Performance Space 122 Announces Fall Lineup

Performance Space 122 is proud to announce the fall 2008 schedule.  Tickets may be purchased online at www.ps122.org or via phone at (212) 352-3101.  All programs are subject to change.  Performance Space 122 is located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, New York, New York 10009.

Performance Space 122 is New York's ultimate destination for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art, cross-media, and performance events.  Founded in 1979, Performance Space 122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists whose work challenges the traditional boundaries of dance, theatre, music, and performance.  Committed to exploring innovative form as well as material, P.S. 122 is steadfast in its search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures and points of view.  www.ps122.org.

The following is a detailed roster of companies that will be appearing at Performance Space 122 in the coming months.

 Thomas Bradshaw
SOUTHERN PROMISES
World Premiere
Theatre
Downstairs Theater
Saturday, September 6 – Saturday, September 27
Tuesday – Saturday at 8:30pm / Sunday and Monday at 7:00pm
(no performance Monday, September 15)
Tickets $18, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

When the master of the plantation dies, he wills his slaves to be freed, but his wife doesn't believe that good property should be squandered.

Playwright provocateur Thomas Bradshaw ignites the stage yet again in his signature inflammatory style.  Following sold out and controversial runs at Performance Space 122, including Prophet and Purity, and elsewhere, including Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist and Cleansed, Bradshaw teams with acclaimed director Jose Zayas (a/d Talk Radio) for an explosive new creation that is not for the faint of heart.

Southern Promises is presented by Performance Space 122 in conjunction with The Immediate Theatre Company and Queens Theatre in the Park as part of B.O.B., P.S. 122's Best of Boroughs Program Commission.  B.O.B. is a program that unites artists and institutions from all five boroughs to create opportunities for diverse collaboration and audience development.  Southern Promises was developed in part through IRT Theater's artist-in-residence program.

Reid Farrington
THE PASSION PROJECT
World Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Wednesday, September 10 – Saturday, September 20

Tuesday – Sunday at 7:30pm, plus additional late shows Fridays and Saturdays at 9:00pm

Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members). The Passion Project is a vibrant archival film experiment spun from the reels of the last great silent film, Carl Th. Dreyer's 1928 immortal masterpiece, "The Passion of Joan of Arc."  Exploring the intersection of live performance, film and installation, The Passion Project includes every frame of Dreyer's film – his outtakes and the reels that were eerily lost to fire – and explodes the film into three dimensions, placing the audience inside the action and surrounding them with the relentless rhythm of 30mm projections.  The Passion Project features a mesmerizing and meticulous performance by Shelley Kay, who bears an uncanny resemblance to the Melle Falconetti, the actress in the film.

Reid Farrington is a video-installation artist and frequent collaborator with the Wooster Group.  For more information on him visit:  http://www.reidfarrington.com/

"The Passion Project" was developed at 3LD Art and Technology Center and with the support of Ideal Glass Gallery.  Made possible in part by the support of The Danish Film Institute and University of Copenhagen.

Verdensteatret
LOUDER
N.Y. Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Thursday, September 25 – Sunday, September 28
Thursday – Saturday at 8:00pm/Sunday at 6:00pm
Tickets from $25, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

For their new production Louder, Norway's award-winning performance collective Verdensteatret embarked on a long journey through Vietnam and the Mekong-river.  Combining robotics, video, sound, music, shadow play, object theatre and new technology, they take the audience with them on an intense and other-worldly voyage.  Reason ends as the spectator is engulfed by a vast and visual soundscape, encountering cycles of transformation and the layering of tales from the past and present.    

Louder is a massive storytelling orchestra rigged on rusty wire.  The epic performance is propelled by sound and image.  A tidal wave of pictures and sounds is cast at the audience by a spectacularly intricate machine so fragile that it is in constant danger of short-circuiting.  Among a pile of megaphones that hurl sound in all directions, and a knot of wires stretched to the point of snapping, people navigate and narrate this teeming and transporting environment.   

Verdensteatret is one of the most innovative and experimental companies in Norway.  Their experimental use of audiovisual technology in a close dialogue with more traditional and historic tools of artistic expression results in complex orchestral works and space-related musical compositions.

Verdensteatret is supported by Arts Council Norway and the Consul General of Norway.

Verdensteatret received the Bessie Award 2006 in New York for Concert for Greenland in the category Performance, Installation and New Media – it made its U.S premiere at PS 122. http://www.verdensteatret.com

 
Rachid Ouramdane, Pascal Rambert and Kate Moran
Diptyque: A Standing Boy and With My Own Hands (double bill)
U.S. Premiere
Dance
Friday and Saturday, October 3 and 4
A Standing Boy– Upstairs Theater
Friday and Saturday at 7:30pm
With My Own Hands– Downstairs Theater
Friday and Saturday at 9:00pm

Tickets from $25, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (P.S. 122 and FIAF members). Both shows (they are designed to be seen together):  $35, $20 (P.S. 122 and FIAF members)

Performance Space 122 teams with the second Crossing The Lines Festival, in collaboration with the French Institut Alliance Française (FIAF) to present the double bill A Standing Boy and With My Own Hands.  French director Pascal Rambert and choreographer Rachid Ouramdane, for the first time, present back-to-back performances of two autonomous dances in conversation with one another.  The two performance pieces comprise a third through the audience's experience of comparing and contrasting them, challenging the audience to forge a complete oeuvre from two separate parts.

Diptyque is created through collaboration between these two leading French artists and U.S. collaborator Kate Moran; this is a double presentation, in both spaces, of two major works, set in conjunction and contrast with each other.  Both dances are solos engaged in fascinating ways with identity, one in blinding whiteness, the other in blinding blackness.

Without realizing it, the artists often speak to each other.  With My Own Hands presents a naked woman, with male genitals on a plinth, each body part microscopically lit.  A Standing Boy is a solo performance featuring Ouramdane surrounded by projections of nature.  Gender, presence and the idea of the performer are all thrown into confusion in this dizzy two bodied free fall.

Co-presented by the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) as part of Crossing the Line 2008.

 
WaxFactory
BLIND.NESS
World Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Sunday, October 12 – Saturday, November 1
Tuesday – Saturday at 8:00pm
Sunday at 6:00pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Internationally acclaimed discipline-bending WaxFactory finally returns home to N.Y.C., after three years and sold-out runs in Switzerland and Slovenia, to present the world premiere of its latest original creation, BLIND.NESS (Love is a four-letter word), an in depth and daring examination of what happens when love goes terribly wrong.

Directed by Ivan Talijancic and co-written with Slovenian playwright Simona Semenic, BLIND.NESS follows a powerhouse all-female cast on an emotional roller coaster ride across the dark and wildly humorous underbelly of love.  Presented in WaxFactory's renowned interdisciplinary style, part-multi-media installation, part-dance theatre, BLIND.NESS brings together an exciting team of international collaborators including sublime video by A.G. of Italy, the sleek architectural design of Minimart and the seductive sounds of electronica duo Random Logic of Slovenia, plus WaxFactory co-founder Erika Latta.   This technology infused tour de force will surely bend minds and break hearts.

WaxFactory is an international group of artists dedicated to exploring a multiplicity of theatrical visions. Ivan Talijancic and Erika Latta founded this multi-disciplinary theatre group.  http://www.waxfactory.org/

BLIND.NESS is a co-production of Performance Space 122 with Cankarjev Dom Center for the Performing Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia).

Amy Caron
WAVES OF MU
New York Premiere
Theatre/Dance/Art
Downstairs Theater and P.S 122 Gallery (entrance on 9th Street)
Friday, October 10 – Sunday, October 19
Tuesday – Saturday at 7:30pm/Sunday at 5:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Kick off your shoes (literally) and step into a universe like none other.  Informed by the monumental discovery of mirror neurons and created alongside world-renowned neuroscientists, (according to neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran, "The discovery of mirror neurons is the most important unpublicized story of the decade," doing for psychology what DNA has done for biology), Amy Caron's beautifully complex two-room installation-performance drives multidisciplinary art headlong into new territory.  Her warped lab/lecture/experiment gives a nod and a wink to hard science while cleverly activating her "test subjects" to cheer, cringe, and discover through experience, a new awareness of the profundity of our interpersonal world.  

This is a two-room show: part installation and part performance.  http://www.amycaron.com

Waves of Mu is presented as part of Room, a commissioning program created by Performance Space 122 to encourage artists to collaborate with experts outside the traditional performing disciplines.

 

Jo Strømgren Kompani
THE SOCIETY
New York Premiere
Theatre
Off-site at the Abrons Arts Center
Wednesday, October 15 – Sunday, October 19
Wednesday – Saturday at 8:30pm / Sunday at 6:30pm
Tickets from $25, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)
A society of sworn coffee drinkers gather together for their daily ritual.  The harmony is broken by a horrific incident: the discovery of a used teabag.  As the investigations unfold, one question is inevitable: How far will they go in order to track the traitor down, smoke him out, and bring this evil act to justice?

This performance erupts in the inimitable Jo Strømgren Kompani style of nonsensical language theatre mixed with dance, physical rawness, live music, and absurd humor.  The main object on stage is a coffee machine; the isolated conflict between drinkers of coffee and tea in a micro-world is open for interpretation.  JSK mirror the macro-world by scrutinizing basic elements of contemporary phenomena: in our turbulent times the average citizen is ever more tempted to accept torture, suppression of minorities, and other violent means in order to restore order and avoid a clash of civilizations.  Can theatre contribute to change this?  JSK neglects any responsibility to join that debate.  Rather, they pursue their signature fart-in-the-universe quest to pinpoint utterly sad human behavior.

Established in 1998, Jo Strømgren Kompani has grown quickly into one of the major contemporary dance-theatre companies in Norway. http://www.jskompani.no/

 

Sara Juli
DEATH
World Premiere
Dance
Downstairs Theater
Friday, October 24 – Sunday, November 2
Tuesday – Sunday at 8:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

 With her unique arsenal of movement, spoken word, song Sara confronts the universal demon.  Let's talk about death.  No, really.  Let's face it, deal with it, think about it, laugh about it and really talk about it.  In other words, let's not change the subject.  In a society that focuses all its attention on staying young, where graveyards are far removed and called the more innocuous cemeteries and "resting places," the question is not how do we deal with death – but do we deal with death at all?

Sara Juli is an award-wining dancer, choreographer, arts manager, curator, and producer of dance in New York City.  The Money Conversation – the show that everyone wants to steal from – premiered at P.S. 122 in February, 2006 and went on to be presented at the Noorderzon Festival in Groningen, Holland and around the globe.  Subsequently, The American Dance Festival commissioned and premiered "Deep Throat."  In NYC alone, Juli has also presented solo work at Dixon Place, The Ontological, Manhattan Theater Source, Williamsburg Art NeXus, The Flea Theater, Joyce SoHo, Joe's Pub, Dancenow, Movement Research, and Danspace.

 Goat Island
THE LASTMAKER
A New and Final Performance Work by Goat Island
New York Premiere
Dance
Upstairs Theater
Thursday, November 6 – Sunday, November 16
Thursday – Sunday at 7:30pm
Tickets from $25, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

The ultimate farewell; an everlasting epilogue.  In their new and last piece, Goat Island takes inspiration from the historical trajectory of the Hagia Sophia: church/mosque/museum, an incarnation of multiple movements encountered on different planes.  What begins as an architectural dance, in detailed triadic rounds becomes haunted by the restless and reckless ghosts of the past: including a female impersonation of Lenny Bruce's last routine, a performer singing a pop spiritual (accompanying himself on the saw), reenactments of Saint Francis's farewell, and the last minute of J. S. Bach's Art of the Fugue.  The Lastmaker recapitulates 20 years of Goat Island, in what will surely be a fitting conclusion to their contribution – a journey, within a restrained structure, from the intellectual to the emotional, with lasting resonance.  http://www.goatislandperformance.org

Joseph Silovsky
JESTER OF TONGA
World Premiere
Theatre
Downstairs Theater
Thursday, November 13 – Sunday, November 23
Wednesday – Saturday at 8:00pm/Sunday at 6:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

Joe Silovsky woke up on his birthday in 2001 and read the paper.  What he discovered dramatically affected how he would spend the next seven years of his life.  Now the man known as one of downtown's technological wizards steps out from behind the curtain and into his first full length solo theatrical production.

Joe and his engaging robot Stanley tell the very true and very dramatically complicated story of Jesse Bogdonoff, the sensational and modern-day Court Jester to the Tongan Royal Court (he was appointed in 1999).  Twenty suitcases packed full with island lore spill their secrets, scandals and adventures onto the stage.  Jaw-dropping stories diverge, mountains of money are exchanged, and fish are bombed out of the water.  Silovsky masterfully merges his first hand knowledge of Bogdonoff and all things Tongan with his technological expertise, and takes us on an unforgettable trip to the island nation.  

Joseph Silovsky has been performing and making machines for the theatre since 1990.  He has performed solo work at St Anne's Warehouse, Performance Space 122, Tonic's Little Theater and Pete's Candy Store in New York, as well as various venues in Chicago and at the Kananahk Performance Art Festival in Rakveres, Estonia.  Joseph has collaborated with Victor Morales as Tutto and the Ragman as well as the Radiohole, The Builders Association, Lucky Pierre, HMS, and the Cook County Theater Department.  Joseph has contributed to other theatre companies by constructing robotic and/or mechanical devices for their shows:  the mechanical moon for Radiohole's Fluke, the contest winning robot in NTUSA's What's That on My Head?, and the human-sized R/C robot for Richard Maxwell's Joe.

 
The Debate Society
CAPE DISAPPOINTMENT
World Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Saturday, November 22 – Sunday, December 7
Tuesday – Saturday at 8:00pm/Sunday at 6:00pm
With additional shows Monday, November 24 at 8:00pm and Saturday, December 6 at 10:30pm
No shows Wednesday November 26 or Thursday, November 27
Tickets $18, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

At long last, a play where you can make out in the back seat.  The Debate Society's 4th full-length play transforms the upstairs theater at P.S.122 into their own version of a Drive-In theater and presents a very-close-up absurdist perspective on classic Americana.  So climb into your own private 4-seater, equipped with a cooler, popcorn, and speaker box and enjoy the ride.  Don't forget to turn off the headlights.

Like all good drive-ins, Cape Disappointment starts with a cartoon and finishes with a feature.  The "cartoon" is a short play in which an old couple reminisce about their fallen city and bygone hey-days.  The "feature" is inspired by the classic American road-trip.  The characters- some escaping, some hiding, and some idling- race across a landscape of crumbling lighthouses, crushed cars, and naughty little girls.  Yes, there is an "intermission" and it will probably include a dancing hotdog and matching bun.

Acclaimed actress, and mother of Cape Disappointment director Oliver Butler, Pamela Payton-Wright joins the Debate Society's high-octane performer/writers Hannah Bos and Paul Thureen, along with actor Michael Cyril Creighton.  

 

Lewis Forever
LEWIS FOREVER: Freak the Room
World Premiere
Dance
Downstairs Theater
Tuesday, December 2 – Sunday, December 14
Tuesday – Saturday at 8:30pm/Sunday at 6:30pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

In LEWIS FOREVER: Freak the Room detours and short-cuts become opportunities for fantasy, for violence, for the expression of angst and dissatisfaction, and for tenderness.

LEWIS FOREVER is George Lewis Jr., Isabel Lewis, Ligia Manuela Lewis, and Sarah Lewis – an Brooklyn and Berlin based family performance collective comprised of four siblings, all of whom are artists who have been working independently in their artistic circles for several years.  They now come together to create performance installations and performance parties that utilize music, dance and video. These events provide opportunities to embody ideas and questions surrounding collective versus individual vision, emigration, post-American identity, transient identities, "trans-nationalism," belonging, longing, and dislocation.

George Jr. is a performance artist/musician based in Brooklyn who blends Rock n Roll, theatre, and visual art in his work as an artist jack of all trades; also based in Brooklyn is Isabel, a dance artist and curator.  On the Berlin-based side of the family, there is Ligia Manuela Lewis and Sarah Lewis.  Ligia Manuela has worked with esteemed dance artists including Tere O Connor, David Dorfman, Gisele Mason, and the Superamas.  Sarah has worked with Todd Fletcher choreographing original musicals "William Tell" and "Streets of Wedding," and presented two plays at the English Theatre of Berlin.

http://lewisforever.com/home.html

 
Edit Kaldor
POINT BLANK
U.S. Premiere
Theatre
Upstairs Theater
Thursday, December 11 – Sunday, December 14
Thursday – Saturday at 8:00pm/Sunday at 6:00pm
Tickets from $20, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

The definitive spy-ware performance – a voyeur's paradise.  Using a fictional character, Nada, Kaldor explores the patch-working together of a past that closely resembles her own.  Kaldor invites the 19-year-old Nada to present her large collection of photographs - for years she has been observing people, taking 'spy-photos' of them, capturing their private moments.  The core of Nada's interest is to trace the various life-strategies that people follow.  Driven by curiosity, she becomes witness to a wide range of – at times excessive - human behavior.  Together with the audience she autopsies the images, implications and patterns that emerge.  She aims to get a comprehensive overview and reach the ultimate conclusion: the vision of a life worth pursuing.

Edit Kaldor was born in Budpest and left Hungary for New York at the age of 13, where she would study theatre and literature and later become dramaturge and video film-maker for Peter Halasz' Love Theatre in 1993.  In 1999 Edit Kaldor moved to Belgium where she worked with digital media for several years. For Point Blank she has collaborated with the artist and filmmaker Frank Theys.  At present Edith Kaldor is one of the resident artists at the Antwerp performance workplace wp Zimmer.

Meow Meow
THE LOVE SHOW
U.S. Premiere
Cabaret
Upstairs Theater
Coming in December
Dates & Times TBA
Tickets from $25, $15 (students/seniors), $10 (members)

From the psychotic to cool to kitsch cabaret, multimedia performance art and virtuosic contemporary opera, Meow Meow performs solo and with companies including Opera Factory (London), Elision Ensemble (Australia), Robyn Orlin (South Africa/Berlin), John Jesurun and Mikel Rouse (NYC), in venues as diverse as N.Y.'s Lincoln Center, Berlin's Philharmonic, the Hebbel Theater, B-Dungeon, Sydney's Opera House, Theater Spektakel Zürich, Joe's Pub N.Y., Tokyo's Saitama Theatre, The Glamour Room Shanghai, the Dublin Spiegeltent and numerous international arts festivals.  Bandaged, blindfolded, and drenched in the detritus of romantic love,  exotic(a) performance artist Meow Meow returns to NYC with a time/motion study of love for the new age.  Biology, beauty, desperation and dexterity are examined.  http://www.meowmeowrevolution.com

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