PS122 and La MaMa to Present Nicola Gunn's PIECE FOR PERSON AND GHETTO BLASTER as Part of COIL 2017

As part of the twelfth edition of COIL festival, Performance Space 122 and La MaMa co-present the U.S. premiere of Nicola Gunn's Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster.

This story of a man, a woman, and a duck explores the moral conundrum of what one should do if one comes across a person throwing rocks at a sitting duck. Based on a situation that really happened, which Gunn tells through multiple perspectives, the work calls into question the ethics of intervention with a confrontational muse on peace and conflict, moral relativism, and the very function of art.

Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster continues Gunn's investigations into autobiographical fictions, complex dramaturgical compositions, and multiple performance languages operating simultaneously. Set to Kelly Ryall's evocative, electronic soundscape emitting from the onstage ghetto blaster, Gunn is in perpetual motion with Jo Lloyd's intense physical choreography. Through an accumulation of personal anecdotes and memories told with subversive humour, this self-interrogation on an ethical dilemma dissects the excruciating realms of human behavior in an attempt to navigate the moral and ethical complexities of becoming a better person.

Performances of Piece for Person and Ghetto Blaster will take place January 11-14 (see above schedule) at La MaMa's Ellen Stewart Theatre, which is located at 66 East 4th Street, Manhattan. Tickets are $20 and available online at ps122.org and by phone at 212.352.3101.

The creative team includes Jo Lloyd (Choreography), Kelly Ryall (Music), Niklas Pajanti (Lighting Design), Martyn Coutts (AV Design), Shio Otani (Costume Design), Jon Haynes (Script Dramaturg), Ben 'Bosco' Shaw (Lighting / AV Operator), Nick Roux (Sound Engineer).

Commissioned by Mobile States, produced by Performing Lines. Supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

Nicola Gunn is a writer, director, performer and designer, who combines text, choreography and visual art to make contemporary performance work in response to a self-generated impulse to tell a story or explore a form. She finds parallels between personal experiences and larger social realities, using subversive humour to explore the fragility of the human condition. She has received critical acclaim for a genre of sophisticated performance, has toured to New Zealand, North America, Europe and throughout Australia, and has collaborated with local and International Artists. Most recently she created Mermermer with Jo Lloyd for Chunky Move and The Interpreters for Site is Set, as well as publishing her first comic book with Michael Fikaris, Instruction Manual for Lonely Mountains. Gunn is the recipient of an Australia Council for the Arts Creative Australia fellowship and a Churchill Fellowship.

La MaMa is dedicated to the artist and all aspects of the theatre. The organization has a worldwide reputation for producing daring performance works that defy form and transcend barriers of ethnic and cultural identity. Founded in 1961 by award-winning theatre pioneer Ellen Stewart, La MaMa has presented more than 5,000 productions by 150,000 artists from more than 70 nations. A recipient of more than 30 Obie Awards and dozens of Drama Desk, Bessie, and Villager Awards, La MaMa has helped launch the careers of countless artists, many of whom have made important contributions to American and international arts milieus.

La MaMa's 55th season celebrates the creative and collective histories of La MaMa's local and global communities Since its beginning, La MaMa has forged creative partnerships with artists based in different parts of the U.S., Europe, Asia, Africa and South America. In recent years, these long-term relationships have taken on new life through distance collaborations over the Internet. The 55th season embraces new pathways forged in performance and technology to connect the myriad experiences, politics, conflicts, aesthetics, intimacies and dreams of people and communities participating in an increasingly globalized world. Visit lamama.org.

Performance Space 122 (PS122) provides incomparable experiences for audiences by presenting and commissioning artists whose work challenges boundaries of live performance. PS122 is dedicated to supporting the creative risks taken by artists from diverse genres, cultures and perspectives. We are an innovative local, national and international leader in contemporary performance.

Beginning in 2011, PS122 embarked on one of the most unusual and potentially radical shifts in its history, including a re-structuring of artist support, a business model overhaul, and the renovation of our building. As PS122's East Village home undergoes a much-needed interior renovation supported primarily by the City of New York, DCA and DDC, PS122's core activity continues to be providing audiences with contemporary live performance.

For more than three decades, Performance Space 122 has been a hub for contemporary performance and an active member of the cultural community. Under the curatorial vision of Vallejo Gantner (Artistic Director 2005 - present) PS122 has developed a set of programs designed to re-establish the value of live performance, provide singular experiences for audiences that inspire critical thinking, and sustain the creative process for artists throughout their career. Largely in partnership with peer organizations, PS122 currently presents artists in all disciplines in spaces all over the city during an annual fall & spring season and the Coil festival in January.

In addition to the commissioning and presenting of artists from NYC across the US, and around the globe, PS122 has increased our activity off the stage to provide audiences with a variety of access points and context for the work on stage. These activities include both talkbacks with the artists as well as in depth conversations that bring together luminaries from non-arts disciplines to discuss a variety of topics including everything from religion, to migration, to queer real estate and cultural diplomacy. PS122 encourages the asking of questions and debate of contemporary society's issues in both artistic practice and audience experience. Go to ps122.org.

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