SHIP OF FOOLS to Launch HERE's 2016-17 Season with Audience on a Turntable

HERE launches its 2016-2017 producing season with Ship of Fools, conceived by Jessica Scott, and devised by Jessica Scott with Anonymous Ensemble. This HERE Resident Artist and Dream Music Puppetry Program production plays 15 performances, October 12 - 22 at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street).

A collision of puppetry, movement and live vocals - with the audience of approximately 20 people per performance seated on a turntable - Ship of Fools delivers compelling visuals and dark humor in a series of vignettes that unravel the supposed relationship between women and madness. Drawing inspiration from poignant words and powerful moments ranging from Marilyn Monroe's diary entries to acceptance speeches by female celebrities, this new work by Jessica Scott is a uniquely intimate, topsy-turvy journey that unabashedly spotlights women's voices and how they are heard.

Jessica Scott has worked extensively as a puppeteer, designer and fabricator for Basil Twist, Mabou Mines, Moises Kaufman and Improbable Theatre. She made her Broadway debut in Pee Wee's Playhouse at The Stephen Sondheim Theatre and returned to Broadway as the Puppetry Associate for the musical Big Fish. In 2013 she was the lead puppeteer and puppetry director of the Mabou Mines La Divina Caricatura at La Mama. Ms. Scott collaborated with Bjarne Melgaard to sculpt forty custom dolls for the Park Avenue Armory Show and Lyon Biennale. She also directed the puppetry for Zvi Sahar's Salt of the Earth at BAM, and premiered her first live-action puppetry film, The Never Bell, at BAM's Puppets on Film Festival in October, 2014. Film credits include Flight of the Conchord's Demon Woman and Bjork's Wanderlust. Upcoming projects include the world premiere of Hillary Bettis' Alligator, directed by Elena Araoz, as the premiere production of The Sol Project and technical puppetry design for James Ortiz for Zemire et Amor for Saratoga Opera in 2017. Jessica's continued fascination with puppetry is rooted in the simple animism of the everyday object and an affinity for ensemble performance, both which she believes are playful strategies for life in a complicated century. She is a HERE/Dream Music Puppetry Resident Artist, where she developed Ship of Fools.

Anonymous Ensemble (AnEn) first became known as creators of the The Best, an episodic, intermedia, rock spectacle that performed all over NYC (2003 - 2008) and in Brisbane and Berlin (2006). AnEn achieved further international acclaim with their wildly interactive 'dance party' Wanderlust, which premiered in New York in 2007, played the Edinburgh Fringe in 2008, and toured Norway and the UK in 2009, with a critically acclaimed London premiere at Jacksons Lane theater. In 2010, AnEn went to Athens, Greece to collaborate with a team of Greek artists to create a bilingual, live Rebetiko/Rock Doc, The Return, which premiered the following year at the Rose of Athens Theatre in Athens. Also in 2011, AnEn developed the first act of The Turing Opera with the experimental wing of the National Opera of Greece. In 2012, AnEn created a 'live film' love affair with an audience called LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! that was developed and premiered in NYC and then toured the East Coast. In 2013, AnEn developed I Land, a unique experience of community created entirely out of the inner lives of the audiences which premiered at Incubator Arts in 2014. In 2015, AnEn created Braid, a deconstructed gig at the intersection of fiction and biography which premiered at NC Stage in 2015 and played Five Myles in 2016.

Ship of Fools, performed by a company of four, features Co-Direction, Puppetry, Costume and Set Design by Jessica Scott; Co-Direction, Text and Projection Design by Eammon Farrell; Original Compositions by Alex Klimovitsky; Lighting Design by Ayumu Poe Saegusa; Sound Design by Gavin Price and Live Music and Vocals by Liz Davito.

Ship of Fools plays October 12 - 22 as follows: Wednesdays - Sundays at 7:00pm; with additional 10:30pm performances on Fridays and Saturdays, and Thursday, October 20. Additional performance Monday, October 17 at 7:00pm. Tickets are $35.00. Tickets can be purchased at www.here.org or by calling (212) 352-3101 or at the HERE Box Office (5PM until curtain on show days). For more, visit www.here.org.

The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director), named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, 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.

The HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) has been HERE's signature development and producing program since 1998. HARP commissions, develops and premieres new hybrid performances. Productions developed at HERE challenge existing boundaries between disciplines. Through HARP, the Resident Artists are given the unique opportunity to develop their projects for up to three years through free works-in-progress showings, workshop presentations in HERE's annual CULTUREMART festival, culminating in full-scale productions.

Each season, HERE premieres several of these Resident Artist productions as mainstage works. These innovative projects are grown in a diverse artistic community where artists receive career development resources and hands-on training. HARP has been widely recognized as a unique model for artistic development for the field to emulate. 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 Dream Music Puppetry Program, under the artistic direction of Basil Twist, with producing direction from HERE co-founder Barbara Busackino, is one of few programs in the country to grow and commission contemporary adult puppet works, particularly works that feature live music as a collaborative element. Dream Music seeks to secure the future of puppetry by providing increased development and performance opportunities to puppet artists, and by collaborating with artists from other disciplines to develop new puppetry techniques. In addition, Dream Music brings to New York the most excellent of international puppetry, reflecting on Twist's roots at the École Supérieure Nationale des Arts de la Marionnette in Charleville-Mezieres, France. Dream Music was inaugurated with the premiere of Basil Twist's OBIE-award winning Symphonie Fantastique in 1998 and the opening of the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, an intimate space created specifically for intimate puppetry. HERE's Dream Music is also proud to house the Griff Williams Puppetry Collection. The 6 antique marionettes of Harry James, Griff Williams, Cab Calloway, Arturo Toscannini, Ted Lewis and Paul Whiteman were all performed with The Griff Williams Orchestra in the 1930s & 40s throughout America's big band era. They have a permanent home outside the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre at HERE.

HERE is also home to the cross-disciplinary productions of Artistic Director Kristin Marting. Currently in development is Assembled Identity featuring Purva Bedi and Mariana Newhard. 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.

HERE proudly hosts adventurous artists, companies and productions, whether emerging or acclaimed, through its SubletSeries. It also presents work from New York, across the country, and around the globe through the Dream Music Puppetry Program (co-curated with Basil Twist), and the widely acclaimed PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival of opera-theater and music-theater, co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects.

Ship of Fools will be followed in HERE's season by Chiflón, El Silencio del Carbón, a Dream Music Puppetry presentation by Chile's Silencio Blanco (February 24 - 26, 2017); CasablancaBox, a HERE Resident Artist production by Sara Farrington & Reid Farrington (April 5 - 29, 2017); Dark Circus, a Dream Music Puppetry presentation by France's STEREOPTIK (May 30 - June 4, 2017); The Reception, a HERE Resident Artist production by Sean Donovan & Sebastián Calderón Bentin (June 13 - 24, 2017); and the annual events PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now (January 5 - 15, 2017), the premier global festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre in New York City, co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE; and HERE's annual CULTUREMART Festival, showcasing hybrid works in progress coming out of the HERE Artist Residency Program (March 14 - 26, 2017).

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