PS 122 Announces Spring 2010 Performance Schedule

Performance Space 122 is proud to announce the Spring 2010 schedule of events featuring six premiere presentations in theatre, dance, video, music, and more. Spring also features the annual Spring Gala honoring John Leguizamo. Additional special events include the annual Ethyl Eichelberger Award celebration & announcement as well as the Thursday Night Socials and Late Night series.

April/May/June 2010 AT-A-GLANCE (as of April 22, 2010)

Reid Farrington - GIN & "IT"
NY PREMIERE | THEATRE, VIDEO | Saturday, April 24 - Sunday, May 9

VAGINAl Davis IS SPEAKING FROM THE DIAPHRAGM
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, DANCE, MUSIC, FILM, X-MEDIA, LIVE ART | Saturday, May 15 - Thursday, May 27
Ethyl Eichelberger AWARD (09) | Ethyl party and announcement Thu, May 20

Adrienne Truscott - BERMUDA
WORLD PREMIERE | DANCE | Sunday, May 30 - Sunday, June 13

Isabel Lewis - STRANGE ACTION
WORLD PREMIERE | DANCE | Thursday, June 3 - Sunday, June 6

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins & Gavin Quinn - THE OCTOROON:
AN ADAPTATION OF THE OCTOROON BASED ON THE OCTOROON
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE | Wednesday, June 16 - Saturday, July 3

THE SPRING GALA 2010 HONORING John Leguizamo
Tuesday, May 4 at The Abrons Arts Center

Plus Thursday Night Socials & Late Nights!

Tickets and PS122 Passports may be purchased online at www.ps122.org or by phone at (212) 352-3101. PS122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, New York, New York 10009. 

The following is a detailed roster of companies and programs that will be
PRESENTED BY PERFORMANCE SPACE 122 Spring 2010: April 24 - July 3

Reid Farrington
GIN & "IT"
NY PREMIERE: THEATRE, VIDEO
Upstairs Theater
Saturday, April 24 - Sunday, May 9
Wednesday - Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 6PM
Late Shows: Saturday, May 1 & 8 at 10:30PM
Thursday Night Social: April 29

Hitchcock's Rope provides Reid Farrington a spectrum of technical feats to mirror: Shot in luridly saturated color, the film translates the compressed drama of a one-act, one-set play to the big screen by appearing to be shot in one uninterrupted take. To achieve this filmic illusion (the first time this had ever been attempted), Hitchcock had to construct a set with moveable walls and intricately choreograph a large team of technicians to move the walls and props as well as shift the bulky color cameras and equipment within the tight quarters of the apartment set. Rope's cast complained that Hitch spent far more time orchestrating these behind-the-scenes moves than he did rehearsing with the actors!

Utilizing the editing technique Farrington developed for The Wooster Group's HAMLET, he separates the performers in the film from their backgrounds, creating multiple planes of video. Similar to his approach to his directorial debut, THE PASSION PROJECT, Farrington continues to develop software that will allow these images (the actors from the film) to be placed on stage relative to their original positions according to the scale plan of the set. In GIN &"IT" 4 live performers simultaneously represent Rope's main characters as hybrid filmic/human presences-blurring the lines between the roles of the technicians and the actors' characters. http://www.reidfarrington.com/

Running time: 60 minutes

Gin & "It" is co-produced by the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, Performance Space 122 and 3LD Art & Technology Center. It was developed through the creative residency programs at 3LD Art & Technology Center, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, and Wexner Center for the Arts. Reid Farrington is the recepient of the 2010 Wexner Center Residency Award. He is also 2009 fellow in Digital/ Arts from the New York Foundation for the Arts. Gin & "It" has also received generous support from New York State Council on the Arts, The Greenwall Foundation, and the Experimental Television Center, and a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation. Research made possible by Sandra Joy Lee, Director of Warner Bros. Archives at The University of Southern California.

In January 2010, as a work in progress, Gin &"It" was co-presented as part of COIL 2010 with Under the Radar in association with 3LD Art & Technology Center. The World Premiere was presented by the Wexner Center in Columbus, Ohio in March 2010.

VAGINAl Davis IS SPEAKING FROM THE DIAPHRAGM
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE | Ethyl Eichelberger AWARD WINNER, 2009
Upstairs Theater
Saturday, May 15- Thursday, May 27
Wednesday - Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 6PM
Late Shows: Saturday, May 22 & Thursday, May 27 at 10PM
Thursday Night Social + the Annual Ethyl Eichelberger Award Announcement & Party: May 20

VAGINAl Davis IS SPEAKING FROM THE DIAPHRAGM is an episodic performance piece that re-examines the heyday of 1970s American daytime television chat and variety programs, taking the format of legendary talk shows like The Mike Douglas Show and Dinah!, which starred lesbian icon Dinah Shore. Never fear - Ms. Davis isn´t assimilating into the mainstream entertainment complex - she's dissecting a TV staple and reconfiguring it with an array of live and Skype guests from the various worlds of literature, dance, theatre, film and art; guests with whom she has intersected in her over 30 year career as a performance and live artist, writer and cultural raconteur. With "Guest McMahons" downtown treasure Carmelita Tropicana and Jennifer Miller, the famed bearded lady of Circus Amok (and winner of the 2008 Ethyl Eichelberger Award), expect ten days of the unexpected, the unusual and the sublime.

Rotating Nightly Guest Stars confirmed as of April 19, 2010 Fashion Powerhouses: Rick Owens & Michelle Lamy, and Pierrot; Culture Guard: Guy Trebay, Bruce Benderson, Joe E. Jefferies, Glenn Belverio, Jose Munoz, Marc Seigel, Jennifer Doyle, John Edward Hayes & Zazie De Paris; Film Glitterati: Bruce LaBruce, Michel Auder, Susanne Sachsse, Uzi Parnes & Ela Troyano, Jackie Raynal of Zanzibar Film Group; Musical Prodigies: Gio Black Peter, Joel Gibb of the band The Hidden Cameras, Jaime Stewart of XIU XIU, Kembra Pfahler of The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black, Glen Meadmore, Carol Pope, Intellectual Pop Power Couple Kathleen Hanna (Le Tigre/Bikini Kill) & Adam Horovitz (a.k.a Ad-rock, nee the Beastie Boys); Art Stars & Performance Legends: Bibbe Hansen & Sean Carillo, Justin Bond, Annie Sprinkle, Jibz Cameron a.k.a. Dynasty Handbag, Billy Miller, Slava Mogutin & Brian Kenny, Mashinka Firunts & Jeremy J F Thompson, and Julie Tolentino; an Ethyl Eichelberger Cabal-- and many, many, many more are being confirmed by the minute!

VaginAl Davis was born and raised in Los Angeles. She has been living as an ex-pat in Berlin for 3 years where she curates a monthly performative silent film program at the Arsenal Institute For Film and Video Art. She also has curated programs for the Berlinale International Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Sundance and Outfest. Ms Davis teaches performance art at Lund University´s Malmö Art Academy in Malmö, Sweden. Besides being an accomplished experimental filmmaker, writer, musician and visual artist VaginAl Davis has been the muse of such diverse artists as Catherine Opie, fashion designer Rick Owens and pop stars Beth Ditto of the indie rock band Gossip, and Beck. Hilton Als of The New Yorker Magazine calls her "the poet laureat of Santa Monica Blvd" She has also been the subject of academic illucidation by Jose Munoz in Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics and Jennifer Doyle, "White Sex: VaginAl Davis Does Vanessa Beecroft" from the 2006 University of Minnesota Press book Sex Objects: Art and the Dialectics of Desire. www.vaginaldavis.com/

Design and Production by Jonathan Berger in collaboration with Sarah Marcy, Joshua Lubin-Levy, Alexander Hollenbach, and Julia Rexon.

The Ethyl Eichelberger Award was created by Performance Space 122 and made possible with generous support from The Gesso Foundation in honor of seminal performer, landmark and legend Ethyl Eichelberger. The award is given to an artist or group that exemplifies Ethyl's larger-than-life style and generosity of spirit; who embodies Ethyl's multi-talented artistic virtuosity, bridging worlds and vitalizing those around them.

Adrienne Truscott
BERMUDA
WORLD PREMIERE | DANCE, THEATRE
Downstairs Theater
Sunday, May 30 - Sunday, June 13
Wednesday - Sunday 8:30PM
Late Shows: Saturday, June 5 & 12 at 10:30PM
Thursday Night Social: June 3

"Bawdy, bold, and bizarre movement; an exercise in existentialism befitting of Beckett."- Venessa Manko Dance Magazine

Adrienne Truscott, Neal Medlyn, and Carmine Covelli will be found somewhere in or around the interior and exterior of the downstairs theater, courtyard, and the street(s) at PS122, developing movement and reasons to move, for themselves and the audience, in spaces that feel, in their liminality, endless in their possibilities and impossible to define. The piece will also investigate why a roomful of husbands watch football in secret storage rooms, surrounded by toasters; what it feels like to live in a camper on the street in NYC; and how to get day laborers to replace 3 American dancers. What is edited out of the dance will be stored at a Brooklyn storage facility for the same month, for the low-price of $79.95.

Adrienne Truscott works with a large and loose group of collaborators, all of whom are authors of their own work. The group functions like a collective, exchanging time, talents and ideas for one another's work while striving to avoid the time and energy-consuming abyss of company infrastructure and financial stress. Each person brings many different talents and roles to bear on every piece. This time out, she'll be calling upon the talents of Neal Medlyn (Hers a Queen, Beyonce LIVE, Unpronounceable Symbol) and Carmine Covelli ("are you there god, it's me carmine"). http://www.adriennetruscott.com/Pages/at_home.html
Note: On Sunday, May 30 there will be a BBQ Benefit for Adrienne Truscott & Group.

Support for Bermuda provided by a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation.

Isabel Lewis
STRANGE ACTION
WORLD PREMIERE | DANCE
Upstairs Theater
Thursday, June 3 - Sunday, June 6
Wed - Sat at 8PM, Sun at 6PM
Late Show: Saturday, June 5 at 10PM
Thursday Night Social: June 10

"Isabel Lewis is a fierce and fiercely smart choreographer and dancer." - Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times

Strange Action is about the peculiar act of performing, about the possibility of making a solo that is not a dead end to autobiography and identity politics. This piece is about Mr. T, head-banging, and Nicole Kidman.

In Isabel Lewis' premiere evening-length solo show she resurrects her depiction of Mr. T and uses him and a few other icons as the unexpected reference points of a discussion by way of performance about the nature of performance itself. Equipped with the contents of a duffel bag Lewis builds a kind of mental map throughout the course of the performance inside of which postulates. Drawing on a range of references from Roland Barthes to B.A. Baracus, Lewis weaves a circuitous narrative about altered states, imagination, connectivity, process, and fiction.

Support for Strange Action provided by a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation.

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins & Gavin Quinn
THE OCTOROON: AN ADAPTATION OF THE OCTOROON BASED ON THE OCTOROON
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE
Upstairs Theater
Wednesday, June 16 - Saturday, July 3
Wednesday - Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 6PM
Thursday Night Social: June 24

An American playwright and an Irish director team up for an adaptation of nineteenth-century Irish playwright Dion Boucicault's notorious nineteenth-century melodrama about Americans. (And slavery.) A bombastic, super-theatrical, full-scale investigation of the sweetest of intersections-theatre and identity politics-this play with real actors and real sets and real costumes seeks to understand why New York audiences can't seem to get enough of plays about Irish folks and black people and racism and, um, America?

Branden Jacobs-Jenkins (Playwright) is a former playwriting fellow at the New York Theatre Workshop, an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and The Public Theater's Emerging Writing Group, and a member of the ArsNova Playgroup. He is the recipient of the 2009 Princess Grace Award for Playwriting and the 2009 Dorothy Strelsin Playwriting Fellowship. His full-length plays include Appropriate, The Change, and Neighbors, presented in Feb 2010 as part of The Public Theater's PublicLab.

Gavin Quinn (Director) is joint artistic director of Pan Pan which he co-founded in 1991 with Aedin Cosgrove. Gavin is also joint Artistic Director with Aedin Cosgrove of The Pan Pan InterNational Theatre Symposium, founded in 1997. (Nominated Special Jury Award, 2001 Irish Times Theatre Awards) Gavin is a grant recipient of the New York Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Gavin is a Board member of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, The Irish Theatre Institute, Irish Modern Dance Theatre and the National Association of Youth Drama.

The Octoroon is a co-production with Pan Pan. Support provided by a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation, Culture Ireland, The Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.

THE SPRING GALA 2010 Honoring John Leguizamo!
Tuesday, May 4
Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street at Pitt Street, Manhattan)
Honorary Chairs: Claire Danes & Baz Luhrmann
Emcees: Carmelita Tropicana & Marga Gomez
Special Guests: Hazelle Goodman, Lisa Kron, Spike Lee, Rosie Perez
Video Performance: Eric Bogosian
DJs: Andrew Andrew
Shining Star Award recipient: The Friedman Foundation

Performance Space 122 will honor John Leguizamo for his significant contributions to the world of performance and his rich history with the organization. John enjoyed his stage breakthrough while writing and starring as seven different Latino characters in his one-man show Mambo Mouth, which had its genesis at PS122, then moved off-Broadway and later became an HBO Comedy Hour in '91. Two more critically acclaimed, award-winning shows, Spic-O-Rama ('93) and Freak ('97), were developed at PS122 and later were adapted into HBO films.

Evening Overview:
* 6:00 Cocktails & Hors d'oeuvres / Silent Auction
* 8:00 Performances and Tributes
* 9:30 Live Auction, Dessert, Special Surprise Guest
* 10:00 Party

Tickets & Sponsorships now on sale:
Single tickets from $200, Sponsorships from $1500
Note: This event sells out every year.

THURSDAY NIGHT SOCIALS at PS122
On the first Thursday of a run at Performance Space 122, tickets include a "Thursday Night Social", a post-show party in PS122-style. Celebrate the artists with the artists and PS122 friends and family and friends with benefits. Refreshments flow freely and many nights spontaneously unfold into a dance-party. Please join us for the following Thursday Night Socials:

April 29: celebrating Reid Farrington and Gin & "It"
May 20: celebrating VaginAl Davis and Speaking from the Diaphragm PLUS the annual Ethyl Eichelberger Award Announcement
June 3: celebrating Adrienne Truscott and Bermuda & Isabel Lewis and Strange Action
June 24: celebrating BranDon Jacobs Jenkins & Gavin Quinn and The Octoroon

LATE-NIGHTS at PS122
More and more audiences are taking advantage of the new "late" curtains at PS122. For the Madrileño in all of us, a visit to PS122 starts off any evening with a performative adventure. For others, it's the convenience of being able to make it a double feature after enjoying another show. The following runs feature 10:00PM or 10:30PM curtains and make it easy to squeeze in an extra culture fix!

Saturdays: May 1 and 8 at 10:30PM - Gin & "It"
Saturday, May 22 and Thursday, May 27 at 10PM - VaginAl Davis is Speaking from the Diaphragm
Saturday, June 5 at 10PM - Strange Action
Saturdays: June 5 and 12 at 10:30PM - Bermuda

Performance Space 122 is one of New York's ultimate destinations for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and multi-media. PS122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists who explore innovative form and provocative content and who rigorously challenge the boundaries contemporary performance; PS122 is committed to a steadfast search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures, nations and beliefs.

For thirty years, Performance Space 122 has been a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the East Village, as well as the wider cultural community in N.Y.C. and across the globe. In just the past 4 years, under the curatorial vision of Artistic Director Vallejo Gantner, PS122 has opened the curtain on more than 2,100 performances, welcomed more than 100,000 visitors, and supported the work of more than 1,800 artists, performers, choreographers, playwrights, directors and designers.

Performance Space 122 passionately advocates for U.S. artists in New York and across globe. Our organization and the artists we present are reclaiming their relevance to wider social discourse by engaging artists, audiences and other community leaders in cultural, economic, and environmental debates about what it means to live in contemporary society. www.ps122.org

On YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PerformanceSpace122
On Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5192991003
On Twitter: @PS122

Tickets and PS122 Passports are now on sale and available at www.ps122.org, by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101, and the Performance Space 122 Box Office.

Tickets from $20 and $15 (students/seniors)
The PS122 Passport is a bundle of 5 tickets for only $55 that can be used in ANY combination to the Spring performances.
Performance Space 122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street.
Program and Prices subject to change.

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