Dixon Place and Sister Sylvester Present The Ventriloquist Circle

Developed in the psychedelic performance venue of Kenny Scharf's Cosmic Cavern, Matt Wilson's The Ventriloquist Circle dives into the madcap world of legendary adult-film star, Hugh Cox.

After Mr. Cox is found murdered on the set of his latest film, the ensuing investigation devolves into the bastard-child of a 1960's Happening and an episode of Law & Order. The Ventriloquist Circle is an exploration into the internet's democratization of taboo to the point of banality-the aesthetics of a BDSM conference at a Holiday Inn. The piece is a tumble down the rabbit-hole of a contemporary mind. Following a sold-out series of workshop performances this August at the Cosmic Cavern, Sister Sylvester has been invited by Dixon Place to premiere this daring and funny new piece during APAP in January. The cast includes Christine Bullen, Daniel Kulick, Zoe Yu Tan, Colin Cramer. Nick Bonnar, Terence Mintern, Marcus Dillon, Face Yu, Greg Bosse, Liliana
Velasquez, Terence Mintern, and Damon Pelletier.

The Ventriloquist's Circle is directed by company director Kathryn Hamilton, with dramaturgy by Peter Clough, video design by Jesse Garrison, costumes by Marina Porter, and scenic elements/live drawing by Damon Pelletier.

www.dixonplace.org

SISTER SYLVESTER
Sister Sylvester creates original performances that question behavior between people and people, and people and the world. We search for difference and dissonance and difficulty. We believe in a skeptical anarchism of the spirit, and find beauty in the thrifty, the discarded, and the everyday. Our work embraces chaos and crafts disruption as a part of its structure. Currently in residency at Grace Exhibition Space for Performance Art, Sister Sylvester has created site responsive work in diverse venues across the city. In addition, we also perform in traditional theater spaces and galleries, keeping a constant re-examining of the relationship between audience and performer at the centre of our work.

Kathryn Hamilton is Sister Sylvester's company director. She has directed work and taught workshops in the US, UK, France, Nepal, and India. She has assisted Anne Bogart at the annual SITI training in Saratoga, and Gavin Quinn, director of Pan Pan, on Playing the Dane, winner of the 2010 Irish Times Award for Best Production. She read for her BA at Cambridge University and for her MFA at Columbia University. She has studied in Japan on Min Tanaka's Body Weather Farm, and at Natana Kairali in Kerala with G.Venu. In 2009, she was awarded a one year artist residency at Flux Factory, New York. 

Matt Wilson is a graduate of Columbia University's MFA Playwriting program, (Charles Mee, Director). He has been the writer for several Sister Sylvester projects, including One Fat Day in Babylon, The Box Man, Tuna Fingers with Walt and Mary, and Play America (Life is Short, Wear Your Party Pants), for which he was nominated for the 2010 Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Full Length Script. His most recent project was as a writer for Fornicated by The Beatles, premiered at ART in Boston. Peter Clough has presentEd Gallery installations at Peres Projects in Berlin (2008) and Southfirst Gallery in New York (2009). He has also performed at the Sculpture Center (2009) and at the Emily Harvey Foundation (2010), and presented video at the Korea Experimental Arts Festival in Seoul (2010). Also working as an independent curator, he has presented the group exhibitions < > (2008) at NYU's Commons Gallery and One and Three
Quarters of an Inch (2010) at St. Cecilia's Convent in Greenpoint.

Bruce Steinberg's lighting designs have been seen in venues ranging from a Soho laundromat to Italian concert halls. Recent work includes: Invisible Cities (Louisa Proske, Red Light New Music/The Italian Academy), Les Mamelles de Tirésias, (Emma Griffin, The Juilliard School), Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (Daniel Fish, University of Rochester). He received his MFA from NYU's TSOA. Visual art installations include Mark di Suvero's sculptures at Salem Art Works and Keren Cytter's Mysterious Serious (2009) at X-Initiative. For terraNOVA Collective, Bruce was awarded the Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Lighting Design Award on Kate McGovern's Blue Before Morning. Damon Pelletier was chosen to present his designs for the opera Dead Man Walking as part of Opera America's 2011 Director-Designer Showcase. He recently designed the world premiere of I Tre Compagni (Nancy Rhodes, Encompass New Opera Theater). Damon frequently works as set and prop coordinator for opera performances at Manhattan School of Music, and has assisted designers Christine Jones (American Idiot) and George Tsypin
(Spiderman).

Sister Sylvester's Past Productions:
2008: One Fat Day in Babylon by Matt Wilson -Performed at the abandoned Prentis Archives in Harlem, Ivanov by Anton Chekhov -Schapiro Studio, Columbia University 2009: The Screens by Jean Genet -Workshop in residency at Salem Art Works, a sculpture park in upstate New
York The Box Man by Matt Wilson -Workshop at Siti Company Studio and Schapiro Studio

2010: Tuna Fingers With Walt and Mary by Matt Wilson, a performance commissioned by curator Sadie Flateman as a part of Bushwick Local, a popup gallery that spanned six floors of unfinished condos.

DIXON PLACE
Dixon Place is a non-profit organization founded in 1986 to provide a space for literary and performing artists to create and develop new works in front of a live audience. While other venues of its kind have since died off, or now only present established artists, Dixon Place remains at the heart of the New York experimental performance scene. Taking risks is crucial to the life of Dixon Place, its artists and audiences. Dixon Place's primary commitments are to bring artists and audiences together through live performance in order to expand the understanding of the creative process and its final product, and to provide a supportive environment for emerging artists to present new work.

Over the last twenty-five years, Dixon Place has successfully maintained its intimate atmosphere and unique environment while increasing its programming to fulfill the need for performance opportunities for the New York community of performing and literary artists.

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