HERE Kicks Off CULTUREMART 2016 Today

The OBIE-winning HERE presents CULTUREMART 2016, taking place March 2 through March 12.

In CULTUREMART, process becomes the focus, in this annual festival offering a first look at live performance work in various stages of development from the boundary-breaking artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) on their journey to mainstage production. CULTUREMART 2016 features 11 workshop performances, including 1 HARP alum presentation, spanning topics and genres as varied as genetics and geometry, oceans and opera, cinema and stardom, and everything in-between.

HERE's producing residency programs (HARP & Dream Music) commission and develop cross-disciplinary performance work through residencies lasting 1-3 years, focused on mid-career artists. While in residence, artists have opportunities to present work at various stages of development through work-in-progress showings and more fully developed workshops in CULTUREMART, offering a vital step in the evolution of new work.

Resident artist projects seen at CULTUREMART culminate in mainstage productions at HERE. CULTUREMART alumni include Young Jean Lee, Taylor Mac, Lisa D'Amour, Faye Driscoll, Erin Orr, Troika Ranch, Corey Dargel, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, and many more.

CULTUREMART 2016 takes place in both of HERE's theaters: the Mainstage and the Dorothy B. Williams Theater.

HERE is located at 145 Sixth Avenue (entrance on Dominick Street). General tickets for CULTUREMART productions are $15.00. Student Rush: FREE with valid Student ID at the box office. For tickets & info, call (212) 352-3101 or visit www.here.org. In-person sales at the Box Office after 5pm on show days only.

Join HERE's ticketing program for avid HERE fans, the OFF-OFFten Club and see all CULTUREMART shows for $5 each. With an OFF-OFFten Club membership, for $60, one receives 4 tickets to be used flexibly before the end of the season, 4 glasses of wine, as well as $5 tickets to all CULTUREMART performances and more.

Visit www.here.org/shows/membership for more information.

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CULTUREMART 2016 SCHEDULE:
*Note: productions listed with same date/time represent a shared bill.

Wednesday, March 2 & Thursday, March 3 @ 8:30 PM CasablancaBox by Sara Farrington & Reid Farrington CasablancaBox is an exploration into the accidental nature of great art through the lens of the 1942 film Casablanca. With an intricately woven multi-narrative script and video score, CasablancaBox is an imagined "making of" and an immersion into the glamour, war, censorship, sexism, racism, addiction and violence of 1940s Hollywood. Additional support provided by the New York State Council on the Arts.

Saturday, March 5 & Sunday, March 6 @ 7:00 PM* Things Fall Apart by Kate Brehm/imnotlost Steeped in a corporeal movement dialogue with herself, a woman explores the boundaries of her sense of control and emotional impact on the world around her through a changing landscape of folding chairs. Kate Brehm is a HARP alumna.
Soundstage by Rob Roth Soundstage is an audio and visual performance poem created by artist Rob Roth. Using the language of cinema the piece reflects and refracts a meditation on the muse and her remedy for loneliness. The piece projects different realities blending and dissolving in an alchemic journey where time, gender and reality transform. Additional support provided by the New York State Council on the Arts and the Puffin Foundation.
*Shared bill: Things Fall Apart and Soundstage

Saturday, March 5 & Sunday, March 6 @ 8:30 PM* O by RADY&BLOOM Collective Playmaking Influenced by Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, we examine the ocean. The result is a puppet, movement and music-filled ride down a whirlpool of all things natural and unnatural, both poetic and scientific, above and below, through a great drain beneath the ocean floor, and out the other side.
Venice Double Feature by Adam J. Thompson/The Deconstructive Theatre Project Venice Double Feature collides literary sources Death in Venice by Thomas Mann and Watermark by Joseph Brodsky into two individual, yet codependent and simultaneously experienced live films, whose worlds bleed into and out of and shape the destinies of one another and of the eternal city that unites them.
*Shared bill: O and Venice Double Feature

Tuesday, March 8 & Wednesday, March 9 @ 7:00 PM* Assembled Identity by Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting and Mariana Newhard What makes a human authentic? Is it their genome sequence? Their DNA profile? Their life experience? Exploring ethnic ambiguity, race and identity, this duet uses original and found text, live cinematography and contemporary music to explore the science of identity, including genomics, genetics, eugenics and cloning, all of which impact our culture.
Elements by Lainie Fefferman Elements will be an evening-length "chamber opera" that explores the aesthetics and wonder of mathematics. Using speech, song, movement, percussion and light, Fefferman will create an environment where the humanity and creativity of perfect abstraction comes to life.
*Shared bill: Assembled Identity and Elements

Tuesday, March 8 & Wednesday, March 9 @ 8:30 PM* Thomas Paine in Violence by Paul Pinto Simultaneously set in and around the posthumous mind of the revolutionary activist, Thomas Paine in Violence is a text-dense psychedelic opera, taking place in a cosmic radio station and inspired by Paine's most radical writings, political soapboxing, swearing, censorship, slam poetry, Henry Fonda and shock jock punditry.
ThisTree by Leah Coloff ThisTree is a multi-media performance exploring family and remembrance while contemplating the circumstance of leaving no genetic legacy. It is anchored in songs written by cellist/singer/composer Leah Coloff and amplified by personal stories and intimate visions created by super 8 home movie footage, handmade objects and personal talismanic props.
*Shared bill: Thomas Paine in Violence and ThisTree

Friday, March 11 & Saturday, March 12 @ 8:30 PM* Stairway to Stardom by Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface Inspired by the 1980s public-access television series by the same name, Stairway to Stardom is a mixed media dance-theatre tour of shattered dreams. Synthesizing intricate choreography and original texts with the post-apocalyptic sound and visuals of Brooklyn's Prism House (Matt O'Hare + Brian Wenner), cakeface honors the contributions of the wildly passionate but questionably talented.
The development of Stairway to Stardom is supported by the Virginia B. Toulmin Foundation's Women Playwrights Commissioning program.

American Weather by Chris M. Green American Weather is a new work of material theater about disparate individuals working in the shadows of the American empire as it crosses over its apex. Using ready-mades, figurative puppets, live projections, customized technologies, spoken text and original music for brass and voice, American Weather investigates a growing national ambiguity.
*Shared bill: Stairway to Stardom and American Weather

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The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director), founded in 1993, is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art. Standout productions include Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, 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, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Kamala Sankaram's Miranda, and Robin Frohardt's The Pigeoning, among many others. In 2008, following an extensive renovation, HERE re-opened the doors to its long-time downtown home for the arts, where it continues as a vibrant, welcoming haven for artists and audiences alike. In addition to commissioning, developing and producing innovative new work from artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), HERE co-produces the acclaimed PROTOTYPE festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre, with Beth Morrison Projects. Through its popular SubletSeries@HERE, HERE also proudly hosts adventurous artists, companies and productions - whether emerging or acclaimed - from New York and around the country.

The HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) has been HERE's core program since 1998. HARP commissions, develops and premieres new hybrid performances. Through HARP, the Resident Artists are given the opportunity to develop projects for up to three years through works-in-progress showings and workshop presentations in CULTUREMART, culminating in full-scale productions.

Additionally, HERE, named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, is home to original hybrid works created and directed by HERE Co-Founder and Artistic Director Kristin Marting and to the Dream Music Puppetry Program (Artistic Director, Basil Twist; Producing Director, Barbara Busackino).

In honoring HERE with the 2009 Ross Wetzsteon Award, the OBIE Committee noted, "it's become increasingly hard for artists to find a place to take risks, a safe haven where they can develop daring new work. One theater has regularly bucked the trend, making its mission to ensure that artists have a home for their research and development, and that theatregoers can sample the exciting results."

HERE's 2015-2016 producing season launched with Genet Porno, a HERE Resident Artist production by Yvan Greenberg/Laboratory Theater and continued with Chang(e), a Resident Artist production devised in collaboration by Soomi Kim and Suzi Takahashi. Following CULTUREMART, the season proceeds with Science Fair by Hai-Ting Chinn (April 13 - 24) and the Artistic Director production Idiot by Kristin Marting and Robert Lyons (April 27 - May 21). HERE's 2015-2016 Season also included the fourth annual PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival in January 2016.

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