PS122's COIL Festival Returns to New York 1/7/11
By: Gabrielle Sierra Dec. 16, 2010
Since COIL began in 2006, 50+ companies from NYC, the US, UK, Australia, continental Europe, Latin America and Asia have been presented as part of this mid-winter festival. This year, spring-loaded as ever, 17 companies boasting over 100 artists and collaborators spanning theatre, dance, multi-media, psycho-sexual storytelling, and live music, not to mention chat-bots, will take part in this year's festival. Performance Space 122 teams up with a diverse range of partners to present the largest COIL festival to date this coming January.
PS 122 Artistic Director, Vallejo Gantner, says of COIL: "We assume that if a show is exceptional it will happen in New York - but in our trans-polar, trans-disciplinary, trans-media world, this assumption is increasingly false. We are finding that in fact we must unceasingly argue for NYC as a hub of live artistic creativity, as a relevant node on the networked landscape of global culture. COIL is our way to shout that NYC still has it. COIL is Performance Space 122 pure and simple in one concentrated fury."
This year, onsite performances include PS 122 premieres by Vivi Tellas (Theatre / Argentina), The BodyCartography Project (Dance / Minneapolis), Annie Dorsen (Theatre / NYC), Ranters Theatre (Theatre / Australia), Kim Noble (Theatre / UK), Teatro Delle Albe (Theatre / Italy), and Ain Gordon (Theatre / NYC), as well as recent hits by Jack Ferver (Dance / NYC), Amanda Loulaki & Short Mean Lady (Dance / NYC) and Spalding Gray (Theatre / NYC).
The offsite / site-specific programming looks toward the future of Performance Space 122 and represents who PS 122 is now as well as who it will become. As PS 122 begins to negotiate every spot in the city for unique and contemporary live experiences, COIL offers the following performances outside of its 150 First Avenue space: Ishmael Houston-Jones / Chris Cochrane / Dennis Cooper (Abrons Arts Center), Travis Chamberlain (The Hudson Hotel), Palissimo (BAC / Abrons Arts Center), John Jahnke & Hotel Savant (3LD Art & Technology Center), The Debate Society (Atlantic Stage 2), Radiohole (The Collapsible Hole), and Brian Rogers (The Chocolate Factory).
COIL 2011 At-a-Glance
*off-site performance
DANCE PRESENTATIONS
The BodyCartography Project Symptom (Minneapolis)
Fri, Jan 7 5PM / Sat, Jan 8 5PM / Sun, Jan 9 4:30PM / Mon, Jan 10 6:30PM
Fri, Jan 7 10PM / Sat, Jan 8 7:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 7:30PMAmanda Loulaki & Short Mean Lady I Am Saying Goodnight (NYC)
Fri, Jan 7 5PM / Sat, Jan 8 5PM / Tue, Jan 11 7:30PM
Sat, Jan 8 5PM / Sun, Jan 9 7PM / Mon, Jan 10 4PM
Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street at Pitt Street)*Palissimo The Painted Bird | Bastard (NYC)
Sun, Jan 9 4PM
BAC (450 West 37th St.)
Wed, Jan 12 at 4PM / Thu, Jan 13 6PM / Fri, Jan 14 6PM
Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street at Pitt Street)*Brian Rogers Selective Memory(NYC)
Sat, Jan 8 8PM / Sat, Jan 8 10PM / Sun, Jan 9 2PM / Mon, Jan 10 8:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 8PM
The Chocolate Factory (549 49th Avenue, Long Island City)
THEATRE PRESENTATIONS
Annie Dorsen Hello Hi There (NYC)
Thu, Jan 6 7:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 5PM / Mon, Jan 10 5PM / Tue, Jan 11 10PM / Thu, Jan 13 7:30PM / Fri, Jan 14 10PM
Extends beyond COIL through January 22; visit www.ps122.org for more details.
Fri, Jan 7 7:30PM / Sat, Jan 8 10PM / Mon, Jan 10 10PM / Tue, Jan 11 5PM / Thu, Jan 13 10PM / Fri, Jan 14 7:30PM / Sat, Jan 15 10PM
Extends beyond COIL through January 22; visit www.ps122.org for more details. Vivi Tellas Rabbi Rabino (Argentina)
Wed, Jan 5 9:30PM / Thu, Jan 6 6:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 6:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 6:30PM / Thu, Jan 13 7:30PM / Sat, Jan 15 9:30PMRanters Theatre Holiday (Australia)
Thu, Jan 6 9:30PM / Fri, Jan 9:30PM / Sat, Jan 8 6:30PM / Mon, Jan 10 9:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 9:30PM / Thu, Jan 13 9:30PM / Fri, Jan 14 9:30PM / Sat, Jan 15 6:30PMSpalding Gray Stories Left to Tell(NYC)
Wed, Jan 5 6:30PM / Fri, Jan 7 6:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 9:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 4:30PMTeatro Delle Albe Ouverture Alcina (Italy)
Wed, Jan 5 10PM / Thu, Jan 6 10PM / Sun, Jan 9 10PM / Mon, Jan 10 7:30PMAin Gordon A Disaster Begins (NYC)
Mon, Jan 10 4:30PM*Radiohole Whatever Heaven Allows(NYC)
Fri, Jan 7 - Mon, Jan 10 / Wed, Jan 12 - Sat, Jan 15 8PM
The Collapsible Hole (146 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn)*Travis Chamberlain Green Eyes (NYC)
Wed, Jan 5 - Sat, Jan 8 8PM & 9:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 5:30PM & 7PM / Mon, Jan 10 3PM & 4:30PM /
Wed, Jan 12 - Sat, Jan 15 8PM & 9:30PM
The Hudson Hotel (356 West 58th Street)
Extends beyond COIL through January 3; visit www.ps122.org for more details. *John Jahnke & Hotel Savant Men Go Down (NYC)
Thu, Jan 6 - Sun, Jan 9 / Wed, Jan 12 - Sat, Jan 15 8PM
3LD Art & Technology Center (80 Greenwich Street)
Extends beyond COIL through January 23; visit www.ps122.org for more details.*The Debate Society Buddy Cop 2 (NYC)
Sat, Jan 8 7PM / Sun, Jan 9 4PM / Mon, Jan 10 7PM / Tue, Jan 11 4PM / Wed, Jan 12 7PM / Thu, 9:30PM
Atlantic Stage 2 (330 West 16th Street)
*****
DANCE PRESENTATIONS
The BodyCartography Project
Symptom
NY PREMIERE
Downstairs of PS122
Fri, Jan 7 5PM / Sat, Jan 8 5PM / Sun, Jan 9 4:30PM / Mon, Jan 10 6:30PM
"A stirring piece, viscerally, and you'll be thinking about it afterwards, as I am now." - TC Daily Planet
Join "twins", dancer Otto Ramstad and visual artist Emmett Ramstad, as they examine the human body, investigate notions of social bodies versus biological bodies, and explore the gaps between seeing, knowing and empathy. Symptom inspects the slippage between subjective and objective understandings of the human body, where a symptom acts as an indicator, trait, feature, mark or sign that is open for interpretation. Sound composed by electro-acoustic instrumentalist Andrea Parkins.
Co-created by Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad. Composer Andrea Parkins. Researcher and theorist Aren Aizura. Performed by Otto Ramstad and Emmett Ramstad.
Since 1998 the BodyCartography Project's co-directors Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad have created numerous dance, film and installation works. Their work extends from intimate solos for the street or stage, to large community dance works in train stations, dance films in national parks, to highly complex works for site or stage amidst installations, video and sound. Their work has been produced across the USA, Canada, New Zealand, Japan, Europe, Russia and South America. Recent highlights include a commission for the Lyon Opera Ballet and the premiere of their work 1/2 Life with a physicist, composer Zeena Parkins and visual artist Emmett Ramstad at Performance Space 122, NYC, the Southern Theater and Art of This Gallery in Minneapolis. They are featured artists in the first book about site dance in the USA published by University of Florida Press titled Site Dance: Choreographers and the Lure of Alternative Spaces and 2010 McKnight Fellows.
*****
Jack Ferver
Rumble Ghost
Upstairs of PS122
Horror movies will never be as terrifying and shocking as the human psyche. They act as metaphors - scary stories that offer a release or escape from the more devastating twists and turns of an unquiet mind. Without ghosts to explain haunted houses, we are left with the painful sites of crumbling careers, failing marriages, and abused children. In Rumble Ghost, as the flimsy membrane between an American horror movie classic and the fragility of the human condition deteriorates, the darkest place in the world is shown to be right up there-in your mind.
*****
Amanda Loulaki & Short Mean Lady
I Am Saying Goodnight
Upstairs of PS122
Fri, Jan 7 5PM / Sat, Jan 8 5PM / Tue, Jan 11 7:30PM
"She is certainly intense, and she is certainly talented." - John Rockwell, The New York Times
Every night I AM SAYING GOODNIGHT only to wake up in the morning longing for the smell of coffee and start all over again until exhausted I AM SAYING GOODNIGHT only to wake up in the morning longing for the smell of coffee.
A pre-decided game, with an intense physical vocabulary, unfiltered emotions, and an unflinching embrace of fatalism.
*****
Ishmael Houston-Jones, Chris Cochrane & Dennis Cooper
THEM
Co-Presented by AMERICAN REALNESS/tbspMGMT
At Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand Street at Pitt Street)
Sat, Jan 8 5PM / Sun, Jan 9 7PM / Mon, Jan 10 4PM
THEM is an intensely physical interdisciplinary work that presents an unblinking look into the lives of young (gay) men and how they interact with one another. Conceived and directed by Ishmael Houston-Jones THEM features provocative texts by Dennis Cooper and a cacophonous live electric guitar score by Chris Cochrane. Houston-Jones' choreography, while rooted in improvisation, develops the themes of connections that never quite happen, grappling and wrestling that seem inconsequential and ineffective, and support that disappears.
THEM sparked controversy and almost got PS 122 shut down when it originally premiered in 1986. This contemporary reconstruction of THEm Looks back to its "aggressive and vital" (Village Voice, Supree) roots to present a portrait of the young (gay) men of today.
Through a reconstruction residency at The New Museum, the three creators recast THEM with a new generation of male performers and re-premiered the piece as part of PS 122's 30th Anniversary Season. 2010 Cast: Joey Cannizzaro, Felix Cruz, Jeremy Pheiffer, Niall Noel, Jacob Slominski, Arturo Vidich, Enrico D. Wey
*****
Palissimo
The Painted Bird | Bastard
At BAC (450 West 37th Street) and at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand St. at Pitt St.)
At ABRONS ARTS CENTER: Wed, Jan 12 at 4PM / Thu, Jan 13 6PM / Fri, Jan 14 6PM
"A vivid, often anguished imagination shines through in [Zustiak's] work..." - The New Yorker
In Bastard, Pavel Zuštiak, in collaboration with composer Christian Frederickson and award-winning Slovak dancer Jaro Vi?arský, tackles the themes of displacement, otherness and transformation. The first installment of his trilogy "The Painted Bird", the piece is loosely inspired by Jerzy Kosinski's controversial novel of the same name. Zuštiak draws upon the book's signature scene-a wandering boy witnessing the painting of a bird into brilliant colors causing it later to be violently killed by its own flock-to create a new work that transforms the internal landscape of agony and misrecognition into a collective remembrance.
"The Painted Bird" is a trilogy - Bastard is Part 1 and premiered at LaMama in the fall of 2010. Parts 2 & 3 are to be presented by Baryshnikov Arts Center and Performance Space 122 respectively.
Pavel Zuštiak is a 2010 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, 2009 Princess Grace Foundation Residency Award- and 2007 Princess Grace Award-winner for Choreography. He is the Artistic Director of Palissimo Company, founded and based in New York City since 2004.
*****
Brian Rogers
Selective Memory
At The Chocolate Factory (549 49th Avenue, Long Island City)
Sat, Jan 8 8PM / Sat, Jan 8 10PM / Sun, Jan 9 2PM / Mon, Jan 10 8:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 8PM
Conceived, directed and choreographed by Brian Rogers in collaboration with Madeline Best, Selective Memory is a real time video performance about nostalgia for relationships that never took place; events that never happened; a film never made, but which everyone remembers; and the exploitation of the misappropriation of "real" sounds and images that confound, distort, remake and ultimately erase the truth.
Inside a claustrophobic "film set" comprised of computer-controlled moving cameras, a shapeless dioramic background, embedded monitors and microphones, a single performer will establish a hyper-intimate relationship with the cameras; and a simultaneously elusive/remote relationship with the live audience. Using simple cinematic techniques-extreme close-ups, slow pans, jump cuts, and tiny movements all executed in real time-the performer cycles through a series of meticulously choreographed gestures in tandem with composed "shots" designed not to construct a narrative but rather to suggest an endless number of possible narratives, creating an enormous blank space in which the spectator will imagine characters, relationships, conflicts and emotions that are never literally present. Through the gradual repetition and manipulation of images, the "literal" materials of cinema-locations, backgrounds, sets, establishing shots, etc.-will be discarded, leaving only the camera and the performer in a sustained, neutral but intensely focused exchange that resembles a high wire act or an oscillating sine wave; erasing the distance between camera, performer and spectator, and in the end, erasing all traces of meaning, leaving only light.
*****
THEATRE PRESENTATIONS
Annie Dorsen
Hello Hi There
US PREMIERE
Upstairs of PS122
Thu, Jan 6 7:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 5PM / Mon, Jan 10 5PM / Tue, Jan 11 10PM / Thu, Jan 13 7:30PM / Fri, Jan 14 10PM
Extends beyond COIL through January 22; please visit www.ps122.org for more details.
Language is meaningless, thought is pointless, and we're all gonna die. Hello, hi there!
New York director Annie Dorsen takes the famous television debate between the philosopher Michel Foucault and linguist and activist Noam Chomsky from the Seventies as inspiration and material for a dialogue between two specially developed chatbots: every evening, these computer programs designed to mimic human conversations perform a new - as it were, improvised - live text.
Hello Hi There is a performance without people-a literal expression of post-humanism, and simultaneously an examination of what it means to be human. The piece goes inside the question of human nature and intelligence, both the organic and the artificial.
Obie award-winning director and writer Annie Dorsen works in a variety of fields including theatre, film, dance and, as of 2010, digital performance. Most recently, Hello Hi There premiered at the streirischer herbst festival in Graz, and will tour to Oslo, Bergen and Berlin before arriving in New York in January 2011. She is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway musical Passing Strange, which she also directed. Spike Lee has since made a film of her production of the piece, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2009, subsequently screened at the South by Southwest Film Festival and The Tribeca Film Festival, and was released theatrically by IFC in 2010 before being broadcast on PBS' Great Performances. Also in 2010, she collaborated with choreographer Anne Juren on Magical (ImPulsTanz Festival) and with Ms. Juren and DD Dorviller on Pièce Sans Paroles (brut Vienna and Rencontres Choréographiques Internationales Seine-St-Denis, Paris). In 2009 she created two music-theatre pieces: Ask Your Mama, a setting of Langston Hughes' 1962 poem, composed by Laura Karpman and performed by Jessye Norman and The Roots (Carnegie Hall), and ETHEL's Truckstop, seen at the Brooklyn Academy Of Music's Next Wave Festival. Her pop-political performance project Democracy in America was presented at PS 122 in spring 2008. Her short film, I Miss, originally the centerpiece of Democracy in America, has screened at American Film Institute Festival (AFI Fest), SXSW Film Festival, The New York Film Festival's "Views From the Avant-Garde" and the Nantucket Film Festival. Her work has been seen at numerous venues in the US, including The Public Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Soho Rep, Marfa Theatre (TX), NYStage and Film, Sundance Theatre Lab, Stanford University, Clubbed Thumb and Women's Project. In addition to numerous awards for Passing Strange, Ms. Dorsen has received several fellowships, notably the Sir John Gielgud Fellowship from the Society of Stage Directors and Choreographers. She has taught at New York University, Fordham University, and Playwright's Horizons and is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama.
Co-produced by steirischer herbst festival, Black Box Teater, BIT Teatergarasjen, Hebbel am Ufer and Performance Space 122. Additional touring support provided by Bundesministerium für Unterricht, Kunst and Kultur (bmukk). Additional production support and residency provided by the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at Rensselaer (EMPAC).
*****
Kim Noble
Kim Noble Will Die
US PREMIERE
Upstairs of PS122
Fri, Jan 7 7:30PM / Sat, Jan 8 10PM / Mon, Jan 10 10PM / Tue, Jan 11 5PM / Thu, Jan 13 10PM / Fri, Jan 14 7:30PM / Sat, Jan 15 10PM
Extends beyond COIL through January 22, please visit www.ps122.org for more details.
"Shocking, beautiful and profound. It will blow your mind." - Time Out
Following extraordinary critical acclaim, five-star reviews and sell-out seasons at London's Soho Theatre and the Edinburgh Festival, Kim Noble Will Die makes its US premiere as part of PS 122's COIL Festival.
Life is tough. Kim Noble will help you get through it while laying bare his plans for departing this world.
Forced to assess his meager legacy as his contemporaries become more and more successful, what Kim Noble bequeaths to the world has become of utmost importance to him. In a series of benevolent acts, audience members are written into Kim's legally binding Last Will and Testament, provided with guides to surviving terrorist plots on the underground, money is given away and, perhaps most touching of all, containers of Kim's sperm will be available to female audience members in a bid to populate the world with genius once he is dead.
A ground-breaking new multi-media show, this is an absurd mix of comedy, video and avant-garde theatre from award-winning, BAFTA-nominated performance artist, video artist and comedian Kim Noble.
Co-directed by Kim Noble, Gary Reich and Flick Fernando.
*****
Viviana Tellas
Rabbi Rabino
WORLD PREMIERE
Downstairs of PS122
Co-presented with Rattlestick Playwrights Theater
Wed, Jan 5 9:30PM / Thu, Jan 6 6:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 6:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 6:30PM / Thu, Jan 13 7:30PM / Sat, Jan 15 9:30PM
Renowned Argentinian director Vivi Tellas "kidnaps reality", placing two Conservative Rabbis onstage to perform their own autobiographies - ranging from jokes to Jewish food to their opinions on Charlton Heston's "The 10 Commandments." On the threshold where simple reality transforms into performance, Rabbi Rabino captures pieces of "theatricality outside the theatre", placing them onstage in a unique context where audiences can connect with "the Rabbi's world" in a whole new way.
Vivi Tellas, Director / Julie Kline, Collaborator / Dahlia Fischbein, Collaborator / Rabbi Hyman Levine, Performer / Rabbi Moses Birnbaum, Performer
Vivi Tellas has been at the cutting edge of the Argentine theater scene since 1980, first as the originator of Teatro Malo (Bad Theater) and since then as the director of a succession of innovative stage productions. Tellas has continually explored and tested the limits of theatrical practice and institutions. Her original contributions include Homenaje a Xul Solar (1989), Europera V (1995), Los fracasados del mal (1992), and a groundbreaking interpretation in collaboration with artist Guillermo Kuitca of La casa de Bernarda Alba (2002). Since 2000 she has worked on the Archives Project, a cycle of radical stagings of everyday life in Buenos Aires, directing her real-life mother and aunts (Mi mamá y mis tías, 2003-04), recreating her driving lessons in the Automóvil Club Argentino (Escuela de conducción, 2006-07), imagining a conversation between the writer Edgardo Cozarinsky and his doctor (Cozarinsky y su médico, 2005-06), and exploring Buenos Aires nightlife in Disc Jockey (2008). Vivi Tellas founded and directed the Center for Experimentation in Theater of the University of Buenos Aires. From 1998 to 2000 she was in charge of the Stage Arts section of the Recoleta Cultural Center. Between 2001 and 2008 she was the Artistic Director of the Sarmiento Theater, which she transformed into the experimental space of the Theater Complex of the City of Buenos Aires. In 2008, she taught the seminar "Family Theater," first in London by joint invitation of the National Portrait Gallery and Shunt, the legendary performance space, then in Dublin by invitation of the Project Arts Center.
*****
Ranters Theatre
Holiday
US PREMIERE
Downstairs of PS122
Thu, Jan 6 9:30PM / Fri, Jan 9:30PM / Sat, Jan 8 6:30PM / Mon, Jan 10 9:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 9:30PM / Thu, Jan 13 9:30PM / Fri, Jan 14 9:30PM / Sat, Jan 15 6:30PM
"An extraordinary piece of theatre, a subsuming into another place that send the audience into the night refreshed an afloat on a sea of calm." - Emer O'Kelly, Irish Independent
Holiday is a gentle provocation. In a moment of relaxation and quiet reflection two men unwittingly engage. Spontaneous, unaffected and thrillingly real, innocent discussion becomes an exploration of private fantasy, hidden anxiety, personal mythology, and the most inexplicable behavior.
From the bar to the chaise lounge, Holiday is the journey of man's simple complexities, set within a sparingly elegant design, complimented a contemporary baroque musical score sampling Vivaldi, Corelli and Albinoni.
Established in 1994, Ranters consists of a writer, director, general manager and ensemble of actors committed to creating original, contemporary, theatre that is raw and immediate. Ranters is a small, artistically driven theatre company that makes highly distinctive original work. Ranters is one of only a few companies worldwide that works in a minimalist, non representational theatre genre, creating work that is finely crafted through extensive rehearsal processes. The company has a highly successful production and on-selling history.
Over the past 16 years Ranters has consistently received critical acclaim in Australia and abroad. At the company's core is an uncompromised commitment to Ranters' artistic vision. The company has twelve productions in repertoire, has been programmed in twelve international arts festivals and has toured seven countries worldwide.
This project has been assisted by the Australian Government through the Australia Council, its arts funding and advisory body and by the Victorian Government through Arts Victoria and by Arts House through the City of Melbourne and Arts Victoria.
*****
Stories Left to Tell
Created from classic and unpublished work of Spalding Gray
Downstairs of PS122
Wed, Jan 5 6:30PM / Fri, Jan 7 6:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 9:30PM / Tue, Jan 11 4:30PM
*Single tickets are $30
When Spalding Gray succumbed to depression and took his life in the winter of 2004, he left behind a loving family, a legion of devoted fans and an enormous body of work. Stories Left to Tell charts a uniquely personal journey through Spalding's inimitable perspective and voice, featuring excerpts from his hilarious monologues juxtaposed with journal entries, poems, and other unpublished - and previously unperformed - writing.
Starring Ain Gordon, Kathleen Chalfant, Hazelle Goodman, and Bob Holman. Directed by Lucy Sexton.
Teatro Della Albe
Ouverture Alcina
US PREMIERE
Upstairs of PS122
Wed, Jan 5 10PM / Thu, Jan 6 10PM / Sun, Jan 9 10PM / Mon, Jan 10 7:30PM
"This is a remarkable performance, the script superb, irreproachable" - Muriel Mingau, Le Populaire
Ouverture Alcina is a vocal performance based on the figure of the sorceress Alcina from Ludovico Ariosto's renaissance poem Orlando furioso. It is a fight between the power of the voice and of music, a deep and surprising alchemy that draws the figure of the sorceress, wounded by love, in her iconic immobility. No action, no spectacle, just a ghost that howls an untreatable pain. The "canto" in Romagnol dialect (the dialect from Romagna, a region in the North of Italy), an "ultra-local" harsh and archaic language, makes a strongpoint of its incommunicability and objective music.
The Teatro delle Albe was founded in 1983 by Marco Martinelli and Ermanna Montanari. The company has been interweaving the search for the "new" with the teachings of Traditional theatre, inventing a contemporary theatrical language. The Teatro delle Albe has become established as one of the most important realities on the national and international scene. It has received awards and acknowledgements in Italy and abroad, including nine Ubu Prizes, the Lo Straniero Prize dedicated "to the memory of Carmelo Bene", and two Golden Laurels at MESS International Festival of Sarajevo. In 1991 the Albe created Ravenna Teatro, one of the liveliest theatrical centers in Italy.
*****
Ain Gordon
A Disaster Begins
Downstairs of PS122
Mon, Jan 10 4:30PM
"Seeking order in a life, a war, and a deluge... (with) cleareyed passion." - The New York Times
A lone woman's unbreakable bond with the hurricane that devastated the Texas island of Galveston in 1900, taking 6,000 lives in a single night. With only a pitcher of water and a drinking glass, she unravels the shocking truth behind this disaster, weaving in tales of presidential corruption, pubescent despair, patriotic fervor, pre-marital passion and paralyzing writer's block.
Ain Gordon is a three-time Obie winning writer/director/actor, a two-time NYFA recipient, and a Guggenheim Fellow in Playwriting. Commissioned/produced/presented by NYTW, Soho Rep., The Public, 651 ARTS, DTW, PS 122, Kitchen Theatre, and HERE, etc (all NY); Mark Taper (CA), George Street Playhouse (NJ), Krannert (IL), Baltimore Museum of Art (MD), DiverseWorks (TX), Spirit Square (NC), North Fourth Arts Center (NM), LexArts (KY), etc. Core Writer at Playwrights' Center and Co-Director of Pick Up Performance Co(s).
*****
Radiohole
Whatever, Heaven Allows
At The Collapsible Hole (146 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn)
Fri, Jan 7 - Mon, Jan 10 / Wed, Jan 12 - Sat, Jan 15 8PM
WINNER OF 2009 Spalding Gray AWARD
"INSPIRED" - NY Times "OUTRAGEOUS" - The New Yorker
Known for its radical and reckless theatricality, avant-garde New York troupe Radiohole's newest work is a star-spangled American meta-melodrama inspired by film director Douglas Sirk's 1950s potboilers and Milton's epic Paradise Lost. Our heroine is an all- American "Eve" who must save her home from an evil-doer while struggling to find fulfillment in a lasting relationship with a supposedly good man who looks like a god. Radiohole's newest synthesis of cultural flotsam is sure to be bawdy, silly, possibly transcendent, and a touch disturbed.
*****
Travis Chamberlain
Green Eyes
NYC PREMIERE
At The Hudson Hotel (356 West 58th Street)
As part of COIL: Wed, Jan 5 - Sat, Jan 8 8PM & 9:30PM / Sun, Jan 9 5:30PM & 7PM / Mon, Jan 10 3PM & 4:30PM / Wed, Jan 12 - Sat, Jan 15 8PM & 9:30PM
Extends beyond COIL through January 30, please visit www.ps122.org for more details
The New York City premiere production of Tennessee Williams' Green Eyes, directed by Travis Chamberlain, unflinchingly explores one of Tennessee Williams' later works, hidden away for decades and only recently published 25 years after his death. Erin Markey stars as a ravenous Southern woman determined to satisfy the darkest recesses of her most deviant desires. This site-transformative event, ensconced in a suite at the Hudson, one of Manhattan's hottest hotel destinations, delves the disturbing subjectivities that exist in the gray areas where sadomasochistic desire and domestic violence overlap. Audience capacity for this highly eccentric, hyper-intimate premiere by America's most celebrated playwright is extremely limited. Travis Chamberlain (Director) is a director and curator based in New York City. Since 2007, he has produced and curated performances at The New Museum and from 2004-2007 served as Artistic Director at Galapagos Art Space in Brooklyn. Also in 2007, he curated and produced the world premiere of "Week 4" from Suzan Lori-Parks' 365 Plays/365 Days at The Public Theater. A member of Lincoln Center Theater's Directors Lab, Chamberlain has conceived and directed original productions: Project C: Is This a Dream? (NY Fringe), Never Live Long in Cages (NY Fringe), Head VI + 2(X)ist (Danspace), plus a series of music-theater collaborations with playwright/composer Kyle Jarrow. His direction of Erin Markey's Puppy Love: A Stripper's Tail received an extended run at PS 122 in May 2010.
*****
John Jahnke & Hotel Savant
Men Go Down
WORLD PREMIERE
At 3LD Art & Technology Center (80 Greenwich Street)
As part of COIL: Thu, Jan 6 - Sun, Jan 9 / Wed, Jan 12 - Sat, Jan 15 8PM
Extends beyond COIL through January 23, please visit www.ps122.org for more details
A strange and provocative theatre work that utilizes the construction of a Greek drama and the sensibility of a classic Fairy Tale to examine the ramifications of antique guilt on the modern conscience. Following a Greek king who abandons his war torn country for the safety of a cliff-side cave, the play travels one thousand years through the extended lifespan of the tormented ruler, a man who simply will not make a decision about how to handle his human responsibilities, and until he does so, cannot die. This punishment, or gift, is the verdict of an unnamed political council, who observes but remains distanced during his years of decadent, amoral, ethical elusion.
The production will be helmed by lead artist Jahnke and his frequent collaborators: set designer Peter Ksander, sound designer Kristin Worrall, costume designer Ramona Ponce, video designer Taili Wu and choreographer Benjamin Ford Asriel. Lighting Designer Bruce Steinberg has joined the team for Men Go Down. Ksander garnered a 2010 Henry Hewes Design Award nomination for Hotel Savant's most recent work, The Archery Contest at PS 122. In 2008, the entire design team was nominated for a Notable Effects award for Hotel Savant's staging of Artaud's The Cenci at The Ohio Theater.
*****
The Debate Society
Buddy Cop 2
At Atlantic Stage 2 (330 West 16th Street)
Sat, Jan 8 7PM / Sun, Jan 9 4PM / Mon, Jan 10 7PM / Tue, Jan 11 4PM / Wed, Jan 12 7PM / Thu, 9:30PM
"Village Voice Best of 2010" Award winners The Debate Society bring back Buddy Cop 2, their hit comedic action/mystery of holiday nostalgia and athletic rigor. When a flood destroys their station, the local police set up shop in the nearby community center. The days are peaceful and the nights are silent . . . until those things that always happen begin to happen. Mysteries emerge. Criminals are chased. Hardcore racquetball is played. In this town, nothing is what it seems . . . Or is it?
*****
Performance Space 122 is one of New York's ultimate destinations for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and multi-media. Now celebrating its 30th Anniversary Season, PS 122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists who explore innovative form and provocative content, rigorously challenging the boundaries of contemporary performance. PS 122 is committed to a steadfast search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures, nations and beliefs. www.ps122.org
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/user/PerformanceSpace122
Twitter: @PS122
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Single tickets are from $20 except where otherwise noted, $15 for students / seniors.
5 tickets for $55: The PS 122 PASSPORT may be used in ANY combination to ONSITE performances and a selection of offsite performances. Recommended for Performance Lovers and valid through June 30, 2011. Check ps122.org for details.
10 tickets for $100: The All-access Passport may be used in ANY combination to ONSITE performances and a selection of offsite performances. Recommended for professional arts presenters and valid through January 31, 2011. Check ps122.org for details.
Tickets and Passports are available via www.ps122.org and by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101 and at the Box Office, located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street (open from 4PM to curtain on performance-days).
SPECIAL EVENT:
International Collaboration & Exchange Stakeholders Brunch
Hosted by Performance Space 122, Trust for Mutual Understanding and the National Performance Network
Saturday, January 8th at PS 122. 11AM - 1PM
A conversation for contemporary performance stakeholders addressing some of the following questions: What does it really mean to be international? Why is important to engage international networks? What is exchange? What is diplomacy? How are they different from import / export? What strategies are working to foster more co-commissioning and reciprocity with our peers in Europe, Latin America, Asia, Australia and Africa?
FESTIVAL HUB:
VBar St. Mark's confirmed as the official COIL Festival Hub. Join us at Vbar for breakfast, lunch, dinner and / or late-night drinks throughout the entire festival. Present your performance ticket stub or PS 122 Passport to enjoy exclusive COIL discounts. Vbar St. Mark's is located blocks from PS122 at 132 1st Ave at St. Mark's Place / www.vbar.net
A BRIEF HISTORY OF COIL ARTISTS:
2006: 4 companies / 6 days (Jan 19 - 24)
Ballet Lab (Australia), LeeSaar The Company (Isr/NYC), Adrienne Truscott (NYC), Helen Herbertson (Aus)
2007: 8 companies / 7 days (Jan 17 - 23)
Thomas Bradshaw (NYC), International WOW (NYC), Jeremy Wade (Berlin/NYC), Morgan Thorson (MN), Elevator Repair Service (NYC), Lee Saar (NYC), Sara Juli (NYC), Mabou Mines
2008: 10 companies / 7 days (Jan 9 - 16)
1927 (U.K.), Deganit Shemy & Company (Israel/NYC), LaS Company (Czech Republic), Maria Hassabi (NYC), the TEAM (NYC), Banana Bag & Bodice (NYC), John Moran & Saori (NYC), Paola Prestini and VisionIntoArt (Italy), Rob Roth and Theo Kogan (NYC), C'est Duckie! (U.K.)
2009: 12 companies / 8 days (Jan 6 - 13)
Pan Pan (Dublin), Joe Silovsky (NYC), Lewis Forever (Berlin/NYC), Okwui Okpokwasili (NYC), Ella Hickson, Temporary Distortion (NYC), The Shalimar (NYC), LeeSaar the Company (NYC), The BodyCartography Project (MN), Palissimo (NYC), Reid Farrington (NYC), the TEAM (NYC)
Gisele Vienne (France), NYC Players & Richard Maxwell (NYC), Raymond Scannell (Ire), Edgar Oliver (NYC), Morgan Thorson (MN), Temporary Distortion (NYC), Lisa D'Amour (MN), Maria Hassabi (NYC), Megan V. Sprenger (NYC), Rotozaza (UK), NTUSA (NYC), Reid Farrington (NYC), LeeSaar the Company (NYC), WaxFactory (NYC)
2011: 17 companies / 11 days (Jan 5 - 15)
The BodyCartography Project (MN), Viviana Tellas (Argentina), Kim Noble (UK), Spalding Gray(NYC), Teatro Delle Able (ITAL), Amanda Loulaki & Short Mean Lady (NYC), Ranters Theatre (Australia), Jack Ferver (NYC), Annie Dorsen, Ain Gordon(NYC), Ishmael Houston-Jones / Chris Cochrane / Dennis Cooper (NYC, Paris), Palissimo (NYC), Radiohole (NYC), Brian Rogers (NYC), Travis Chamberlain (NYC), John Jahnke (NYC), Debate Society (NYC)
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