PS122 and The Chocolate Factory Bring Daniel Fish's UNTITLED to COIL 2017 Tonight

As part of the twelfth edition of PS122's Coil festival, Performance Space 122 and The Chocolate Factory Theater present Daniel Fish's latest, untitled work. Made for a very small audience, and performed during daylight hours, Untitled uses light, set and sound to ruminate on the passage of time, our perception of it, and to pose questions about how alert an audience can be as both individuals and a group.

Fish made a name for himself in the early aughts by staging radical, severe, inventive productions of the canon, before looking to non-theatrical material such as novels, essays and films as sources for building his own theatrical experiments. For example, A (Radically Condensed and Expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again (2012) involved actors painstakingly repeating the words of David Foster Wallace as they were being fed recordings of his voice through headphones.

This new experimental project presents a radical departure from Fish's previous text-driven work, exploring what happens when actors and text are gone and the talking stops. This is a further evolution of his signature emphasis on the laying bare of process, and testing the limits of an audience's presence, resulting in works of austerity, transparency and repetition.

While seeming to favor simplicity, Fish doesn't shy away from elements theatricality and spectacle. In this largely text-less work, set (by Perrine Villemur) and light (by Barbara Samuels) drive the un-drive-able while Philip White's original score subverts expectations of aural perception. Fish creates a theater that is at once difficult and sumptuous, alienating and seductive.

Performances of Untitled, whichwill take place tonight, January 12, through January 21 (see above schedule) at The Chocolate Factory Theater, 5-49 49th Ave, Long Island City, Queens. Tickets are available online at chocolatefactorytheater.org and by phone at 212.352.3101.

Daniel Fish is a New York-based director who makes work across the boundaries of theater, film, and opera. He draws on a broad range of forms and subject matter including plays, film scripts, contemporary fiction, military logs, essays and found audio. His recent work includes Who Left This Fork Here (2015), Oklahoma (2015), TEd Hearne's The Source (2014) and Eternal (2013). His work has been seen at theaters and festivals throughout the U.S. and Europe including The Walker Arts Center, PuSH, Teatro Nacional D. Maria, Lisbon/Estoril Film Festival, Vooruit, Festival TransAmériques, BAM Next Wave Festival, Noorderzon Festival, The Chocolate Factory, The Public Theater's Under The Radar, Opera Philadelphia/Curtis Opera Theater, American Repertory Theater, Richard B. Fisher Center at Bard College, Yale Repertory Theater, McCarter Theater, Signature Theater, The Shakespeare Theater Company, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Staatstheater Braunschweig and The Royal Shakespeare Company. Residencies and commissions include The MacDowell Colony, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Mass MOCA, The Chocolate Factory, The Bushwick Starr, LMCC/ Governor's Island. He has taught at The Juilliard School, Bard College, Princeton University and NYU/Tisch Department of Design for Stage and Film. He is graduate of Northwestern University's Department of Performance Studies.

Since it was founded in 2005, The Chocolate Factory Theater has supported the development and presentation of new work by a community of local, national and International Artists working in dance, theater, performance, and multimedia. The Chocolate Factory's programs have drawn many thousands of new visitors to its 5,000 square foot industrial facility in Long Island City, Queens. The organization is currently planning for the purchase and renovation of a permanent facility in the neighborhood.

The Chocolate Factory is artist-founded and artist-led. It's Artistic Director, Brian Rogers, continues to create and present his own work at The Chocolate Factory while providing support to a close-knit community of forward-thinking visiting artists working at all stages of their careers.

The Chocolate Factory received an Obie grant in 2009. It's works have received Bessie and Obie Awards and have toured nationally and internationally. Visit chocolatefactorytheater.org for more.

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 over 3 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 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 for more.

To post a comment, you must register and login.