force/collision Presents JARMAN (ALL THIS MADDENING BEAUTY), Now thru 4/27

force/collision announces its current performance project, Jarman (all this maddening beauty) will be livestreamed on HowlRound TV on April 20th at 4:00pm. Inspired by queer avant-garde artist, activist and filmmaker, Jarman (all this maddening beauty) invades the mind and artistic aesthetic of Derek Jarman (The Last of England, Sebastiane, The Tempest) to create a poetic and visually dynamic mash-up of video and live performance. This project will premiere in 2014 to coincide with the 20th anniversary of Jarman's death.

This collaboration is written by OBIE Lifetime Achievement Award-winning playwright Caridad Svich and developed by force/collision. Jarman (all this maddening beauty) will be directed and performed by force/collision Founding Director John Moletress. Performances will begin in Washington, D.C. at Atlas Performing Arts Center, today, April 17-27, 2014. The production will then tour both nationally and internationally in Summer/Fall 2014 to such cities as Liverpool, London, San Francisco and Chapel Hill.

About Derek Jarman - Derek Jarman was a leading avant-garde British filmmaker whose visually opulent and stylistically adventurous body of work stands in defiant opposition to the established literary and theatrical traditions of his sometimes staid national cinema. Jarman advocated a personal cinema more dedicated to striking imagery and evocative sounds than to the imperatives of narrative and characterization.

Like the noted American underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger, Jarman displayed a fascination with violence, homoeroticism, gay representation and mythopoeic imagery. Proudly and openly gay, Jarman shared news of his HIV infection with his public and incorporated his subsequent battles with AIDS into his work, particularly in The Garden (1990) and Blue (1993). Excavating and reclaiming suppressed gay history was an ongoing project that informed his several unconventional biopics: Sebastiane (1975), Jarman's sun-drenched directorial debut about the martyred Christian saint; the unusually accessible and slyly anachronistic Caravaggio (1986); the raw and angry modern dress version of Christopher Marlowe's Edward II (1991); and the stark and theatrical Wittgenstein (1993).

In his last years, Jarman was an outspoken advocate for the rights and dignity of gays and PWAs (Persons With AIDS), but art remained his primary cause. A champion of film art and a dedicated experimentalist, he was a critic of, and at odds with, what he saw as the stifling, repressive commercialism of mainstream cinema. Always struggling for funds, Jarman produced his first seven features for a combined cost of only $3 million. His final film, Blue, was his most unconventional-an unchanging field of blue over which we hear voices and sounds. Blind and mortally ill, Jarman remained a visionary film maverick. He authored a number of books, including a 1984 autobiography, Dancing Ledge. In 1994, Jarman succumbed to AIDS complications at age 52.

About the Artists

Caridad Svich received a 2012 OBIE Award for Lifetime Achievement in the theatre, and the 2011 American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize for her play The House of the Spirits, based on the novel by Isabel Allende. Among her other work are 12 Ophelias, Any Place But Here, Alchemy of Desire/Dead-Man's Blues, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls on the Neon Shell That Was Once Her Heart (a rave fable), Instructions for Breathing, The Way of Water, and the multi-media collaboration The Booth Variations. Last season Repetorio Espanol in New York premiered her play Love in the Time of Cholera, baed on the novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez; , Single Carrot Theatre in Baltimore premiered The Tropic of X; and Borderlands Theatre in Arizona premiered GUAPA as part of a rolling premiere, courtesy of the National New Play Network, that continues at the Miracle Theatre in Oregon and Phoenix Theatre in Indiana. Other regional premieres include In the Time of the Butterflies (based on the novel by Julia Alvarez) at Mixed Blood Theatre, Fugitive Pieces at Ex-Pats Theatre and The Archaeology of Dreams at University of Nebraska-Omaha. Among her awards are: Trusts National Theatre Artist Residency at INTAR and NEA/TCG Playwriting Residency at the Mark Taper Forum Latino Theatre Initiative, She is an alumna playwright of New Dramatists, founder of NoPassport theatre alliance and press, Drama Editor of Asymptote journal of literary translation, associate editor of Routledge/UK's Contemporary Theatre Review and contributing editor of TheatreForum. Ms. Svich is also an affiliated artist of the Lark Play Development Center, Woodshed Collective, New Georges and a lifetime member of Ensemble Studio Theatre.

John Moletress (Director, Performer) is an interdisciplinary performance artist and director. He is the Founding Director of force/collision (force-collision.org). Directing highlights: Our Town (Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival Invited Production), Trust me (force/collision, presented by Arena Stage), Shape by Erik Ehn (La MaMa ETC, Atlas Performing Arts Center), The Nautical Yards (Washington Navy Yard), What A Stranger May Know (Kennedy Center), Mistakes Were Made (Stages Repertory Theatre), Pippin (Steel River Playhouse), The Crucible (SRP), Separate Rooms (Kennedy Center Page-to-Stage Festival), 4.48 Psychosis (Warehouse Theatre), Magnificent Waste (by Caridad Svich at Flashpoint), Shakespeare's r+j (Assistant Director at Signature Theatre), The Saint Plays (Church Street Theatre). Performance highlights: The Cherry Orchard (Washington Shakespeare Company), Downtown Daylight Project (directed by Michael Kahn), Doctor Tedrow's Last Breath (Ice Factory/Ohio Theatre), Hamlet (directed by Douglas Campbell), The Loft (Manhattan Theatre Club), Place Setting (Primary Stages). John is George Washington University's 2014 Spring DanceWorks Guest Artist Choreographer. JohnMoletress.com

About HowlRound TV: HowlRound TV is a global, commons based, peer produced, open access livestreaming and video archive project stewarded by HowlRound: A Center for the Theater Commons. The channel is at howlround.tv and is a shared resource for live events and performances relevant to the world theater and arts fields. Its mission is to break geographic isolation, promote resource sharing, and to develop our knowledge commons collectively.

The show runs April 17-27, 2014 (running time: approx. 70 min) in LAB II, Atlas Performing Arts Center, Washington, D.C., playing Wednesday at 7:30pm; Thursday-Saturday at 8:00pm; Sunday at 4:00pm; PWYC. Preview April 17 at 8:00pm; Opening Night/Press Night April 19. Special Events: 4/19 Post-Performance Opening Night Reception; 4/20 HowlRound TV Livestream Broadcast. Tickets: $20 General Admission; $10 Student with ID; Box Office: 202-399-7993; atlasarts.org DIRECTIONS: 1333 H Street NE, Washington, DC. Nearest Metro Station: Union Station (red line)

force/collision is an interdisciplinary contingent of artists/collaborators who are dedicated to a visceral exploration of performance through an intercultural dialogue of sharing ideas, work and artistic expression. The core ensemble includes Ilana Faye Silverstein, Frank Britton, Karin Rosnizeck, Daniel Paul Lawson, Dane Edidi, Sue Jin Song, Collin Ranney, Joshua Sticklin, Jacob Janssen, Sarah Elizabeth Ewing and John Moletress. Biographies for individual ensemble members can be found here: http://force-collision.org/theartists/.

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