PS122 Announces Fall 2009 Schedule Including The NY Version of Seattle's BUMBERSHOOT 9/5-9

Performance Space 122 is proud to announce the Fall 2009 schedule. Tickets and PS122 Passports may be purchased online at www.ps122.org or via phone at (212) 352-3101. PS122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, New York, New York 10009.

Performance Space 122 is New York's ultimate destination 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.

The following is a detailed roster of companies and programs that will be presented by Performance Space 122 this Fall (September - December, 2009), both at PS122 and OFF-SITE:

PS122 NYC: SEATTLE EDITION
BUMBERSHOOT
September 5 - September 9
OFF-SITE: Seattle Center, Seattle

Performance Space 122 exports a multi-artist program to be presented at Seattle's legendary Bumbershoot Festival. PS122 NYC: SEATTLE EDITION is a live bento box teeming with delectable performance bites from Witness Relocation, Reggie Watts and Tommy Smith, LeeSaar The Company - plus a live art installation by 31 Down and Japanther. Best to come hungry.

PS122 NYC: SEATTLE EDITION features:

Witness Relocation: The Panic Show
Combining dance and theatre with the energy of a rock concert, "The Panic Show" attacks mass hysteria, hyper-ventilation, stress, and self help techniques. Dark confessions, confetti, and real time performance tasks will whip the audience and performers into a lather. Co-commissioned by Dance New Amsterdam.

Reggie Watts / Tommy Smith: Radio Play
Sonic auteurs Reggie Watts & Tommy Smith model "Radio Play" after radio programs of yesteryear, gathering a group of actors, musicians and sound-effects artists to create a surreal sonic entertainment - performed in the dark!

LeeSaar The Company: Geisha
A woman and man are locked in a sensual duet interwoven with a surreal concert performance by an over-the-top Celine Dion-esque diva. Navigating a world that is alternately disturbing and seductive, intimate and extroverted, Geisha opens the door to an intensely voyeuristic and hypnotic experience.

31 Down radio theatre & JAPANTHER: THE SCREAM CONTEST
A startlingly cathartic installation of alt-punk proportions: 31 Down and Japanther challenge you to The Scream Contest. Sign up to read a short radio theatre scene ending with a blood curdling scream provided by YOU. Like a sideshow at a county fair where people test their strength by pounding a hammer and ringing a bell, The Scream Contest rewards the best set of lungs. The winner is decided by the SCREAM-o-METERTM.

Since 1971, Bumbershoot has been Seattle's premiere indoor/outdoor Music and Arts Festival. Situated in the Seattle Center, the 74-acre park located in the heart of the Pacific Northwest, Bumbershoot has it all, and umbrellas a number of artists from different genres representing the best in music, film, comedy, theater, spoken word, dance, visual, performance and literary arts.

Compagnie Dakar / Lotte van der Berg
Braakland
Theatre | Live Art
New York Premiere, in association with New Island Festival and NY400
OFF-SITE: Governors Island
Thursday, September 10 - Sunday, September 20
Thursdays - Sundays; exact performance times for Braakland will be announced shortly and posted on ps122.org

Braakland (Wasteland) epitomizes theatre on location; theatre in, and in relationship to a landscape. In sober, penetrating images, Braakland tells a tale of nine figures wandering about a forgotten land. They surrender to the laws of living and dying, without defense. Is this an existence that they have chosen - or one they merely failed to escape?

Award-winning director Lotte Van den Berg was inspired by the novels of J.M. Coetzee, the South African writer who received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003 when making this astonishing piece of theatre. A performance without words, Braakland conveys the violence, the desolation, and the poetry of Coetzee's work.

Compagnie Dakar was established in Holland in 2001 by Artistic Director Guido Kleene. Guido was born in Dakar, Senegal and Compagnie Dakar's artistic purpose is to explore the relationship and contrast between European and African worldviews.

Attention: this is an open-air performance; please wear suitable clothing and footwear; recommended for those ages 16+.

New Island Festival Pass: $35/ Single tickets available from $5 per event
The festival will be accessible via a free ferry: the Governors Island Ferry departs from the Battery Maritime Building located adjacent to the Staten Island Ferry.

About New Island Festival: New Island Festival (September 10-20, 2009; Governors Island) is a 10-day festival of the best of Holland: thrilling concerts, exhilarating DJ sets, provocative theatre, stunning site specific performance and dazzling visual arts - all from world-class Dutch artists. The festival is part of NY400, a celebration commemorating the 400th anniversary of Henry Hudson's voyage from Amsterdam to New York Harbor. http://newislandfestival.com/

AVANT-GARDE-ARAMA!
World Premiere
Mini-Festival: Theatre | Dance | Live Music | Live Art | Multi-Media + Season Opening Party
Upstairs Theater
Friday, September 18th at 8pm
Saturday, September 19th at 8pm

"Orchestrated mayhem and the excitement that ensues are the only predictable variables...Try as it may to maintain theatrical composure, [A.G.A.] always ends up degenerating, or exploding, into an all-out party." - Flavorpill

P.S. 122's longest-running series, this multidisciplinary mini-festival features an exuberant and eclectic line-up of the wildest experimental performance shorts to be found in N.Y.C.

Curated by Salley May and the A.G.A. Committee, this year's off the wall extravaganza will be hosted by David Ilku and Gina Vetro and will feature season opening festivities with live music and DJs. Anything can - and will - happen!

Cupola Bobber
WAY OUT WEST, the SEA WHISPERED ME
New York Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Thursday, September 24 - Sunday, September 27
Thursday - Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 6pm,
Late Show: Saturday, September 26th at 10:30pm

"...this pair of Chicago-based 30-year-olds can lay claim to a special talent for alternative performance-making of disarmingly odd, cosmic charm." - Donald Hutera, The Times of London

"What Samuel Beckett doing standup would be." - trailerpilot.com

A vast internal adventure exploring The Sea, as mythology and as awesome presence. Using Cupola Bobber's home-spun minimal aesthetic and poker-faced absurdist charm, Stephen Fiehn and Tyler B. Myers - like Laurel & Hardy channeling Gilbert & George - visit The Sea and watch a town slide in.

Founded in 1999, Cupola Bobber is a collaboration between Stephen Fiehn and Tyler B. Myers. They have created four evening length performances by working slowly out of their studio on the west side of Chicago. They have performed in multiple venues in Chicago, Austin, Portland, and New York, and toured internationally. They were International Artists in Residence at the Nuffield Theatre Lancaster in 2008. Alongside the evening-length performance work they have made video, durational performance, and published writing.

Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me is a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Links Hall and P.S. 122 in partnership with the National Performance Network.

Maria Hassabi
SOLO SHOW
World Premiere
Dance
Solo
World Premiere: In association with Crossing the Line
Downstairs Theater: Saturday, September 26 - Sunday, October 4
Tuesday - Saturday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 5:30pm
Late Show: Saturday, October 3 at 10pm
SoloShow
World Premiere: In association with PERFORMA 09
Upstairs Theater: Thursday, November 12 - Sunday, November 15
Thursday - Saturday at 8pm, Sunday at 6pm
Late Shows: Friday, November 13th at 10pm and Saturday, November 14th at 10pm

SOLO SHOW is a diptych of two autonomous evening-long solos that play between opposing orientations. The performer moves from a solitary contemplation in Solo, to a devotion to 'show-culture' in SoloShow. Hassabi continues her rigorous exploration of representations of the female body - embedded within art history, pop culture, and the performance of daily life - dissolving them into the physicality of contemporary dance.

SOLO SHOW, created and directed by Hassabi, will be performed alternatively by her longtime collaborator Hristoula Harakas and herself; and will feature lighting by Joe Levasseur, clothing by ThreeAsFour, dramaturgy by Marcos Rosales, sound score by James Lo, and set design by Scott Lyall and Hassabi.

Maria Hassabi is a director/choreographer/performer. In her work she employs extreme physicality and aesthetic precision, creating worlds filled with iconic images. Hassabi's works live within the juncture of dance, installation and performance art. Hassabi's work has been presented at venues such as PS122, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 1 Contemporary Art Center, The Joyce Theater, and Ballroom Marfa. Internationally, she has been featured at ImpulsTanz Vienna, In-Presentable Festival Madrid, TSEH-Springdance/Dialogue Moscow, Musée Géo Charles in Grenoble, France, The Biennale of Young Artists of Europe, in Sarajevo-Herzegovina and European festivals in Cyprus, Greece and Portugal. Hassabi was born in Cyprus and received a BFA in 1994 from the California Institute of the Arts. She is a recipient of the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, 2009 Grants to Artists Award.

With funding from the National Performance Network, MCAF supported by the N.Y.C. Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by LMCC and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston. Co-produced and presented by Performance Space 122, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) as part of the Crossing the Line Festival, and the 2009 Visual Art Performance Biennial, Performa 09.

About Crossing the Line (September 12 - October 3, 2009): Crossing the Line is FIAF's fall festival, conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of transdisciplinary artists working in France and New York City. Initiated, conceived, and produced by FIAF in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions, the 3rd annual edition of this inter-disciplinary contemporary arts festival further develops its focus on artists who are transforming cultural practices on both sides of the Atlantic. www.fiaf.org

About Performa 09: Performa 09 (November 1-22, 2009) is the third edition of the internationally acclaimed biennial of new visual art performance presented by Performa, a non-profit multidisciplinary arts organization dedicated to exploring the critical role of live performance in the history of twentieth century art and to encouraging new directions in performance for the twenty-first century. www.performa-arts.org

Hotel Savant / John Jahnke
THE ARCHERY CONTEST
World Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Friday, October 2 - Sunday, October 18
Wednesday - Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 6pm

Downtown's enfant terrible delivers a frisky and hyper-stylized sex comedy that shoots straight into the heart of marriage in America. Behind this Technicolor Romantic Pastoral lies a glittering and scathing indictment of rules and regulations, rituals and rites of spring. A foursome and a sexton breach the boundaries of matrimonial shackles and dive headlong into a hedonistic lifestyle with complex consequences.

The Archery Contest sends up and examines the tragic-comic foibles of human desire straight-jacketed by antiquated dogmas and outdated notions of marriage, ultimately asking: in a country steeped in tradition yet eager for change, how ably can we move away from our puritanical past and into an unfettered future?

The Hotel Savant, a theatre company based in New York City, explores the seminal ideologies of history and mythology and their impact on contemporary narrative. Utilizing a variety of performance techniques that include pageantry, dance and tableau, they create original works and revive obscure texts that correlate to present day topics.

Presented by Performance Space 122; Developed at 3LD Art & Technology Center; and with the support of Art International Radio (AIR) and NYSCA.

31 Down
THE ASSEMBER DILATOR
World Premiere
Theatre | Multi-Media
Thursday, October 8 - Saturday, October 18
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 5:30 pm
Late Shows: Saturday at 10pm

A doctor and a nurse become lab rats in their own hallucinogenic medical trial.

The Assember Dilator is a sonic meltdown of science fiction and perversion focused on the development of x-ray vision and its consequences, obvious and unknown. Through hypnotic aural and visual design, 31 Down confronts issues of medical research, sources of funding, and the responsibility of science in the near future. Grappling with themes of transcendence, control and greed, specific notions of human interaction with science and nature are unraveled.

Brooklyn-based 31 Down was formed in 2001. The company creates audio-based performance work with a heavy emphasis on imagery and mood and an invested use of new technologies and interactive systems to create and control the performances.

31Down's recent performance venues include: Bumbershoot, The Ontological Theater, The New Museum, White Box/PERFORMA 05, The Kitchen, Rhizome, free103point9, SPARK Festival of Electronic Music and Art (Minneapolis, MN), Hallwalls (Buffalo, NY) and the Megapolis Festival (Boston, MA).

This work was developed with the support of: free103point9, Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, The Bushwick Starr and OfficeOps.

Temporary Distortion
AMERICANA KAMIKAZE
World Premiere
Theatre | Multi-Media
Downstairs Theater
Saturday, October 24 - Saturday, November 14
Wednesday - Saturday at 7:30pm / Sunday at 5:30pm
Late Show: Saturday, November 7 at 10pm
No performance on Saturday, October 31

Following sold-out runs at Performance Space 122 in 2008 and 2009 and a sensational sneak preview at Prelude '08, Temporary Distortion return and climb back inside one of their signature box structures - this time delving into the worlds of Japanese ghost stories and "J-Horror". A theatre and cinema hybrid, Americana Kamikaze is haunted by vengeful spirits and doppelgangers, impossible physical manipulations, elliptical storylines, creepy sound designs, equally creepy cinematography, bizarrely happy endings - and even the saccharine pop songs.

Since its inception in 2002, Temporary Distortion has earned a reputation for pushing the boundaries of theater by staging unsettling, meditative performances in claustrophobic, boxlike structures. Featuring minimal physical movement and a uniquely restrained acting style, these four-dimensional theatrical installations bridge the gap between performance and visual art.

The performers never make eye contact, never touch, and barely move, as a constant stream of video is projected around them. More physical than the presence of the live actor, the world of the film unfolds in an alternate reality of blood, sweat, sex, and death. This continual juxtaposition of stage and cinema is one of complement, complication, and contradiction, suggesting multiple ways to interpret relationships between characters and to disentangle perpetually shifting narrative fragments.

Co-producers: Maison des Arts de Créteil (Paris), Le Manége (Maubeuge), Performance Space 122 (New York). Additional support provided by The Greenwall Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, The Nancy Quinn Fund, a project of A.R.T./New York.

Morgan Thorson
HEAVEN
New York Premiere
Dance | Live Music
Upstairs Theater
Sunday, October 25 - Friday, October 30
Wednesday - Friday at 8pm / Sunday at 6pm
Late Show: Friday, October 30 at 10pm

Morgan Thorson teams with the sublime slowcore band LOW in pursuit of ecstatic and corporeal perfection in a real-time performance ritual. This reverential spectacle transfers the myth of perfection from the religious to the Theatre World as a roving chorus of performers undertakes angelic choral singing and Thorson's uniquely dynamic choreography. While extreme restriction is transformed into powerful kinesthetic expression, believers and non-believers, dance-enthusiasts and live music-lovers will experience Heaven's acute force of attraction.

Inspired by the rigor and austerity of religious practices - while decrying the barriers and lies that religion creates - the ensemble approached their research, process, material and relationship as a devotional practice; showing their love for the theatre and its parallels to worship.

Named BEST CHOREOGRAPHER 2008 in the Best of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis-St.Paul City Pages, Thorson is also a fellow in choreography at the Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography and a 2009 McKnight Foundation fellow in choreography. Dodging a trademark style, her ensemble and solo works address: the state of being (in general and within the context of the performance); her own personal relationship to dance; and the perception and representation of the body.

Heaven is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Diverseworks (Houston) in partnership with Performance Space 122 (New York), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and NPN.

Rabih Mroué
*Title to be confirmed*
New York Premiere - in association with Performa 09
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Solo Theatre | Performance
Thursday, November 5 - Saturday, November 7
Thursday - Saturday at 8pm
Late Show: Saturday, November 8 at 10pm

Rabih Mroué (born 1967 in Beirut) is an actor, director, and playwright. In 1990 he began creating his own plays, performances, and videos. Continuously searching for new and contemporary relations among all the different elements and languages of the theatre art forms, Mroué questions the definitions of theatre and the relationship between space and form of the performance and, consequently, questions how the performer relates with the audience. His works deal with issues that have been swept under the table in the current political climate of Lebanon. He draws much-needed attention to the broader political and economic contexts by means of a semi-documentary theatre.

From theatre practice to politics, and from the problem of representations to his private life, his search for ‘truth' begins via documents, photos, and found objects, fabricating other documents, other ‘truths': it is as if the work becomes a dissection table for the dubious processes of Lebanon's war society. With the accumulation of materials, a surrealistic saga unfolds, teasing out the proposition that "between the truth and a lie, there is but a hair."

Presented by Performance Space 122 in association with and as part of the 2009 Visual Art Performance Biennial, Performa 09.

Marisa Olson
ASSISTED LIVING
New York Premiere
Solo Theatre | Performance
Downstairs Theater
Thursday, November 19 - Sunday, November 22
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30pm, Sunday at 5:30pm
Late Show: Saturday, November 21 at 10pm

Assisted Living is a futuristic Martha Stewart-style T.V. show focused on coping with the health and environmental challenges of living a life prolonged and polluted by technology. As hostess, Olson devises craft projects and recipes for 150-year-olds, taping the show on-site before a "live studio audience."

Marisa Olson's work combines performance, video, net art, sound, drawing, and installation to address the cultural history of technology, the politics of participation within pop culture, and the aesthetics of failure. The show incubated at Wooloo's New Life Berlin festival

LeeSaar The Company
PRIMA
World Premiere
Dance
Upstairs Theater
Wednesday, November 18 - Sunday, November 22
Wednesday - Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 6pm
Late Show: Saturday, November 21 at 10pm

The writhing physicality and explosive tempos synonymous with LeeSaar's award-winning choreography mature and ripen in the company's fourth presentation at Performance Space 122.

In Prima, five arresting performers explore a world of pure sensation and energy. Teasing out the feminine and the virile, they are alternately playful and bashful as they navigate sexuality and temptation.

The company's process and technique is influenced by the Gaga training of Ohad Naharin. Lee and Saar are recipients of the Six Point Fellowship 2007-2009, the Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography for 2008, and the New York Foundation for the Art Fellowship for 2008.

A co-production of Performance Space 122, the JCC (Manhattan), Fusebox Festival, and testperformancetest (Austin TX).

Lisa D'Amour & Katie Pearl with Emily Johnson
TERRIBLE THINGS
World Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Friday, December 4 - Sunday, December 20
Thursday - Saturday at 8pm / Sunday at 6pm
Late Shows: Saturday, December 12, Friday, December 18, Saturday, December 19 at 10pm
Additional show: Wednesday, December 16 at 8pm

Science Tuesday meets Oklahoma angst as Lisa D'Amour and Katie Pearl flip P.S. 122 into a low-rent IMAX and get up close and in between molecules, quarks and memories. Have you ever wondered if all those lives you've imagined yourself living are actually happening in a parallel world(s)? Terrible Things takes audiences on a hallucinogenic T-R-I-P inside the many lives and countless break-ups of Katie Pearl. Expect an in-your-body out-of-body experience shaped by Katie, her action-figure literary Mom, three killer dancers: Emily Johnson, Morgan Thorson, and Karen Sherman, two Brazilian Jiu Jitsu wrestlers, and 1000 marshmallows. Featuring the choreography of Emily Johnson.

Lisa D'Amour and Katie Pearl are OBIE-award winning collaborators with a 12-year history of creating work for theaters and non-traditional sites. They are known for combining theater with installations to create performances that are intimate, mysterious and often interactive.

Funders: NYSCA, MAP Fund, Irving Linn Charitable Trust. This production was developed through the Voice and Vision Summer Theater Lab, The Playwrights' Center's Core Writer Lab; rehearsal residencies at the Abrons Arts Center, and the University of Iowa; work-in-progress showings at the Fusebox Festival and Chashama; Presented by Performance Space 122.

Sybil Kempson and Mike Iveson, Jr.
CRIME OR EMERGENCY
New York Premiere
Theatre | Cabaret
Downstairs Theater
Friday, December 4 - Sunday, December 20
Wednesday - Saturday 7:30pm / Sunday at 5:30pm
Late Shows: Saturday, December 12 and Saturday, Dec 19 at 10pm

Two iconoclastic downtown performers threaten our Aristotelian/Stanislavskian conceptions of contemporary American theatre and identity as we safely understand it in a new play by Sibyl Kempson.

Mike Iveson, with his demonic arrangements of the indigenous music of their native New Jersey, joins Kempson in a rapturous and obsessive melodrama of consciousness. Together they distill this 11-person play into a desperate and harried duet (Kempson performs 10 out of 11 characters; Iveson performs the 11th and underscores the entire evening with barely recognizable piano arrangements of early Bruce Springsteen songs.) Part cabaret fiasco, part aesthetic holocaust, their dual dueling performance pits them in a life-or-death struggle for the right to devour the soul of the play.

Please note that at the Late Shows, the part played by Ms. Kempson will be played by Mr. Iveson; and the part and piano played by Mr. Iveson will be played by Ms. Kempson.

Written and performed by playwright/performer Sibyl Kempson with musical accompaniment and arrangements by Mike Iveson.

Presented by Performance Space 122; developed at Dixon Place, Soho Rep, and Fusebox Festival. Originally developed at Dixon Place as a prefatory workshop in 2005 and as a Mondo Cane! commission in 2007 with a full cast. In January 2008, the duet version was workshopped at the Soho Rep Studio series.

Tickets and PS 122 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 PS 122 Passport is a bundle of 5 tickets for only $55 that can be used in ANY combination to the 2009-10 season performances.
Performance Space 122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street.
Program and Prices subject to change.

 

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