THE DIRECTOR Comes To PS21 In Collaboration With Fusebox Festival This Spring

With a well-earned reputation as "a Hudson Valley outpost of the avant-garde" (The New York Times, June 2022), PS21/ Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, is home to a state-of-the art, green, 350-seat theater offering resident makers and performers the tools and flexibility for successful innovation and collaboration in developing and presenting sophisticated multi-media work. Just five of PS21's 100 acres of grounds are developed; the rest are meadows and woodlands.

April 22-23: On the back of successful tours to the Sydney Opera House, Finland and the UK in 2019, and to the international Theater Festival of Kerala, India in January 2020, The Director comes to PS21 in collaboration with Fusebox Festival this spring!

From Australia's APHIDS theater collective, a charismatic Tasmanian ex-funeral director Scott Turnbull, and artist Lara Thoms, demystify the inner workings of the death industry with playful, macabre humor and invigorating honesty. Nothing is off limits, including the smell of a crematorium, the tools of the mortuary, and tractors driven into a funeral chapel. Nominated for a 2019 Green Room Award, PS21 is excited to present this bold and unique performance!

THE DIRECTOR

APHIDS Jeff Khan

At a time when dying costs an average of $10,000 and funerals happen within a week, death can seem like a very expensive drive-thru meal. The Director is a bold new performance starring charismatic ex-funeral director of 21 years, Scott Turnbull, and artist Lara Thoms. Taking up a universal experience and taboo topic, Turnbull and Thoms demystify, expose and expand elements of the death industry, using humor and first-hand knowledge to dig a little deeper on what happens after we go. Nothing is off limits, including the smell of a crematorium, the tools of the mortuary, and driving tractors into a funeral chapel.

Blurring the roles of funeral director and theatre director, Thoms and Turnbull ask each other to perform tasks, share knowledge and give feedback on each other's actions. Balancing macabre reality, playfulness and the tragic elements of death, the result is a spiky, funny and invigorating performance.

Lead artist: Lara Thoms

Co-creator: Scott Turnbull

Design: Katie Sfetkidis

Dramaturgs: Aaron Orzech and Lz Dunn

Sound: Kenneth Pennington

Producer: Anna Nalpantidis

Show Director: Mish Grigor

APHIDS is a 28-year-old artist-led experimental art organization based in Naarm (Melbourne), Australia. Collaborative and future-focused, APHIDS is led by Co-Directors Lara Thoms and Mish Grigor with Executive Producer Anna Nalpantidis. The work of APHIDS is feminist, intersectional, angry, and funny; we bring artists into meaningful exchange with audiences through performance, screens, critical dialogue, and unpredictable encounters in the public realm.

The Director is supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body and Creative Victoria through its Organization Investment Program. It was originally presented by Arts House through the City of Melbourne as part of CultureLAB.

PS21/Performance Spaces for the 21st Century Black Box Theater

Address: 2980 NY-66, Chatham, NY 12037
Phone: (518) 392-6121; https://ps21chatham.org/

ABOUT PS21

With a well-earned reputation as "a Hudson Valley outpost of the avant-garde" (The New York Times, June 2022), PS21: Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, is home to a state-of-the art, green, 350-seat theater offering resident makers and performers the tools and flexibility for successful innovation and collaboration in developing and presenting sophisticated multi-media work. Just five of PS21's 100 acres of grounds are developed; the rest are meadows and woodlands.

Founded in 2006, PS21 is the mecca for innovative programming by leading and emerging artists in music, dance, theater, contemporary performance, and the visual and multimedia arts in the Hudson Valley. We support artists' creative endeavors, connect them to a broad, diverse audience outside the conventional urban setting, and offer the region's year-round inhabitants the opportunity to engage with the arts regardless of economic status, age, or cultural background.

PS21's programming also reflects our commitment to environmental preservation and the quest for a sustainable future. Among recent seasons' performances that focused on environmental issues, including global warming, were the New York State premiere of John Luther Adams's Ten Thousand Birds by Alarm Will Sound (2020), Heartbeat Opera's The Extinctionist (2021), a cautionary vision of the future threatened by rising sea levels, and-last year-the screening of Earth, Oleksandr Dovzhenko's masterly 1930 critique of the collectivization of Ukrainian farms, with live accompaniment by DakhaBrakha, the Ukrainian ethno-chaos band, and Philippe Quesne's eco-futurist fable Farm Fatale (2022). This year's season highlight, ANIMA, from France, a spectacular performance-installation by visual artist/photographer Noémie Goudal, director Maëlle Poésy, circus artist Chloé Moglia, and composer Chloé Thévenin, without moralizing about ecological precarity, combines music, photos, film, and circus performance to create an experience of the vertigo of time, the fragility of landscapes, and the power of the elements (2023).

Our Pavilion Theater is a green-energy marvel surrounded by 100 acres of unspoiled meadows, trails, and woodlands that are a haven to wildlife and visitors across the region. Integrated into our unspoiled campus, the theater embodies our commitments to the public: open, inviting, and optimized for their enjoyment and encouraging citizen expression and participation. Our state-of-the-art green theater provides artists with a level of technical support that few facilities in the US or elsewhere can match.

PS21/Performance Spaces for the 21st Century, a state-of-the-art venue located on 100 acres of orchards, meadows, and woodlands in the heart of the Hudson Valley. Tickets, HERE, and info@ps21chatham.org; 518.392.6121; Performances in PS21 Black Box Theater.

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