Performance Space 122 Announces Their Upcoming Schedule
By: Gabrielle Sierra Jan. 14, 2010
Performance Space 122 is proud to announce the Spring 2010 schedule of events featuring eleven premiere presentations in theatre, dance, video, and more. Spring also features special events and series: Thursday Night Socials and Late-Nights at PS122.
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE | EXTENDED through Sunday, January 31
Commissioned by Performance Space 122 and Presented by Performance Space 122 as part of COIL 2010 in association with Under the RadarBodyCartography Project - 1/2 LIFE
NY PREMIERE | DANCE | Wednesday, February 10 - Sunday February 14Marisa Olson - WHEW! AGE
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE | Friday, February 12 - Sunday, February 14Tom Murrin & Lucy Sexton - THE TALKING SHOW
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE | Thursday, February 18 - Sunday, March 7Radiohole - WHATEVER, HEAVEN ALLOWS
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE | Sunday, February 21- Saturday, March 13
Spalding Gray AWARD WINNER (09) | Spalding Party Thursday, February 25AVANT-GARDE-ARAMA!
THEATRE, DANCE, MUSIC, X-MEDIA, LIVE ART | Fri April 16 + Sat, April 17Reid Farrington - GIN & "IT"
NY PREMIERE | THEATRE, VIDEO | Saturday, April 24 - Sunday, May 9VaginAl Davis - ORIFICE DESCENDING
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, CABARET | Saturday, May 15- Sunday, May 30
Ethyl Eichelberger AWARD (09) | Ethyl Party and Announcement Thu, May 20
WORLD PREMIERE | DANCE | Sunday, May 30 - Sunday, June 13LEWIS FOREVER - ACIPRAYOSTDCOWCBM
Art Consumption Internalization Personalization and Re-manifestation...World Can Be Made
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, DANCE, Interactive | Sunday, June 6 - Sunday, June 13Branden Jacobs-Jenkins & Gavin Quinn - THE OCTOROON:
AN ADAPTATION OF THE OCTOROON BASED ON THE OCTOROON
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE | Friday, June 18 - Saturday, July 3Tickets 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 this Spring (January - June, 2010):Richard Maxwell/NYC Players
ADS
WORLD PREMIERE
THEATRE
Upstairs Theater
Commissioned by Performance Space 122
Presented by Performance Space 122 as part of COIL 2010 and Under The Radar
Extended at PS122 through January 31, 2010
Wednesday, January 20 - Sunday, January 31
Wednesday - Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 6PM
Late shows: Saturday, Jan 23 & Saturday, Jan 30 at 10PM
Added shows: Thursday, Jan 28 and Friday, Jan 29 at 10
No show: Thursday, Jan 21
The BodyCartography Project
1/2 LIFE
NY PREMIERE | DANCE
Upstairs TheaterWednesday, February 10 - Sunday February 14
Wednesday - Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 6PM
Late Show: Saturday, February 13 at 10PM
Thursday Night Social: February 11 (post-show)1/2 Life constructs a contemporary ritual to address our dormant nuclear nightmares and investigates the survival of the body amidst a world of scientific research, data, and control. The performance swims across the Pacific Ocean and unites performers from nuclear superpower USA, atomic survivor Japan, and nuclear free New Zealand and teams them with a physicist to understand the physics of nuclear power. Data is translated into movement; scientific distillations of reality add up on a chalkboard. Informed by principles of matter and energy, resonation, and radiation, and critical mass 1/2 Life generates a relationship between nuclear physics and physical movement. The BodyCartography incorporates an ensemble of shadow movers, like kuroko (on-stage set dressers in kabuki) who manipulate a set that is, in turn, inspired by the blue sheet architecture of Japan. Video and music combine with elements of group mind, issues of control, and the relationship between scientist and subject. Dance and video artists Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad bring together an extraordinary collaborative team including composer and harpist Zeena Parkins, visual artist Emmett Ramstad, physicist Bryce Beverlin II and performer Takemi Kitamura.Cast includes: Sinan Goknur, Becky Olson, Taja Will, Jennifer Arave, Kimberly Lesik, Emma Rainwater, Melissa Birch, Laressa Dickey, Melissa Guerrero, Sharon Mansur, Laura Grant and Nick LeMere http://www.bodycartography.org/1/2 Life was made possible with support from the Rockefeller MAP Fund, the Jerome Foundation, the Metropolitan Regional Arts Council, the Archibald Bush Foundation, Arts International, Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Moore Family Fund
Marisa Olson
WHEW! AGE
WORLD PREMIERE
THEATRE
Downstairs TheatreFriday, February 12 - Sunday, February 14
Friday - Saturday at 7:30PM, Sunday at 5:30PM
LATE SHOW Saturday, February 13 at 10PMMarisa Olson will sit before a projected score of remixed YouTube meditation videos and vintage relaxation tapes, and engage the audience in a series of guided visualizations and breathing exercises. While no audience participation is required, the artist will invoke the familiar persona of the self-help "guru" in encouraging viewers to think about the role of mindfulness and positive thinking in their interactions with the environment. Her message is ultimately to stop freaking out and start chilling out. Expect kitsch and giggles as much as tranquility and a reawakening of your bodily senses.Marisa Olson is an admitted internet junky and a serious bookworm. This performance is both a product and a trace of her research into fluke epistemologies, the vernacular of digital visual culture, and the intersecting histories of science and superstition, new ageism and DIY/homebrew computing culture. If you'll allow her to mix metaphors about body heat, global warming, and other things "hot," she'll reward you with a sundry selection of funny videos, chakra realigning musical jams, and the words to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside. Marisa Olson's work combines performance, video, drawing & installation to address the cultural history of technology, the politics of participation in pop culture & the aesthetics of failure. Her work has recently been presented by the Whitney Museum of American Art, Centre Pompidou-Paris, New Museum of Contemporary Art, 52nd International Biennale di Venezia, National Museum of Contemporary Art (Athens, Greece), the British Film Institute, the Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive, the Sundance Film Festival, and elsewhere. She is also a founding member of the Nasty Nets "internet surfing club" whose new DVD premiered at the New York Underground Film Festival. Her work has been written about in ArtForum, Art in America, Folha de Sao Paolo, Liberation-Paris, the Village Voice, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. More at http://www.marisaolson.com/ Tom Murrin & Lucy Sexton
THE TALKING SHOW: The Magical Ridiculous Journey of Alien Comic
WORLD PREMIERE
THEATRE, SOLO PERFORMANCE
Downstairs TheatreThursday, February 18 - Sunday, March 7
Thursday - Saturday at 7:30PM, Sunday at 5:30pm
Thursday Night Social: Feb 18 (post-show)"You can't take your eyes off his chaotic energy." - VogueThe unofficial godfather of downtown performance, Tom Murrin (aka Alien Comic) takes us on a talking tour of his life---and of his travels through avant garde theatre in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s! He was a teenage magician, a Jesuit schoolboy, a Los Angeles trial lawyer, a LaMama playwright in the 60s, a traveling street performer peddling his wares from Seattle to Calcutta, and finally a pioneer in the performance scene that sprang up in the East Village in the 1980s.He tells wildly entertaining stories of his youth in Los Angeles, where he wore Frank Sinatra's suit and asked Jane Russell to perform at a pep rally. Murrin also takes the audience on a ride through the American avant garde from the 60s thru the 80s: He wrote plays alongside the likes of Sam Shepard at Ellen Stewart's first LaMama, performed with the original Playhouse of the Ridiculous, got busted in Brussels where the police carried the 16 foot phallus from his play "Cockstrong" through the city, and wound up performing on the streets of Soho with Stuart Sherman. Murrin has been there from the beginning and lived to tell the tale. Speaking with wild-eyed excitement, Murrin hits you with history, hilarity, and his extraordinary generosity of spirit and innocence. It must be seen and heard to be believed. Performed by Tom Murrin. Directed by Lucy Sexton.Lucy Sexton met Tom Murrin in 1980 after watching him perform as the opening act for The Stranglers at Irving Plaza. She began performing with him shortly after that, appearing in "Alien Comic Dies Ten Times in One Performance" at CBGB in 1982 and going on to perform her own act, DANCENOISE, in the series he curated at Performance Space 122 called "The Full Moon Show." Sexton and Murrin have been developing The Talking Show via a series of readings at Bowery Poetry Club over the past year.Running time 85 minutes.Radiohole
WHATEVER, HEAVEN ALLOWS
WORLD PREMIERE
THEATRE
Upstairs TheatreSunday, February 21- Saturday, March 13
Thursday - Friday at 8PM, Saturdays at 8PM + 10:30PM
Sunday at 6PM
Thursday Night Social: February 25, celebrating The Annual Spalding Gray Award (post-show)WINNER OF THE 2009 Spalding Gray AWARD"[Radiohole] turns out effervescent, anarchic work . . . cultivates an eccentric acting style and makes familiar text creepily bizarre." -Time Out 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 god. Radiohole's newest synthesis of cultural flotsam is sure to be bawdy, silly, possibly transcendent, and a touch disturbed. http://www.radiohole.com/The Spalding Gray Award supports gifted writer/performers who fully realize both aspects of Spalding's legacy, who are fearless innovators of theatrical form, who reach into daily experience and create resonant, transcendent work that makes us all bigger, wider, wiser and, somehow, more than we were when we entered the theater. The award is a special commission created in Spalding Gray's honor by Performance Space 122 in New York , UCLA Live, University of California, Los Angeles' public performing arts program, The Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Support for Whatever, Heaven Allows provided by a Commission Grant from the Jerome FoundationAVANT-GARDE-ARAMA!
WORLD PREMIERE
THEATRE, DANCE, MUSIC, X-MEDIA, LIVE ART
Upstairs TheaterFriday, April 16 + Saturday, April 17 at 8PMPS122'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.Reid Farrington
GIN & "IT"
NY PREMIERE
THEATRE, VIDEO
Upstairs TheatreOfficial New York Premiere:
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
In Farrington's Gin & "It," his video theater work mirrors the technical feats of Hitchcock's daring film experiment in "Rope" with its own boundary-pushing melding of projected imagery and live drama. Again Farrington collaborates with film historians and archivists to bring a classic film to the stage with his own boundary-pushing melding of projected imagery and live drama. Hitchcock transferred the compressed drama of a one-set play into a suspenseful film through the illusion of being shot in one uninterrupted film take. Farrington explores the making of this technical tour-de-force. His video theater work will mirror the technical feats of this daring film experiment.
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. http://www.reidfarrington.com/
Running time: 80 minutesGin & "It" is co-produced by the Wexner Center for the Arts at The Ohio State University, PerformanceSpace 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 a 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. VaginAl Davis
ORIFICE DESCENDING
WORLD PREMIERE
THEATRE, CABARET
Upstairs TheatreSaturday, May 15- Sunday, May 30
Wednesday - Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 6PM
Late Shows: Saturday, May 22 & 29 at 10PM
Thursday Night Social: May 20 celebrating Orifice Descending + The Annual Ethyl Eichelberger Award and AnnouncementWINNER OF THE 2009 Ethyl Eichelberger AWARDIn the VaginAl Davis cosmos there is no such thing as masculine or feminine, it's all commercial hype. Ms. Davis, as the grand doyeanne of outsider art, will prove this as she turns PS122 into a living, breathing installation piece with assistance from prolific New York based artist Jonathan Berger who will act as production, set &costume designer, as well as Downtown treasure Jennifer Miller, the bearded lady, and a bevy of art damaged youth hand picked from some of Manhattan´s most enchanted old money families.In Orifice Descending, loosely based on The Balcony by Jean Genet, Ms. Davis will function as Madame/Matriarch of a male brothel or "boydello" where the audience will interactively explore the notion of gender as a continuum and not a binary model. Video projections, tableaux, movement and burlesque routines colorfully illustrate the arbitrary nature of gender rules and how, once unmoored from their fixed positions, they can liberate us from our narrow and stereotypical conceptions of male and female roles.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 elucidation 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. http://www.vaginaldavis.com/
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 TheatreSunday, May 30 - Sunday, June 13
Wednesday - Saturday at 7:30PM, Sunday at 5:30PM
Late Shows: Saturday, June 5 & 12 at 10PM
Thursday Night Social: June 3"Bawdy, bold, and bizarre movement; an exercise in existentialism befitting of Beckett."- Venessa Manko Dance MagazineIn Bermuda, Adrienne Truscott, Neal Medlyn, and Carmine Covelli will occupy the interior and exterior of the downstairs theater, playground, and street 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 loose group of collaborators, all of whom are authors of their own work. The group includes Neal Medlyn (Hers a Queen, Beyonce LIVE, Unpronounceable Symbol), Carmine Covelli (are you there god, it's me carmine), David Neumann (advanced beginner group) among others. 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. http://www.adriennetruscott.com/Pages/at_home.htmlSupport provided by a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation.
LEWIS FOREVER
ACIPRAYOSTDCOWCBM
Art Consumption Internalization Personalization and Re-manifestation As Your Own So That a Deeper Connection with Oneself and the World Can Be MadeWORLD PREMIERE
THEATRE, DANCE, Interactive Performance
Upstairs TheatreSun, Jun 6 - Sun, Jun 13
Wed - Sat at 8PM, Sun at 6PM
Thursday Night Social: June 10
Late Show: Saturday, June 12 at 10PM*The audience is ushered into the space by LEWIS FOREVER members in small groupings. The space is arranged like a large conference room with tables creating a ring around an empty center space. There are individual place settings that are the tools of a hyper-stylized arts and crafts session. Using the structure of a workshop as the overreaching fiction, Dance-artist Isabel Lewis in collaboration with LEWIS FOREVER will create a performance situation that moves from the two dimensional and static to the three dimensional and ephemeral. The performance begins with the small scale and individual and works towards the communal and infinite. Along the way LEWIS FOREVER deliver instruction, spoken vignettes, and moments of song and dance that both admire and critique the art world on a journey ultimately to love and self-actualization.Support 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 TheaterFriday, June 18 - Saturday, July 3
Wednesday - Saturday at 8PM, Sunday at 6PM
Thursday Night Social: June 24An 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, which will be presented in Feb 2010 as apart 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.Support provided by a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation.Special Events!THURSDAYS ARE SOCIAL at PS122
On the first Thursday of a run at Performance Space 122, tickets include a post-show "Thursday Night Social", a party in true 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:Feb 11: celebrating 1/2 Life
Feb 18: celebrating The Talking Show
Feb 25: celebrating Whatever, Heaven Allows + The Annual Spalding Gray Award
April 29: celebrating Gin & "It"
May 20: celebrating Orifice Descending + The Annual Ethyl Eichelberger Award and Announcement
June 3: celebrating Bermuda
June 10: celebrating ACIPRAYOSTDCOWCBM
June 24: celebrating The OctoroonSATURDAY LATE-NIGHTS at PS122
More and more audiences are taking advantage of the new "late" curtains at PS122. Some cite the convenience of being able to fit in an extra show at 10 or 10.30 after a regular 8pm go. For those who like a late start to weekend diversions, a visit to PS122 starts off any evening with a performative adventure. The following shows feature 10pm or 10:30pm curtains on these Saturdays and make it easy to squeeze in an extra culture fix on the weekendsFeb 13 at 10PM - 1/2 Life
Feb 13 at 10PM - Whew! Age
Feb 27, Mar 6, and Mar 13 at 10:30PM - Whatever, Heaven Allows
May 1 and 8 at 10:30PM - Gin & "It"
May 22 and 29 at 10PM - Orifice Descending
June 5 and 12 at 10PM - BermudaSPRING GALA - Save the Date
Tuesday May 4
Abrons Arts CenterPerformance 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.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 P.S. 122 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.Comments
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