A.R.T.'s OBERON Slates November/December 2017 Lineup
By: BWW News Desk Nov. 02, 2017
OBERON, the American Repertory Theater's (A.R.T.) Second Stage and club-theater venue on the fringe of Harvard Square, announces events to be presented at OBERON during November and December - including Live @ OBERON, OBERON Presents, the Glowberon Series, and Usual Suspects.
STL GLD
Live @ OBERON
Friday, November 3 at 8PM
Tickets $10 - $15
Moe Pope and The Arcitype are STL GLD, one of the New England area's most exciting acts. The Emcee/Producer duo has been nominated for Boston Music Award's Best Hip Hop Act for the past two years, and has been called one of the best live acts out of the city of Boston. Their sophomore album, Torch Song is now available on AR Classic Records.
PROCLAMATION 5: TRUE THAT
Saturday, November 4 and Sunday, November 5 at 7PM
Tickets pay what you can
Proclamation 5: True That wrestles with the complex concept of truth in modern society. How do we know what is true when the tangible is questioned and subjective opinion and misinformation are treated as fact? How can we find truth, and what do we do with it once we've found it? In this newly devised production, a natural disaster unites the residents of two towns-previously unaware of each other's existence-in a show brimming with humor, movement, and most importantly, honesty.
Proclamation is the A.R.T.'s annual performance and writing program for area high school students. An ensemble of rising high school juniors and seniors explore an urgent topic while developing an original theater piece. Through dialogues with experts from the community, creative writing, immersive research projects, and group improvisation, the resulting performance digs deep into the personal, the political, and the call to act.
RESISTANCE MIC!
Usual Suspect
Wednesday, November 8 at 8PM
Tickets $5 - $10
Artists. Truth. Power. The 2016 election inspired a broad-based Resistance unlike any 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 our country and create a more compassionate and just world. Artists are vital to this work. In collaboration with Pangyrus and other literary and arts initiatives, A.R.T. and the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy at Harvard University will host a series of intimate performances on the theme of "Resistance." Each date will feature a diverse group of artist-activists telling powerful stories and performing politically engaged works that read, move, sing, and speak truth to power in these troubled times. The series continues Wednesdays, February 7, March 7, April 4, and May 16.
ONTHEFLOOR
OBERON Presents
Friday, November 10, DJ set at 8PM/Performance at 9PM
Saturday, November 11-DJ set at 10:30PM/Performance at 11PM
Tickets $15 - $35
After an epic weekend this spring, ONTHEFLOOR by The Dance Cartel is back! Driven equally by pumping bass, glitter, dance heroism, and feats of endurance, this 90-minute, energy-busting experience is part dance, part video installation, part DJ set and part concert. Innovative percussionists Grooversity turns up the volume both nights, while chanteuse Niki Luparelli (David Bowie Black Friday, Blonde Side of the Moon) and DJ FrenchY make special appearances November 10 and actress-singer Grace McLean (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812) and DJ Nate Bluhm will appear November 11.
THE BIG 6 HURRICANE RELIEF CONCERT
Sunday, November 12 at 7PM
Tickets $10 - $50
The Big 6, and emerging "supergroup" formed by Emergency physicians from Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Harvard Humanitarian Initiative, will cover classic rock songs. Revenue from pay-what-can tickets available for $10, $25, and $50 will be matched by The Big 6, the total of which will in turn be matched by an anonymous donor.
MUSICAL NOTES AT 90: Donald Hall & E.E. Cummings POEMS, SET TO MUSIC
A FUNDRAISER TO BENEFIT THE GROLIER POETRY BOOK SHOP
Tuesday, November 14 at 8PM
Tickets $20 - $75
Currently in its 90th year, The Grolier Poetry Book Shop, the U.S.'s oldest poetry book shop, presents a fundraiser featuring the work of two distinguished poets with deep ties to the Grolier: Donald Hall and E.E. Cummings. WordSong: One Text, Four Composers, an Unspoken Conversation celebrates Grolier's rich literary tradition while providing support as it plans for its 100th year.
The program will feature four different settings of Cumming's in Just by Boston composers Howard Frazin, Benjamin Pesetsky, Tom Schnauber, and Adam Simon, and performed by Krista River, mezzo soprano, Rafael Popper Keizer, cello, and Robert Schulz, marimba. Following will be the premiere of a new song cycle, Letting Go, by Frazin that is a setting of 6 Donald Hall poems: The Wish, The Child, Moon Shot, Villanelle, By the Exeter River, and White Apples, performed by Keith Phares, baritone, and Linda Osborn, piano. Letting Go is an early 90th birthday present for Mr. Hall, who will introduce the presentation himself by video.
Session Americana with Cuddle Magic, Dietrich Strause, and GennaRose Nethercott
Live @ OBERON
Wednesday, November 15 at 8PM
Tickets from $15
Session Americana huddles close to a table wired for sound with suitcase drums, an electric bass, and a pump organ on the perimeter. Comprised of five songwriters and six Boston all-stars sharing lead vocals, you'll never know what's coming next. After ten years of building audiences and winning awards in Boston, the Northeast, and Europe, a performance at 2015's Folk Alliance introduced the band to the national industry, resulting in invitations to showcase at the AMAs, join a national booking agency, perform as the closing act at Sister's Festival, and play Rocky Mountain Folks Fest.
The group will be joined by New York Indie supergroup Cuddle Magic, local troubadour Deitrich Strause, and poet GennaRose Nethercott in the final performance of its Fall residency at OBERON.
Bridget Barkan-DEAR STRANGER, I LOVE YOU
Glowberon Series
Thursday, November 16 at 8PM
Tickets $25
Bridget Barkan shines her light on the community that continues to inspire this living alternative cabaret show. You'll be delighted and moved by her stories, characters, original and cover songs, improvisation, poetry, dance and unapologetic truth. A musical journey from bad to new love, a dance between free love and committed love, the fight for self-love and ultimate infinite universal love that can bring us all together: Perhaps our struggles will usher in an endless season of love.
RESIST(D)ANCE
Friday, November 17 at 6PM
Tickets $10 - $20
Resist(d)ance is three-part immersive art experience including an open creative forum for local artists and community leaders to engage in conversation and art making; a live performance featuring poetry, dance, and live music; and a dance party highlighting the importance of social dance in black communities. The purpose of this event is to unite community thinkers, leaders, and doers throughout Boston to move towards social change, to uplift local artists of color, and to create cultural production-informing our collective strength and identity.
All-access tickets available for the full event beginning at 6PM and for the Performance & Party beginning at 8:30PM.
This event is presented by Radical Black Girl, an art-activist whose goal is the radical awakening of the authentic self to become audacious, unapologetic and empowered. She hopes to inspire transformation of self and communities in order to change our realities through art.
MORTIFIED
Usual Suspect
Saturday, November 18 at 7PM
Tickets $15
Hailed as a "cultural phenomenon" by Newsweek and celebrated for years by the likes of This American Life, The Today Show, The Onion, AV 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.
THE HUMMM
Sunday, November 19 at 7PM
Tickets $20
A wild and riotous deconstruction of Chekhov's classic play Three Sisters performed with just four actors, The Hummm was created by dramaturg Kai Chieh Tu and actors Ali Stoner (The Pirate Princess), Janice Amaya (The Pirate Princess), Katherine Wright (The Pirate Princess), and Sarah Paton (Dying for It) from the A.R.T. Institute for Advanced Theater Training's Class of 2016. Using the "etude" style of devising inspired by the group's work at The Moscow Art Theater, the creative team behind The Hummm explores themes of success, sisterhood, and loneliness both in the world of the play and the present day. The production transports the audience to a surreal world in which the classically bottled-up passions of Chekhov's characters are released. Part classic, part fever dream, The Hummm is an exciting mix of dance, clowning, and improv, all tied together by a vibrant soundtrack and performed live by our composer, DJ Fedor Sokolov (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?).
THE MOTH
Usual Suspect
Tuesday, November 21 at 8PM (tickets available November 14 at 3PM)
Tuesday, December 19 at 8PM (tickets available December 12 at 3PM)
Tickets $10
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!
November's theme is Control. Control towers and control top pantyhose. It's all about holding it together. Prepare a five-minute story about your valiant efforts to keep the equilibrium. Or your maniacal plans as puppet-master to bend others to your will. A surgeon's precision, a nursery school teacher's iron will, being the boss of yourself or others.
December's theme is Dirt. Squalor, smut, filth, muck, and mire! Dig it, dish it, spread it, hose it off. Dirt cheap, dirt poor, treated like dirt. Listen as gardeners and gossips share dirty tidbits and share all the filthy details. Talk dirty to us.
6TH ANNUAL 'OH YOU PRETTY THINGS' AKA 'DAVID BOOBIE BLACK FRIDAY' & 'BONUS BLACK SATURDAY'
Usual Suspect
Friday, November 24 at 8PM and November 25 at 7PM
Tickets $15 - $45
It's the 6th Annual Oh You Pretty Things/David Bowie Black Friday (aka "David Boobie") with a bonus Thanksgiving slice of Sweet Potato Bowie Pie on Black Saturday! Black Friday is approaching once again, which means it's time for the glorious return to Cambridge of Bowie-flavored striptease. Niki Stardust and her Total Blam Blam David Boobie Band (aka Niki Luparelli and The Gold Diggers) bring back to OBERON their lascivious tribute to David Bowie and the female form. Friday's show is for the biggest Bowie fans with around 3 hours and 30 songs featuring Burlesque and Aerials from some of Boston's best and most notorious performers plus the Bowie Costume Contest with $100 Cash Prize. Saturday is "Just the Hits! Wham! Bam! Thank You, Ma'am," The Reader's Digest Condensed Version with a jam-packed 90 minutes featuring the legendary Lipstick Criminals.
SOMETHING STRANGE: A MUSIC AND BURLESQUE TRIBUTE TO THE NIGHTMARE BEFORE CHRISTMAS
Thursday, November 30 & Friday December 1 at 8PM
Saturday, December 2 at 1PM
Tickets $10 - $20
A live music and burlesque tribute to The Nightmare Before Christmas by Walter Sickert & the Army of Broken Toys. Though Something Strange is not specifically a children's show, audience members under 18 are welcome to attend with a parent or guardian, particularly the Saturday matinee performance, which will be more family-friendly.
SWEENEY TODD
Thursday, December 7 at 7PM and Friday, December 8 at 4PM & 9PM
Tickets $15 - $35
Stephen Sondheim's deliciously daring musical masterpiece invites audiences to attend the tale of a father's delightful descent into darkness as he seeks to set right the wrongs that wrecked his life. Along the way, they will meet the many shifting residents of Victorian London who all want their own slice of life's pie. This Harvard-Radcliffe Dramatic Club student production will turn the award-winning musical inward, looking at it through the lens of Sweeney's psyche as OBERON becomes Fleet Street and various London locales, and a projection of Sweeney Todd's mind. Audience members, as figments of Sweeney's imagination, will be first-hand witnesses to the splendor of his carnage.
THE SWEETBACK SISTERS' COUNTRY CHRISTMAS SINGING SPECTACULAR
Live @ OBERON
Saturday, December 9 and Sunday, December 10 at 7PM
Tickets $25
For nine years running, The Sweetback Sisters have been selling out theaters across the Northeast with their signature take on the holiday sing-along: The Sweetback Sisters' Country Christmas Singalong Spectacular. This wildly popular show, back for its second year at OBERON, requires a bit of audience participation and a love for all genres of holiday music (Fear not! Songbooks are provided). Add in a healthy dose of trivia, prizes, and matching outfits and we think it's safe to say you've got yourself a bona fide spectacular!
CHRISTMAS DONKEY
Presented by A.R.T.
Saturday, December 9 at 10:30PM
Tickets from $25
Is that Dominick the Donkey on the dance floor? Tony Award-winner Diane Paulus' celebrated smash hit celebrates Christmas with the ultimate disco experience - a crazy circus of mirror balls, tinsel, and feathered divas, of roller skaters, balls of holly, and hustle queens inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The festive 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!
Marga Gomez - LATIN STANDARDS
Glowberon Series
Thursday, December 14 at 8PM
Tickets $25
Directed by David Schweizer and a New York Times Critic's Pick from the Under the Radar Festival, Gomez's new solo piece is a loving, funny, and true story of perseverance and creative addiction passed down from immigrant father to lesbian daughter. Mixing nostalgia, urgency, and comic edge Marga Gomez (2017 GLOW FEST) portrays herself and a collection of vivid portraits of characters from 1960s Manhattan to present-day San Francisco as she ponders the ballads (or Latin standards) penned by her late father, comedian, producer, entrepreneur, and songwriter Willy Chevalier.
BANBOCHE 2017: CELEBRATION & CABARET
Friday, December 15 at 8PM
Tickets $15 - $50
Come together to experience Haitian contemporary dance and culture as Jean Appolon Expressions (JAE) shares its latest interpretation of the immigrant experience. The evening will include a dance performance, live Haitian music, media from JAE's 2017 Haiti summer Institute, and an opportunity for everyone to let loose on the dance floor with a DJ.
THE DONKEY SHOW NEW YEAR'S EVE 2018
Presented by A.R.T.
Sunday, December 31, Doors at 9PM | Performance at 10PM | Toast at Midnight | Party until 2AM
Tickets $55 (Floor) and $95 (VIP Table)
The Donkey Show is once again opening its doors for a special late night New Year's Eve celebration. Named "Boston's Best Dance Party" by Boston Magazine and currently playing at OBERON every Saturday night, The Donkey Show brings you the ultimate disco experience-a crazy circus of mirror balls and feathered divas, of roller skaters and hustle queens. The Donkey Show tells the story of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream through the great '70s anthems. The enchanted forest of Shakespeare's classic comedy becomes the glittered world of retro disco as the lovers escape from their real lives to experience a night of dream, abandon, and fantasy.
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 ninth 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!
OBERON is located at 2 Arrow Street at the corner of Mass Ave. in Harvard Square, Cambridge. For more info and tickets visit cluboberon.com.
OBERON is the American Repertory Theater's Second Stage, a destination for theater and nightlife on the fringe of Harvard Square. In addition to offering work from the A.R.T's main season, OBERON is also a thriving incubator for emerging artists to imagine new projects that could only exist in this exciting club-theater environment. Thousands of artists and performance groups bring work to the space each year. OBERON regularly features a wide variety of local performers including aerialists, beat poets, musicians, tap dancers, gender-bending sketch troupes, comedians, burlesque performers, and arialists.
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