BLACK WIZARD / BLUE WIZARD to Play Incubator Arts Project, 12/5-22

Ancient ideals and modern musings rub up against each other in Black Wizard / Blue Wizard, a philosophical musical fantasia. Two referees adjudicate the proceedings as the Black and Blue Wizards battle to save themselves and humanity from the mundane. Warping the conventions of musical theater and classical art song to intersect with the sensibilities of electronic music, Blue Wizard / Black Wizard is a pop culture smashup of fantasy language and contemporary parlance. What unfolds is a ritualistic sporting event, the likes of which audiences have never seen.

Black Wizard / Blue Wizard is written by Eliza Bent (The Hotel Colors, Half Straddle) with music by Dave Malloy (Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Three Pianos, Beowulf), and is directed by Dan Safer (Witness Relocation); featuring Eliza Bent, Nikki Calonge (ANIMALS), Mikeah Ernest Jennings (World of Wires, The Shipment, Big Art Group), Dave Malloy, and Andy Strain (Joanna Newsom, Beowulf) on trombone. Set design is by Mimi Lien; costume design by Oana Boatez; lighting design by Yi Zhao; video design by Michael De Angelis; and stage management by Maurina Lioce.

The show will run at Incubator Arts Project (located inside St. Mark?s Church) 131 East 10th Street at 2nd Ave. in Manhattan. Directions: L train to 1 or 3 Ave.; R or W trains to Broadway/8 Street; 6 to Astor Place; N Q 4 5 trains to Union Square. Tickets are $18.00 at: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/cal/16/1385950432260. More info at: http://www.incubatorarts.org/blackwizard2013.html

About the Artists:

Eliza Bent is performer, playwright and journalist. Playwriting credits include The Hotel Colors (the Bushwick Starr), Karma Kharms (or yarns by Kharms) as part of the Target Margin Lab series at the Bushwick Starr, Toilet Time with Eliza Bent (Catch! 50, Great Plains Theatre Conference, "Little Theatre" at Dixon Place), Trumped! (Solo Nova Ones at Eleven), Pen Pals Meet (Iranian Theatre Festival at the Brick), and Blue Dress Reduction and She of the Voice both at the undgergroundezero festival. As a performer Bent has appeared in Seagull (Thinking of You) (Half Straddle at the COIL festival 2012), Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din (Van Cougar at the Bushwick Starr) and In the Pony Palace/Football (Half Straddle at the Bushwick Starr). Bent is a MacDowell Colony fellow, a Bay Area Playwrights finalist and a New Georges affiliated artist. She is a senior editor at American Theatre magazine, a company member of the Obie-award winning ensemble Half Straddle and has an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College. Her next show, Fire the Hire, will premiere at the Reykjavik Arts Festival in 2014. elizabent.wordpress.com

Dave Malloy has written music for seven musicals, most recently Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812, an electro-pop opera based on War & Peace. Comet premiered at Ars Nova in the fall of 2012 before transferring to Kazino, a Russian supper club built specially for the show. The show won the Richard Rodgers Award and an Obie. Other musicals include Beowulf - A Thousand Years of Baggage, Beardo, Sandwich, and Clown Bible. He is also one of the co-creators/performers of Three Pianos, a drunken romp through Schubert?s "Winterreise" an Obie in 2010. He was the winner of a Jonathan Larson Grant and the NEA/TCG Career that won Development Program for Theatre Designers, the 2011 Composer-in-Residence at Ars Nova, has been a Guest Professor in devised music theater at Princeton and Vassar Universities, and has been the composer for Banana Bag & Bodice since 2002. He lives in Brooklyn. davemalloy.com

Dan Safer originally hails from the wild suburbs of New Jersey, and is the artistic director of Witness Relocation, with whom his dance and theater work has been performed in New York and across the US, in Europe, and Southeast Asia, at venues ranging from Theatre de Chaillot in Paris to the Bushwick Starr in Brooklyn, with productions including world premieres by Chuck Mee (Heaven On Earth), English language premieres by Toshiki Okada (Five Days In March), and many original works. Additionally, his work as a choreographer has been seen at venues such as the Brooklyn Academy Of Music, Dance Theater Workshop, St. Mark?s Church, and the Ash Lawn Opera. In spring of 2013 he choreographed The Rite of Spring for the Philadelphia Orchestra with Ridge Theater. He has choreographed plays (most recently Hoi Polloi?s All Hands at the Incubator), operas, rock videos, fashion shows, and films (The Imperialists Are Still Alive, Sundance 2010), was a 2007- 9 recipient of the Six Points Fellowship (Performance), and is the winner of two NY Innovative Theater Awards. Artforum Magazine called him "pure expressionistic danger" and Time Out New York called him "a purveyor of lo-fi mayhem". He used to be a go-go dancer and once choreographed the Queen of Thailand?s Birthday Party. He is the Head of Movement Training at NYU/ Playwrights Horizons Theater School and has recently taught at Princeton University and the Norwegian Theatre Academy. witnessrelocation.org

Incubator Arts Project cultivates and presents a multi-generational community of artists who challenge the conventions of live performance by producing original work at St. Mark's Church in- the-Bowery. IAP programs provide access to a fully equipped venue along with personalized career support and strategic investment of resources individually tailored to the needs of each artist.

By providing production opportunities for emerging to mid-career artists, Incubator Arts Project functions as a training ground where formative repertoire is conceived and new work can be constructed as each participant?s artistic voice develops a distinct style. In addition to offering artists exclusive access to a theater, technical assistance and administrative support, staff provides professional mentoring and advisement to assist in the process of making well- considered choices in support of artists? long-term stability and success during all stages of their careers.

Core programs include the New Performance Series, Other Forces, Music and Short Form. Incubator Arts Project is fiscally managed by Performing Artservices Inc., a New York based non- profit arts organization, and is artistically led by a team of curators who collectively make programmatic, artistic and organizational decisions.

Since 2006, Incubator Arts Project has presented award-winning work by artists including: Alec Duffy, Banana Bag & Bodice, Bluemouth Inc., Debate Society, Daniel Fish, Half-Straddle, Karinne Keithley, Object Collection, Vampire Cowboys, and Witness Relocation. Incubator artists have seen their work tour nationally and internationally and go on to Off-Broadway runs.

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