Philly Choreographer Annie Wilson Returns to JACK With 'At Home With The Humorless Bastard'

Philly favorite choreographer/performer Annie Wilson returns to JACK with At Home with the Humorless Bastard: an exploration of personal and collective grief that shifts the audience's perspective by bringing them onstage and casting them in the dance. Through the piece, she asks whether immediate and deep intimacy with a stranger is possible, and, if not, whether adding nudity, glitter, or amateur renditions of Charles Manson songs would help. Wilson takes aim at social structures that both allow and inhibit the deep connection many are aching for, constantly, relentlessly, like a low-frequency hum that's a little unsettling in the bowels. The Humorless Bastard pokes at those structures, letting them fill up with water, turning the volume up on that hum.

"I wanted to make a piece that uses abstraction to careen between moments of banality and melodrama. I want At Home with the Humorless Bastard to embrace the chaos of our current moment without resorting to nihilism and instead rewrite the audience-performer contract in order to bring us into a feeling of closeness, as artificial as it may be." - Wilson

TICKETS: $18 (www.jackny.org)

COLLABORATORS:
Annie Wilson, creator and performer
Rebecca Wright, director
Lisi Stoessel, set design
Adriano Shaplin, sound design
Andrew Thompson, lighting design
Dramaturg Plus: Miguel Gutierrez
Creative Collaborator: Alex Torra
Stage Management: Nicole Labadie-Bartz

Annie Wilson makes dances that gently yet raucously rewrite the social contract between audience-as-receiver and performer-as-giver of meaning. She practices public vulnerability and intimacy in order to research and enliven that which is actively repressed in public life: grief, empathy, emotional honesty, and the experience-instead of appearance-of the female body. She is a 2017 Pew Fellow, a 2015 Independence Fellow, a proud incubated artist at Headlong, and an Applied Mechanics Associated Artist. Her work has been presented by Fringearts, Bryn Mawr College, JACK, thirdbird, the Center for Performance Research, Mascher, SmokeyScout Productions, and . Most recently, At Home with the Humorless Bastard premiered December 2016 at FringeArts. Other recent work includes: Lovertits, At the Gloaming with the Hipster Shaman, and Solo. Some artists she has recently worked with: Meg Foley, Nichole Canuso, and Almanac. She bartends Sunday nights at Lucky 13 Pub in South Philly and is assistant property manager at Simpson Mid-town. www.theanniewilson.com

Rebecca Wright is a Philadelphia-based director-creator, and the artistic director of Applied Mechanics, with whom she has created ten original immersive plays. Recent credits include Articles of Faith with Cynthia Hopkins, Peaceable Kingdom with Orbiter 3, Close Music for Bodies with Michael Kiley and FringeArts, Marcus/Emma at InterAct Theater Company, Emma Goidel's The Gap at Azuka, Kafka's The Metamorphosis and Shaw's St. Joan with Quintessence Theater Group, Sarah Flood in Salem Mass at The Flea, Sophie Gets the Horns with The Riot Group, and FEED and We Are Bandits with Applied Mechanics.

Adriano Shaplin is a sound designer, playwright, and performer. Recent designs include At Home with the Humorless Bastard (Annie Wilson), I Am Not My Motherland (Orbiter 3), Magic Wand (Riot Group/Headlong Dance Theater), Saint Joan (Quintessence Theatre Group), It's So Learning (Berserker Residents), Hello! Sadness! (Mary Tuomanen), Bortle 8 (Chris Davis), The Metamorphosis (Quintessence Theatre Group), Lovertits (Annie Wilson), (some) Love & (some) Information (Headlong Dance), We Are Bandits (Applied Mechanics), My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (The Flea), and Sophie Gets the Horns (Riot Group) www.adrianoshaplin.com

Andrew Thompson (Lighting Designer) is a Philadelphia based designer and technician. Previous work with Annie includes the original run of Bastard at FringeArts and Lovertits. Other recent credits - Abbot Adam: None, THE TOP (No Face Performance Group), Breathe Smoke (Orbiter 3), The Shame Symposium (Chelsea & Magda), 901 Nowhere Street (Sam Tower + Ensemble), Let The Dog See The Rabbit (Lightning Rod Special). http://athompsondesign.com/

Lisi Stoessel is a hybrid theatre artist exploring the aesthetics and transformative potential of the moving body in space. She has performed and created sets and puppets for many companies along the east coast of the US and beyond. Recently Lisi was nominated for a Baker Artist Award, and awarded a 2017 Jim Henson Foundation Workshop Grant for her immersive theatre production, H.T. Darling's Incredible Musaeum. Lisi is an Artistic Associate of Submersive Productions (Baltimore, MD) and Core Collaborator of feminist punk rock dance band Tia Nina (Washington, DC). She holds her MFA in Scene Design from the University of Virginia.

Nicole Labadie-Bartz is a Philadelphia based Stage Manager. Since graduating from The University of the Arts in 2016, they have stage managed with Philadelphia theatre companies Applied Mechanics (Chronotope, FEED, Bandits), Orbiter 3 (I Am Not My Motherland, Peaceable Kingdom), The Bearded Ladies (Marlene and the Machine) and New Paradise Laboratories (Gumshoe). Other favorites: Hello! Sadness! (Mary Tuomanen), Close Music for Bodies (Michael Kiley with FringeArts Curated Festival), Me First: An Autobiographical Comedy about Dying (Jason Rosenberg), Destiny Estimate (MJ Kaufman).

JACK is an OBIE-winning performance venue founded in 2012 in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn and co-led by Alec Duffy and DeeArah Wright. Our mission is to fuel experiments in art and activism, collaborating with adventurous artists and our neighbors to bring about a just and vibrant society. We present about 200 theater, music and dance performances a year and hold community forums on racial justice, gentrification, and police/community relations. JACK's presenting season is made by the National Endowment for the Arts - Art Works program, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature, New Music USA's NYC New Music Impact Fund (made possible with funding from The Scherman Foundation's Katharine S. and Axel G. Rosin Fund), Brooklyn Arts Council, The DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Memorial Fund, the Harkness Foundation for Dance, the Mental Insight Foundation, The Santvoord Foundation, The Lida Foundation and M & T Charitable Foundation.

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