true tales. When the doors open, storyteller hopefuls put their names in The Moth Hat. A half hour later, names are picked, and one by one, storytellers take the stage. Each person has just five minutes! The ten featured stories are scored by teams of judges selected from the audience. Each StorySLAM generates a StorySLAM winner. After ten SLAMs, the winners face off in our GrandSLAM Championships. Come sign up to tell a story, or just enjoy the show!

The theme for April 30 is Burned. Prepare a five-minute story about getting burned. Blistered by love, scalded by the powers that be, scorched by karma or just over-tanned. Tell us about the things that leave you smoldering. Sunscreen anyone?

The theme for May 21 is Worship. Prepare a five minute story about coming to the altar. Waiting in line for the midnight release of the next book in the series or singing your heart out on a Sunday morning. Tell tales of seeing the light or giving it up in favor of something else. Feeling the glory of the end of a 10 mile run, becoming an adult at 13, or finally making it to the last level. Prayers, disillusions, and everything in between. All are welcome here.

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PERLE NOIRE: MEDITATIONS FOR JOSEPHINE

Friday, May 3 at 10PM

Tickets free

Perle Noire: Meditations for Joséphine brings together the astonishing talents of several of today's most innovative artists. Conceived by director Peter Sellars and premiered at the Ojai Music Festival in June of 2016, Perle Noire spotlights Baker's iconic songs re-composed by the percussionist Tyshawn Sorey and sung by world renown soprano and activist Julia Bullock, who sees her work on the show not as an impersonation of Baker, but as a tribute. Other collaborators include poet Claudia Rankine and International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).

The performance is free but ticket reservations are required. Limit 2 per person. Tickets unclaimed at 9:45PM will be released to those on the waiting list.

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CATAPULT SHOWCASE

Tuesday, May 7 at 7PM

Tickets $10

Five public radio stations across the country are changing the sound of public radio...with podcasts! Our five teams - from Salt Lake City to Atlanta - will assemble for the culmination of a 20-week training to launch podcasts they've meticulously refined throughout the second round of PRX's innovative podcast accelerator - Project Catapult. Maybe you're interested in how one Indiana fertility doctor misled dozens of families, or how Southern Hip Hop has shaped the world. Perhaps you'd like to explore how ordinary people navigate faith and spiritual identity, or what the country can expect now that marijuana legalization seems to be the trend. Or maybe you just want to learn how to love and appreciate music from the perspective of a kid. There's a little something for everyone! Join us and discover five new podcasts you'll need to add to your queue in 2019!

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SASKIA'S UTOPIA

Thursday, May 9 - Friday, May 10 at 9PM

Saturday, May 11 at 1PM

Tickets from $20

Saskia's Utopia is a queer world-making project. After a year and a half of building our community around Boston in which, thematically, we have played with pre-existing cultural aesthetics (previous events include "Industrial Revolution," "Boot Camp,", etc). We now seek to manifest something new altogether, to build an environment in which we can explore new and alternate possibilities of being and in which we can connect with each other as intimate and autonomous subjects, to build a "Utopia." We are so excited to share that new world with you.

Thursday: Local Night celebrating all of the rich and diverse talent that the Boston area has to offer.

Friday: Main Event featuring guest artists from around the country who are pushing the boundaries of drag, electronic music, and queer organizing.

Saturday: Discussion of the challenges and bright new future of organizing queer public space in Boston, and then we will send off the space with a casual Garden Party, dancing our last dance at OBERON to the rhythms of house music.

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BOSTON ARM WRESTLING DAMES - FIGHT NIGHT

Sunday, May 19 at 7:30PM

Tickets from $15

Boston Arm Wrestling Dames is a bunch of fired-up Dames who toe the line between theatrical antics and hardcore athleticism. Eight wrestlers with big personas and money hungry entourages will throw down in an all-out arm wrestling brawl. Will TinkerHell be able to defend her title as Grand Champ? Featuring a halftime burlesque performance by Thick Lizzy and DJ sets by 7elucinations. Rules and prizes are determined and managed by the referees and judges, whose calls are constantly manipulated by the influence of each wrestler's entourage and crowd hecklers with dolla dolla billz! All proceeds raised at this event go to Boston Abortion Support Collective.

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FEMFINITE: THE FEMME SHOW

Thursday, May 30 - Friday, May 31 at 8PM

Tickets from $15

The Femme Show explores infinite possibilities of queer femininity as resistance and celebration. The 2019 edition includes the return of The Society for the Preservation and Promotion of Sapphic Social Mores, a tribute to Gladys Bentley, a dancing carnivorous plant, drag, storytelling, spoken word, burlesque, and more! Friday night's show is ASL interpreted and will be followed by dancing with DJ Lady Spindrift.

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THE DONKEY SHOW

The Long-Running Hit

Presented by A.R.T.

Every Saturday night

Tickets from $25

Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus' celebrated smash hit continues its tenth season at OBERON every Saturday night, bringing you the ultimate disco experience-a crazy circus of mirror balls and feathered divas, of roller skaters and hustle queens inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The party rages on the dance floor to all the best '70s hits as the show unfolds around the audience. After the show, the party continues into the night so you can live out your own disco fever fantasy!

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OBERON is the American Repertory Theater's club theater space for cutting-edge performance, a thriving incubator for local and emerging artists pushing the theatrical form, and host to some of A.R.T.'s most boundary-breaking productions. It has attracted national attention for its innovative programming and business models. Thousands of artists and performance groups bring work to the space each year.

ABOUT AMERICAN REPERTORY THEATER

American Repertory Theater at Harvard University (A.R.T.) is a leading force in the American theater, producing groundbreaking work in Cambridge and beyond. A.R.T. was founded in 1980 by Robert Brustein, who served as Artistic Director until 2002, when he was succeeded by Robert Woodruff. Diane Paulus began her tenure as Artistic Director in 2008. Under the leadership of Paulus as the Terrie and Bradley Bloom Artistic Director and Executive Producer Diane Borger, A.R.T. seeks to expand the boundaries of theater by producing world-class performances in which the audience is central to the theatrical experience.

Throughout its history, A.R.T. has been honored with many distinguished awards including the Tony Award for Best New Play for All the Way (2014); consecutive Tony Awards for Best Revival of a Musical for Pippin (2013) and The Gershwins' Porgy and Bess (2012), both of which Paulus directed, and sixteen other Tony Awards since 2012; a Pulitzer Prize; a Jujamcyn Prize for outstanding contribution to the development of creative talent; the Regional Theater Tony Award; and more than 100 Elliot Norton and IRNE Awards.

A.R.T. collaborates with artists around the world to develop and create work in new ways. It is currently engaged in a number of multi-year projects, including a collaboration with Harvard's Center for the Environment that will result in the development of new work over several years. Under Paulus' leadership, the A.R.T.'s club theater, OBERON, has been an incubator for local and emerging artists and has attracted national attention for its innovative programming and business models.

As the professional theater on the campus of Harvard University, A.R.T. catalyzes discourse, interdisciplinary collaboration, and creative exchange among a wide range of academic departments, institutions, students, and faculty members, acting as a conduit between its community of artists and the university. A.R.T. mentors students in the Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club working at the Loeb Drama Center and OBERON, and plays a central role in Harvard's undergraduate Theater, Dance & Media concentration, teaching courses in directing, dramatic literature, acting, voice, design, and dramaturgy.

Dedicated to making great theater accessible, A.R.T. actively engages more than 5,000 community members and local students annually in project-based partnerships, workshops, conversations with artists, and other enrichment activities both at the theater and across the Greater Boston area.

Through all of these initiatives, A.R.T. is dedicated to producing world-class performances in which the audience is central to the theatrical experience.

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