HERE Presents BANNERS & CRANKS: A CANTASTORIA FESTIVAL 6/19-26

Witness a millennium-old art form re-imagined and reinvigorated as performers, puppeteers, artists and craftspeople from across the country cook up a week of contemporary cantastoria in Banners & Cranks: A Cantastoria Festival. Landing in New York City June 19 - 26, this festival features puppeteers and artists from far and wide in performances combining story, song and colorful paintings on large banners or scrolls that move on cranky mechanisms, animating the pictures using pre-cinematic technology.

Banners & Cranks traces its roots to the ancient practice of picture story recitation, which in its earliest form involved the display of representational paintings accompanied by sung narration. Originating in 6th Century India, this religious and later increasingly secular practice evolved as it spread east and west. Versions of the practice in Indonesia, China, Japan, and across the Middle East and Europe expanded to include instrumental music, puppets, props, broadsheets and booklets, as well as the central printed, painted, embroidered, and/or otherwise decorated narrative images. Forms of picture-story recitation continue in Iran, Turkey, India and Indonesia, while artists, puppeteers and activists in the West have unearthed startlingly modern qualities in cantastoria infusing it with fresh content. Banners & Cranks: A Cantastoria Festival, curated by artists Dave Buchen and Clare Dolan, celebrates this art form, displaying the diversity and richness of its contemporary practice in the U.S.

The first Banners & Cranks festival took place in Chicago in April 2010, with three weekends of performances by artists from across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, and an accompanying exhibition of cantastoria paintings from around the world, including pieces from Italy, India, Mexico, Canada and the U.S. Time Out Chicago hailed the event, "likely the U.S.'s most elaborate examination to date of this subterranean art."

On Sunday, June 19 from 4:00-7:30 PM, Banners & Cranks kicks off in New York with an opening celebration of performance and music in Brooklyn Bridge Park / Pier 1. Presented by New York's own Great Small Works, this event features the Greatest Smallest Band parading and accompanying shows by Great Small Works, The Dolly Wagglers, Theater Oobleck, Chinese Theatre Works, Possibilitarian Puppet & Mask Theater, Jonny ClockWorks & The Cosmic Bicycle Theatre, Daniel Lang-Levitsky and more. FREE and open to the public; all ages welcome.

The following week, over the course of five days from Wednesday, June 23 - Sunday, June 26, Banners & Cranks delivers a different ‘cabaret style' performance at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue), where unforgettable, unusual shows filled with live music and striking images centered around specific themes will delight audiences in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre. Banners & Cranks features performances by: The Dolly Wagglers, Great Small Works, Peter Schumann, Chinese Theatre Works, Possibilitarian Puppet & Mask Theater, Mouth of the Wolf, Bread & Puppet, Sam Wilson, VSA Vermont's Awareness Theater Co., Redwing Blackbird Theater, More of Everything, Adam Ende, Clare Dolan, Theater Oobleck, The Whiskey Spitters, Ramshackle Enterprises, Soozin Hirschmugl, The Bros. Harrel, Olive & Orlando Brecht, Hermine Ortega and Alissa Hunnicutt.

Themes by date and performer line-up detailed below.

Wednesday, June 22 at 7:00 PM: Boom or Bust!
Wednesday starts off the fest with Boom or Bust!, an evening of explosive world premieres from puppetry luminaries performing tales of highlife and lowlife from itinerant aficionados of pre-technological entertainment. Performances by: The Dolly Wagglers, Great Small Works, Peter Schumann, Chinese Theatre Works, Possibilitarian Puppet & Mask Theater.

Thursday, June 23 at 7:00 PM: Beggars & Choosers
Thursday brings us Beggars & Choosers, a special hometown evening featuring performers based in Brooklyn, Queens and Manhattan, presenting stories of survival, surrender, agency and activism. Performances by: Great Small Works, Mouth of the Wolf, Bread & Puppet, Sam Wilson, Chinese Theatre Works.

Friday, June 24 at 7:00 PM: Slap & Tickle
Slap & Tickle aims to slap us awake and tickle our senses. Companies from New York, Montreal, Ohio and Vermont present shows intended to entertain as well as educate and inspire. Performances by: VSA Vermont's Awareness Theater Co., Redwing Blackbird Theater, Mouth of the Wolf, Possibilitarian Puppet & Mask Theater, More of Everything, Alissa Hunnicutt.

Friday, June 24 at 11:00 PM, LATE SHOW: Phobia & Fetish (not fit for young folks!)
The late night program on Friday, Phobia & Fetish, is a raucous evening filled with stories of unusual longings, murderous passions and odd obsessions featuring music by the notorious Whiskey Spitters. Performances by: VSA Vermont's Awareness Theater Co., Adam Ende, Clare Dolan, Theater Oobleck, Sam Wilson, The Whiskey Spitters.

Saturday, June 25 at 7:00 PM: Coming & Going
Saturday has us Coming & Going as we plumb the depths of some classic dramatic themes: the Voyage, the Discovery and the Vast Frontiers of the Unknown. Performances by: Ramshackle Enterprises, Soozin Hirschmugl, Theater Oobleck, The Bros. Harrel.

Sunday, June 26 at 2:00 PM, FAMILY MATINEE: The Cat & the Fiddle (fit for young folks!)
Sunday's matinee, The Cat & the Fiddle, is a compendium of delights for family audiences, featuring cantastoria and crankies created specifically for young people or by young people including stories, poems, tales and fables of all kinds. Performances by: Olive & Orlando Brecht, Adam Ende, Theater Oobleck, Soozin Hirschmugl, Hermine Ortega.

Sunday, June 26 at 7:00 PM: Sink or Swim
Finally on Sunday night, Sink or Swim in tidal waves of high emotion, pools of sober reflection and plunging moments of reckoning which wrap up the fest with a splash. Delivered by veteran puppeteers and young newcomers from New York, North Carolina, Vermont and Canada. Performances by: Clare Dolan, Redwing Blackbird Theater, The Bros. Harrel, Hermine Ortega, More of Everything, Alissa Hunnicutt.

Dave Buchen makes theater and books and music. As a member of Chicago's Theater Oobleck, he has acted in countless plays and written a few of them. His cantastorias include an adaptation of Pliny the Elder's Natural History and a seven-year project to perform the entire contents of Charles Baudelaire's Les Fleurs du Mal as cantastoria. His books are printed on his Vandercook #1 press, the most recent of which is a collection of linocuts based on the spanish suffix -azo. He lives in San Juan, Puerto Rico where he has performed in bars, alleyways, a prison, a winery, a convenience store, a forest and the occasional theater.

Clare Dolan is a performer, director, and cheap artist based in Vermont. As a puppeteer for twelve years with the Bread and Puppet Theater, she has performed in cities and towns throughout the U.S., South America, Europe, Asia and the Middle East. She lectures and leads workshops in a wide range of arenas from small town community centers to mountain villages in Mexico to inner city schools. She also creates, performs, and participates in collaborative projects in puppet theater, cantastoria and toy theater. She is a stilt dancer and instructor, and also the founder and chief curator of The Museum of Everyday Life, an ongoing multifaceted museum experiment based in Glover, Vermont.

Great Small Works was founded in New York City in 1995 by a collective of artists who aim to keep theater at the heart of social life. Drawing on folk, avant-garde and popular theater traditions to address contemporary issues, the company performs in theaters, community centers, schools, galleries, streets and other public spaces. The company produces performance works on a wide variety of scales, from outdoor pageants with giant puppets and hundreds of performers from diverse communities, to miniature tabletop spectacles. The company continues the tradition of Spaghetti Dinners, variety evenings, founded on the Lower East Side in the late 1970s by veterans of Vermont's Bread and Puppet Theater, that include music, live performance, political discourse and healthy portions of spaghetti. Great Small Works Productions consistently reinvent ancient, popular theater techniques: Toy Theater, mask and object theater, circus, sideshow and picture-show (cantastoria), to name a few. On any scale, Great Small Works Productions seek to renew, cultivate and strengthen the spirits of their audiences, promoting theater as a model for reanimating the public sphere and participating in democratic life. Great Small Works has received a 2005 Puppeteers of America Jim Henson Award for innovation in puppetry, a 1997 Village Voice OBIE Award grant, 1997 and 2007 UNIMA-USA Citations for Excellence, a NYFA Community Assets Grant, and New Theater Advancement support from the New York State Council for the Arts, as well as project-based support from the NEA, NYSCA, NYC-DCA, as well as private foundations and individuals. Its members are John Bell, Trudi Cohen, Stephen Kaplin, Jenny Romaine, Roberto Rossi and Mark Sussman.

Since 1993, the OBIE-winning HERE, Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director, has been one of New York's premier arts organizations and a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theatre, dance, music, puppetry, visual, multi-media art. Past notable productions include Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist, Hazelle Goodman's On Edge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Corey Dargel's Removable Parts and Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, among many other standout works. HERE's work is challenging and alternative and offers audiences the opportunity to feel that they are part of something new and fresh.

HERE's core program is the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), through which HERE commissions and develops new hybrid works over a 1-3 year period. As part of the HERE community of artists and audiences, Resident Artists show works-in-progress, develop workshop productions and mount full-scale productions. Through HARP, HERE grows innovative artistic work and offers artists, while offering artists resources and education in areas such as marketing, budgeting, grantwriting and touring. Each season, HERE produces 4 to 6 Resident Artist productions as mainstage works.

HERE's Dream Music Puppetry Program is one of few programs in the country to grow and commission contemporary adult puppet works. Dream Music provides performance opportunities to puppet artists and encourages multidisciplinary collaboration to develop new puppetry techniques. This program was inaugurated with the premiere of Basil Twist's OBIE-award winning Symphonie Fantastique in 1998 and the opening of the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, an intimate space created specifically for intimate puppetry. Under the artistic direction of Twist, with producing direction from HERE co-founder Barbara Busackino, the Dream Music aesthetic is geared toward puppet works that feature live music as a collaborative element. Dream Music seeks to secure the future of puppetry by providing increased development and performance opportunities to puppet artists, and by collaborating with artists from other disciplines to develop new puppetry techniques. Over the past ten years, Dream Music has presented in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre many exciting artists ranging from eclectic international troupes to The Jim Henson International Festival of Puppetry and has commissioned over 20 full-scale puppetry works from New York based puppeteers including the acclaimed Arias with a Twist in 2008 (returning to NYC in September 2011 for a limited engagement at Abrons Arts Center).

Banners & Cranks: A Cantastoria Festival runs June 19 - 26.

Opening Celebration: Saturday, June 19 from 4:00-7:30 PM in Brooklyn Bridge Park.
FREE & Open to the Public.

At HERE (145 Sixth Avenue): Wednesday 6/22 at 7:00 PM, Thursday, 6/23 at 7:00 PM, Friday 6/24 at 7:00 PM & 11:00 PM, Saturday 6/25 at 7:00 PM and Sunday 6/26 at 2:00 PM & 7:00 PM.

Tickets: $20 individual show / $30 two-show pass. Tickets may be purchased at www.here.org, (212) 352-3101 or at the HERE Box Office (5 PM until curtain on show days).

HERE is located at 145 Sixth Avenue, one block below Spring Street. For more info, visit www.here.org.

NOTE: In editorial, HERE should be referred to as HERE (formerly HERE Arts Center).

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