Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Final Episodes of LIFE & TIMES Set for 2016 Crossing the Line Festival

The French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF), Anthology Film Archives, and the Hermès Foundation's New Settings program are thrilled to launch the 2016 Crossing the Line Festival with the New York City premiere of award-winning theater group Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life & Times: Episodes 7, 8 & 9. On Thursday, September 22, Episode 8 will be screened at FIAF's Florence Gould Hall, followed by the Crossing the Line Opening Night Party. On Saturday, September 24, Episodes 7, 8 & 9 will be screened at Anthology Film Archives.

Led by husband-wife duo Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Nature Theater of Oklahoma took the world by storm when they launched their obsessive, ambitious Life & Times cycle. Created from a single phone conversation, the 16-hour epic multi-art serial chronicles the utterly unremarkable, yet very human, life story of company member Kristin Worrall from birth to age 34.

Using a verbatim transcript of recorded telephone interviews as found material, each episode of this genre-bending spectacle is told through a different artistic lens and very often a particular medium in which the artists have no prior professional experience. The result is a practice that is equal parts ridiculous and devotional.

Upon its premiere at The Public Theater in January 2013, Charles Isherwood of The New York Times described Life and Times Episodes 1-4 as "one of the most unforgettable adventures of my theatergoing experience," and Hilton Als of The New Yorker called the show "a masterpiece." The production received an Obie award and Nature Theater of Oklahoma's artistic directors Kelly Copper and Pavol Liska have been awarded the Doris Duke Performing Artist and Alpert awards.

Created over a decade, the Life & Times serial culminates with Episode 9. Spanning theater, song, animation, illuminated manuscript, and now film, Nature Theater of Oklahoma makes heroic attempts to push everyday speech, mundane experience, and theatrical forms to their most epic proportions.

"This kind of language does not belong in the theater...Let's use it!"-Nature Theater of Oklahoma

Opening Night Party
Life & Times Episode 8
Supported by the Hermès Foundation within the framework of the New Settings program
Thursday, September 22 at 7:30pm
FIAF, Florence Gould Hall, 55 East 59th Street
FIAF & Anthology Members $10; Non-Members $15

Screening will be followed by a Crossing the Line Festival Opening Celebration with the artists who will be serving their famous PB&J sandwiches.

Life & Times Episodes 7, 8 & 9
Supported by the Hermès Foundation within the framework of the New Settings program
Co-presented with Anthology Film Archives Saturday, September 24, Episode 7 at 5pm, Episodes 8 & 9 at 8pm
Anthology Film Archives, 32 2nd Avenue (at 2nd Street)
FIAF & Anthology Members $7; General Admission $11; Students & Seniors $9

Episode 7
Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, 2015. 135 min.
With Ilan Bachrach, Asli Bulbul, Kelly Copper, Gabel Eiben, Daniel Gower, Robert M. Johanson, Dany Naierman, Peter Nigrini, Elisabeth Conner Skjærvold, and Kristin Worrall

With hot burning passion and limited means, Nature Theater of Oklahoma takes on Hollywood, the French New Wave, and the entire history of cinema with an ode to Citizen Kane. Shifting the narrative from the first person to third to match the classic film's style, they deploy rear screen projection, four boxes of wigs, fake teeth, and a cast of eight players to portray 100 characters, traversing three continents, and covering the formative years of the heroine's young adult life.

Episode 8
Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, 2015. 118 min.
With Ilan Bachrach, Asli Bulbul, Gabel Eiben, Daniel Gower, Robert M. Johanson, Elisabeth Conner Skjærvold, and Kristin Worrall

Inspired by early Cinemascope movies and Hudson River School painters, this vividly colorful episode is sung in an exuberant chorus of voices. Shot in long, single takes at dawn and dusk in New York City and the Hudson River Valley, this musical adventure through young adulthood traverses both personal crises and political ones. Ambitious and visually arresting, the film is a vibrant, wonderfully weird love letter to living, growing, and making art in New York City.

Episode 9
Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, 2015. 18 min.
With Ilan Bachrach, Gabel Eiben, Daniel Gower, Robert M. Johanson, Dany Naierman, Elisabeth Conner Skjærvold, Kristin Worrall, and additional surprise guests

Episode nine takes the form of a joyous rap music video shot with GoPro cameras on roller skates. In 19 madcap minutes, the company narrates five wayward years in the life of a white woman from Rhode Island-as she works in the accounting department at Macy's, steals another woman's boyfriend, and travels to Austria for the first time-in the most hard core gangster rap they can muster.

"Personnel is being hired for the Theater in Oklahoma! The Great Nature Theater of Oklahoma is calling you! It's calling you today only! If you miss this opportunity, there will never be another! Anyone thinking of his future, your place is with us! All welcome! Anyone who wants to be an artist, step forward! We are the theater that has a place for everyone, everyone in his place! If you decide to join us, we congratulate you here and now! But hurry, be sure not to miss the midnight deadline! We shut down at midnight, never to reopen! Accursed be anyone who doesn't believe us!"-Franz Kafka, Amerika

Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an award-winning New York art and performance group under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. Since Poetics: a ballet brut, our first dance piece created as an ensemble, Nature Theater of Oklahoma has been devoted to making the work we don't know how to make, putting ourselves in impossible situations, and working from out of our own ignorance and unease. We strive to create an unsettling live situation that demands total presence from everyone in the room. We use the readymade material around us, found space, overheard speech, and observed gesture, and through extreme formal manipulation, and superhuman effort, we affect in our work a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live. www.oktheater.org.

Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on independent, experimental, and avant-garde cinema. Opened in 1970 by Jonas Mekas, Jerome Hill, P. Adams Sitney, Peter Kubelka, and Stan Brakhage, Anthology in its original conception was a showcase for the Essential Cinema Repertory collection. An ambitious attempt to define the art of cinema by means of a selection of films which would screen continuously, the Essential Cinema collection was intended to encourage the study of the medium's masterworks as works of art rather than disposable entertainment, making Anthology the first museum devoted to film as an art form. The project was never completed, but even in its unfinished state it represented an uncompromising critical overview of cinema's history, and remains a crucial part of Anthology's exhibition program.

In the decades since its founding, Anthology has grown far beyond its original concept to encompass film and video preservation; the formation of a reference library containing the world's largest collection of books, periodicals, stills, and other paper materials related to avant-garde cinema; and a remarkably innovative and eclectic film exhibition program. Anthology screens more than 900 programs annually, preserves an average of 25 films per year (with 900 works preserved to date), publishes books and DVDs, and hosts numerous scholars and researchers.

Fueled by the conviction that the index of a culture's health and vibrancy lies largely in its margins, in those works of art that are created outside the commercial mainstream, Anthology strives to advance the cause and protect the heritage of a kind of cinema that is in particular danger of being lost, overlooked, or ignored. www.anthologyfilmarchives.org

About the Partnership between Crossing the Line and the Hermès Foundation's (Fondation d'entreprise Hermès) New Settings program - Crossing the Line is thrilled to partner with the Hermès Foundation (Fondation d'entreprise Hermès)'s New Settings program for a fourth consecutive year. Launched in 2011, New Settings supports new performing arts productions that shift borders between disciplines to create innovative art forms. This year Episodes 7, 8 and 9 of Nature Theater of Oklahoma's Life & Times cycle are presented as part of the New Settings program within the framework of Crossing the Line.

Crossing the Line, now in its tenth year, is an annual citywide festival that engages International Artists and New York City audiences in discovery and dialogue to re-imagine the world around us. The festival is produced by the French Institute Alliance Française (FIAF) in partnership with leading cultural institutions. This year's edition of the festival takes place from September 22-November 3, 2016.

France has a long history of supporting national and international cultural practices, welcoming and nurturing new ideas and influential perspectives from around the world. FIAF, as the leading French cultural institution in the US, critically maintains that tradition through the Crossing the Line Festival, presenting leading-edge artists from France and the US alongside their peers from around the world.

Since its inauguration in 2007, Crossing the Line has cultivated an increasingly large and diverse following, and received numerous accolades in the press. The festival has been voted "Best of 2009," "Best of 2010," "Best of 2012," "Best of 2013," and "Best of 2014" by The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time Out New York, Artforum, and Frieze, with performances earning an Obie and several Bessie awards. www.crossingtheline.org

FIAF's mission is to create and offer New Yorkers innovative and unique programs in education and the arts that explore the evolving diversity and richness of French cultures. FIAF seeks to generate new ideas and promote cross cultural dialogue through partnerships and new platforms of expression. fiaf.org

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