Fourth Arts Block Offers Affordable Festival Shows in January

Fourth Arts Block (FAB) and its member organizations are offering an alternative to pricey outings with 4 festivals and more than 25 performances for $20 or less, all opening in January 2011. With Performance Space 122's COIL Festival, Under the Radar at La MaMa, The Harlem Renaissance Festival at Metropolitan Playhouse, and The Fire This Time Festival at HorseTrade Theatre Group all this month, the East Village continues to be the go-to neighborhood for work that is diverse, accessible and affordable for everyone to enjoy.

About the Events

The COIL Festival - Jan 5-15, general admission $20, students/seniors $15
Performance Space 122 - 150 First Avenue - The COIL Festival

Kim Noble will die (by Kim Noble) - Jan 7 @7:30pm, Jan 8 & 10 @10pm, Jan 11 @5pm, Jan 13 @10pm, Jan 14 @7:30pm, Jan 15 @10pm
In a series of benevolent acts, audience members are written into Kim's legally binding Last Will and Testament.

Hello Hi There (by Annie Dorsen) - Jan 6 @7:30pm, Jan 9 & 10 @5pm, Jan 11 @10pm, Jan 13 @7:30pm, Jan 14 @10pm
New York director Annie Dorsen takes the famous television debate between the philosopher Michel Foucault and linguist and activist Noam Chomsky as inspiration for a dialogue between two specially developed chatbots.

Symptom (by The BodyCartography Project) - Jan 7 & 8 @5pm, Jan 9 @4:30pm, Jan 10 @6:30pm
Twins - dancer Otto Ramstad and visual artist Emmett Ramstad - explore the gaps between seeing, knowing and empathy.

Rabbi Rabino (by Vivi Tellas) - Jan 5 @9:30pm, Jan 6 & 9 & 11 @6:30pm, Jan 13 @7:30pm, Jan 15 @9:30pm
Renowned Argentinian director Vivi Tellas "kidnaps reality," placing two Conservative Rabbis onstage to perform their own autobiographies.

Holiday (by Ranters Theater) - Jan 6,7,10,11,13,14 @9:30pm, Jan 8,15 @6:30pm
Spontaneous, unaffected and thrillingly real, an innocent discussion between two men becomes an exploration of private fantasy, hidden anxiety, personal mythology, and the most inexplicable behavior.

Ouverture Alcina (by Teatro della Albe) - Jan 5,6 & 9 @10:00pm, Jan 10 @7:30pm
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.

A Disaster Begins (by Ain Gordon) - Jan 10 @4:30pm
With only a pitcher of water and drinking glass a lone woman unravels the shocking truth behind the hurricane that devastated the Texas island of Galveston in 1900, weaving in tales of presidential corruption, pubescent despair, patriotic fervor, pre-marital passion and paralyzing writer's block.

Rumble Ghost (by Jack Ferver) - Jan 7 @10:00pm, Jan 8&9 @7:30pm
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.

I Am Saying Goodnight (by Amanda Loulaki & Short Mean Lady) - Jan 7&8 @5:00pm, Jan 11 @ 7:30pm
A pre-decided game, with an intense physical vocabulary, unfiltered emotions, and an unflinching embrace of fatalism.

Under the Radar Festival 2011 - Jan 5-16, general admission $20
La Mama E.T.C. - 74A East 4th Street

Dutch A/V - Jan 5-16: Thu through Sun @9:00pm, except Jan 6 @4:30pm
Dutch A/V re-presents footage shot in Holland's cities using projection technology and stereophonic sound, turning the interior space into portals to a foreign landscape thousands of miles away.

Gob Squad's Kitchen - Jan 6-8 @7:30pm, additional matinee on Sat Jan 8 @2:30PM
Andy Warhol's films are reconstructed on a journey back to the underground cinemas of New York City in 1965.

Living In Exile - Jan 6-16: Thu through Sat @8:00pm, Sunday @3:00pm
A radically intimate two-character retelling of Homer's Iliad performed in a private living room.

Show your face! - Jan 10&11 @7:30pm
Based on a comic strip, this award-winning collaboration combines puppetry, physical and object theater, and live music for a truly virtuosic performance.

The Walk Across America For Mother Earth - Jan 15,22,29 @ 2:30pm, Jan 16,19,20,21,26,27,28 @ 7:30pm, Jan 23,30 @ 5pm
Taylor Mac's exuberant theatricality is combined with the richly scored work of Talking Band to tell the story of a nine-month protest walk from New York to a Nevada Nuclear Test Site.

The Harlem Renaissance Festival - Jan 17-30, general admission $15-18, discounts for students, seniors and children
The Metropolitan Playhouse - 220 East 4th Street

Program A: The Blues According to Langston Hughes - Jan 17,30 @7pm, Jan 23 @4pm, Jan 28 @9pm
A musical journey of the African-American in the 20th century as seen and experienced by Langston Hughes and set to music in a variety of styles evoking the drama and emotions of the times.

Program B: Harlem on my Mind - Jan 18,22,27 @7pm, Jan 29 @4pm
Four new plays with authentic songs and poems.

Program C: A Block of Time Part 1 - Pigfoot Mary Says Goodbye to the Harlem Renaissance - Jan 19,25,28 @7pm, Jan 30 @4pm
One of Harlem's most successful early entrepreneurs - Pig Foot Mary - says goodbye to the customers of her highly profitable pig's feet and other eats stand at 135th and Leonox Avenue.

Program D: The White Person's Guide to the Harlem Renaissance - Jan 20,26 @7pm, Jan 22 @9pm, Jan 29 @1pm
What lurks above 125th street? Generations X, Y, and Z take the A Train to Harlem and discover what happened during a time not too long ago and how its influences still resonate today.

Program E: Belle of the Books - Jan 20 @9pm, Jan 21 @7pm, Jan 22 @4pm, Jan 23 @1pm
A dream play set somewhere among memory, fantasy, self discovery and paranoia, we adventure through the heart and mind of Belle da Costa Greene, the first librarian and director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in Manhattan from 1906 almost until her death in 1950.

Program F: Chasing Heaven - Jan 21,27,29 @9pm, Jan 24 @7pm
A Pulitzer Price-winning black female author tangles with the lively ghost of a white male Tin Pan Alley legend when she tries to reinvent his controversial musical work CHASIN' HEBBEN.

Program G: A Tribute to Langston Hughes - Jan 22 @ 1pm, Jan 23,29 @ 7pm, Jan 30 @ 1pm
Ten teens of the city of Newburgh, New York use mime, movement and creative staging to help enhance the emotional impact of the poets intent.

The Fire This Time Festival - Jan 17-26
The Horse Trade Theater Group - 85 East 4th Street

Diversity in Contemporary Theatre Panel - Jan 17 @7pm, FREE
Panelists include Keith Josef Adkins (playwright, Co-Artistic Director of The New Black Fest), Heidi Grumelot (Artistic Director, Horse Trade Theater Group) and many more.

The Flower Thief by Pia Wilson - Jan 18 @7pm, FREE
The Flower Thief is about a young man named Clark and the exploration of his grief after he loses his twin brother in a drowning accident.

Casket Sharp by Radha Blank - Jan 19 @7pm, FREE
Casket Sharp explores gang rituals and death rites at a funeral parlor in the center of a deprived town.

Ten Minute Plays - Jan 20-22 & 27-29 @7pm, Jan 23&30 @2pm, $15
Featuring The Scorpion and the Fox by Jesse Cameron Alick, The Big Crunch or...(the eternal return) by Christine Jean Chambers, Exodus by Camille Darby, The Bitter Seraph of Sugar Hill by Marcus Gardley, Breakfast by Yusef Miller, and Third Grade by Dominique Morisseau.

The Anointed (Full Lenght) by Germono Touissant - Jan 24 @7pm, FREE
Four African American ministers are forced to wrestle with their own truth. The truth that they know could set them free or destroy their ministries.

Gypsy Moth by Kelley Nicole Girod - Jan 25 @7pm, FREE
Gypsy moths are seen only in mid-summer. Males are grayish brown and can fly; females are larger, whitish with black marks and cannot fly.

On Troubled Waters by Derek Le McPhatter - Jan 26 @7pm, FREE
There may be nothing left to lose as the city vanishes into the sea, but three challengers - a healer, a teacher and a soldier will finally confront that Madman at the bridge. It's a showdown, throw-down for the ages, but nobody agreed to a fair fight, and this time madness just might be love.

 

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