Muazzez
Mac Wellman (USA)
Muazzez is derived from A Chronicle Of The Madness Of Small Worlds, a collection of offbeat stories by renowned author, playwright and poet Mac Wellman. Muazzez is one of a string of small worlds ‘real places, but on no map’ where things happen for their own mysterious reasons.
Written in Wellman’s playful, experimental style, Muazzez is performed by longtime collaborator Steve Mellor. Intentionally staged in the simplest of terms, the result is an intimate encounter with a decade’s long collaborative partnership.
Writer & Director Mac Wellman
Performer Steve Mellor
“Sit back and enjoy the torrent of language, as Mr. Wellman zigzags through time, space and participle.” – The New York Times
45 minutes
Co-presented with The Chocolate Factory
Jan 7 7:30pm
Jan 8 7pm
Jan 9 8pm
Jan 10 6pm
Jan 11 2pm & 6pm
Jan 15-17 8pm
The Chocolate Factory
5-49 49th Ave, Long Island City, Queens
$15 General Admission
▸▸ Pass Holders Log in to redeem
MAC WELLMAN’s recent work includes 3 2’s; or AFAR at Dixon Place in October 2011, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at Montclair in the fall of 2006 (and elsewhere more recently), and 1965 UU for performer Paul Lazar, and directed by Stephen Mellor at the Chocolate Factory in the fall of 2008. He has received numerous honors, including NEA, Guggenheim, and Foundation of Contemporary Arts fellowships. In 2003 he received his third Obie, for lifetime Achievement. In 2006 his third novel, Q’s Q, was published by Green Integer, and in 2008 a volume of stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds, was published by Trip Street Press as well as a new collection of plays The Difficulty of Crossing a Field from Minnesota Press. His books of poetry include Miniature (2002), Strange Elegies (2006), Split the Stick (2012) from Roof Books, and Left Glove (2011), from Solid Objects Press. His novel Linda Perdido won the 2011 FC2 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction. He is Distinguished Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College.
The Chocolate Factory is Long Island City based incubator for new developments in experimental performance. The work of founding artists Brian Rogers & Sheila Lewandowski emphasizes collaboration combining movement, music, video and text to devise a means of storytelling that is immediate, collage-like, highly visual, and dependent on new technologies. These curatorial values tend to lead to work that is not easily categorized and requires new methods, more time, and a new kind of audience.
“It feels a little bit like the first New York I knew in the ’70s and ’80s. Not in a retro way at all, but art and residence and commerce were in a more balanced relationship than they are now. It’s not a reference to that time, just a little place where that is occurring again.” – Tere O’Connor, in a New York Times profile of the Chocolate Factory
The Chocolate Factory is located in Long Island City, at the first stop on both the 7 and G trains into Queens. L.I.C. is a waterfront neighborhood which in recent years has become known for its thriving arts community, and has among the highest concentration of art galleries, art institutions (among them MOMA’s PS1, the Institute of the Moving Image, Socrates Sculpture Park, Isamu Noguchi Museum) and studio space of any neighborhood in New York City.
Muazzez was developed with support from the Fusebox Festival in Austin, Texas.