Ucross Alumni Lars Jan And Mia Barron Debut THE WHITE ALBUM At BAM

Ucross, a prestigious artists' residency program and creative lab for the arts located in Wyoming's majestic High Plains, is proud to announce that Ucross Fellows Lars Jan and Mia Barron will stage The White Album, Jan's word-for-word celebration of Joan Didion's famous essay, at Brooklyn Academy Of Music (BAM) from November 28th through December 1st.

"Ucross was honored to welcome Lars Jan and Mia Barron's multidisciplinary group for a special 3-week retreat in Wyoming this summer," said Ucross Foundation President Sharon Dynak. "We were connected to them through a new collaboration that Ucross is developing with UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance. So many organizations have joined together to support this unique project and we are proud to be one of them. It's wonderful to see this cutting edge work travel around the country in performance. It's a long distance from Ucross, population 25, to BAM - but it's clear that creative energy thrives in solitude as well as in urban centers."

"I loved experiencing this place of wonder," Jan said of his time at Ucross. "We gathered a larger team here; [Ucross] allowed for tremendous focus."

Directed by Jan and performed in full by Barron, a 2017 Obie-Award-winner, The White Album is a word-for-word interpretation of Didion's seminal essay. The production is an immersive experience that re-contextualizes issues including women's liberation, the Black Panthers, the Charles Manson murders, and Vietnam student protests; all of which featured heavily in Didion's 1979 essay. The performance unfolds against the backdrop of an escalating house party staged within an architectural set, and is the second-ever stage adaptation of Didion's work following the 2007 Broadway play The Year of Magical Thinking. Jan developed the idea after a "twenty-year personal obsession" with Didion's essay, noticing the uncanny threads between the 1960s themes Didion explored in her work, and racist and sexist issues currently dominating headlines in America.

The White Album performance, which will take place in the Harvey Theater at BAM, runs from Wednesday, November 28 to Saturday, December 1 from 7:30 PM to 9 PM. The White Album was commissioned by Center Theatre Group with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, by BAM for the 2018 Next Wave Festival, by the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, and by The Center for the Art of Performance at UCLA. The White Album received generous development support from CalArts Center for New Performance, the Shiva Foundation, and the Mark E. Pollack Foundation, as well as Ucross.

Ticket info and more is online at https://www.bam.org/theater/2018/the-white-album

Additional information about Ucross can be found on their website.

About Ucross

Located in northeast Wyoming in the foothills of the Bighorn Mountains, Ucross fosters the creative spirit of deeply Committed Artists and groups by providing uninterrupted time, studio space, living accommodations, and the experience of the majestic High Plains, while serving as a good steward of its 20,000-acre ranch. Residencies are awarded to nearly one hundred artists each year. Ten artists are in residence at one time, typically a mix of four visual artists, four writers and two composers.

Since its establishment in 1981, Ucross has provided over 2,000 residencies to writers, visual artists, and composers, including such distinguished fellows as Annie Proulx, Terry Tempest Williams, Colson Whitehead, Elizabeth Gilbert, Ann Patchett, Ricky Ian Gordon, Bill Morrison, Theaster Gates, Anthony Hernandez, and recent Academy Award and Tony winners Benj Pasek and Justin Paul. Other Ucross national partners include The Sundance Institute Theatre Program, the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Pew Fellowships in the Arts, the Alliance of Artist Communities, and the PEN/Hemingway Award for Debut Fiction. The Ucross Foundation Art Gallery is a significant cultural resource for surrounding communities and beyond. For further information, visit www.ucrossfoundation.org.

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