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Eight

architecting

“One of the most self-assured, startlingly well-written and moving pieces of theatre around.”
– The Herald

“Stunningly well performed…this is a truly impressive and exciting hour of theatre”
– The Scotsman

Winner of the 2008 Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award and Fringe First Award Winner, EIGHT is a collection of extraordinary tales of remarkably self-aware young adults smartly crafted by breakout playwright Ella Hickson.

From high-class hookers to those who make friends in morgues, to single mothers and bereaved gallery owners, Eight gives all of these otherwise neglected characters center-stage, including the moving, politically punchy portrait of a man who has lost everything except his memories of the 7/7 London bombings. Marginal behavior is integrated into the mainstream and apathy blazes across it all. ‘Eight’ works to find the glimmers of faith in a world of wholesale cynicism. Incisively witty yet touching and potent, these eight monologues present what those reaching adulthood in The Naughties would be saying – if they could be bothered.

Writer Ella Hickson has written and published poetry since her late teens and completed her first novel in 2004. In addition she has worked as a producer for BBC comedy troupe The Penny Dreadfuls, Offstage Theatre, The Edinburgh Film Festival and in 2006 established her own production company, Escape Artist.

Photo credit: Tom Bishop

best of edinburgh

Presented as part of COIL 09 January 6 – 13, 2009
Extended: Wed, January 14 – Sun, January 25
Wednesday – Saturday 8pm
Sunday 5pm
Tickets from $25
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Guruguru

guruguru

By Ant Hampton, with Joji Koyama and Isambard Khroustaliov

“Hugely entertaining… This smart, mysterious exercise in programmed thinking and collective chaos is strange but exhilarating.” – The Times

“You may find yourself frantically looking for yourself again in the moments after the performance has finished.” – The Guardian

You have been told what to do every moment of the day, for years on end. The voice in your headphones has understood who you are and gives instructions which mirror what you’d be doing anyway. A life free of dither and uncertainty! In your job, this voice is a career-saver… but the day has come when you need to come ‘off the headphones’. You need help.

Five participants enter a brightly lit room, there are five chairs positioned around a TV. A session begins, and as each audience member follows different instructions via headphones, they begin to understand ‘who they are’. Proceedings are led by an on-screen, animated character – whose twin roles of marketing and spiritual Guru are confused by his reliance on untested and accident-prone technologies. The overproduced, digital sheen of our focus-group world cracks open into a colourful volcano of boiling absurdity. A hilarious chaos develops, exposing today’s consumer-mad inability to distinguish between what we want, and what we need.

A Rotozaza Production By Ant Hampton, with Joji Koyama and Isambard Khroustaliov

Commissioned by Fusebox Festival, Texas
Produced by ArtsAgenda

Presented as part of COIL 2010

Supported by the British Council.

50 minutes
January 6-12, 2010
Jan 6 – 8, Jan 11 – 12:
Performances daily 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 10pm
Sat, Jan 9: Performances 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 10pm
Sun, Jan 10: Performances 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 10pm
$10

Coil 2009

Pan Pan – The Crumb Trail
The death of the Fairy Tale. Where did being good ever get anyone?
It’s a sort of detective story, sharp and blunt. Detecting where we are at – but in the dark.
Can we not engage with reality anymore? Ice caps are melting and I’m watching people I don’t know on ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.’ Run time: 1 hour 20
Wed, Jan 7 6:30p |
Thu, Jan 8 10:30p |
Fri, Jan 9 2:30p |
Sun, Jan 11 7p |
Mon, Jan 12 3:30p |
Extended: Jan 15 – Jan 17
More info

Joseph Silovsky – Jester of Tonga
“Wonderfully sweet and quirky” – Culturebot
At last, the man known as one of downtown’s technological wizards steps out from behind the curtain. Silovsky and his robot Stanley tell the very true and complex story of Jesse Dean, the sensational modern-day Court Jester to the Tongan Royal Court. Run time: 1 hour
Wed, Jan 7 10p |
Fri, Jan 9 7:30p |
Sat, Jan 10 2:30p |
Mon, Jan 12 9:30p
More info

Lewis Forever – LEWIS FOREVER: Freak the Room
LEWIS FOREVER is three sisters and a brother, a director, two dancers and a musician. What happens when we freak the fiction of cultural and familial identification? There is play, fantasy, sex and violence. There is an impostor. Words seem to come out almost right. Reactions test their relationships to actions and everything appears as more than it seems. Performance Space 122 is their living room – and they will freak it. Run time: 1 hour
Wed, Jan 7 7p |
Fri, Jan 9 10p |
Sat, Jan 10 6:30p |
Tue, Jan 13 3p
More info

Okwui Okpokwasili – Pent Up: A Revenge Dance
Bessie Award-winner and beloved downtown actress Okwui Okpokwasili spins a modern multi-character folktale. In it, she portrays a woman in exile who sees and seeks revenge as a way of reconciling her present impoverished condition with the belief that she’s a direct descendant of the sun. Run time: 1 hour
Sun, Jan 11 7:30p |
Mon, Jan 12 2:30p | Extended: Feb 10 – 22
More info

Ella Hickson/Tantrum Productions – Eight
A collection of extraordinary tales of remarkably self aware young adults: a politically conservative prostitute keeping old values alive; a hugely successful stockbroker walking out of his life; a gallery owner discovering the suicide of his partner hanging by an Hermes scarf. Run time: 2.5 hours
Tue, Jan 6 7:30p |
Thu, Jan 8 7:30p |
Fri, Jan 9 2pm | Sun, Jan 11 2pm | Extended: Jan 14 – 25
More info

Temporary Distortion – Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road)
“A daring performance about memory and identity.” – Village Voice
Part road movie, part fractured memory, part love story. A hybrid of theater and cinema, staged in Temporary Distortion’s claustrophobic boxlike installation. Run time: 1 hour
Wed, Jan 7 10:30p |
Thu, Jan 8 2:30p |
Sat, Jan 10 7p |
Tue, Jan 13 7:30p
More info

The Shalimar – Trash Warfare
“The most exciting young American company I have seen up here so far this century.”
– Financial Times
Phaedra. The original MILF. Live music, frenetic dance, fierce boxing, raw meat, and nobody’s telling the truth. 8 wild performers satirize America’s celebrity obsession in the midst of war. Grab a ringside seat and be careful of blood splatter. Flash photography is encouraged. Run time: 75 minutes
Thu, Jan 8 3p |
Sat, Jan 10 10p |
Mon, Jan 12 6:30p |
Tue, Jan 13 7p
More info

LeeSaar – Geisha
“Geisha,” by LeeSaar The Company, is a trio with a sexy, raw edge that belies an underlying sense of vulnerability. – The New Yorker, 2008
“LeeSaar’s dances always require unwavering attention, they are powerful. “Geisha” is one of their strongest and most fascinating excursions into territory whose physical and emotional atmospheres are a coolly seething whole.”
-Jennifer Dunning , The NY Times, 2008. Runtime: 1 hour
Sat, Jan 10 2p |
Mon, Jan 12 7p

The BodyCartography Project – Holiday House
“The pleasure of viewing is so intense here, so fun as to be nearly guilty.”-Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine. On holiday the normal sequence of time unravels, regular activities, chores and spatial awareness of ordinary places are deconstructed or completely altered, perception bends. Reality shifts. Dance and video artists Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad are co-directors of the BodyCartography Project and have been collaborating for ten years. Run time: 50 minutes
Fri, Jan 9 7p |
Sat, Jan 10 10:30p |
Mon, Jan 12 10p |
Tue, Jan 13 3:30p

Palissimo – Blind Spot
“Blind Spot casts a potent spell.” – Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
Pavel Zustiak, the 2007 recipient of The Princess Grace Award in Choreography, reprises the acclaimed Blind Spot at Performance Space 122 and creates a world where that which is no longer seen, heard, nor felt reoccurs as an unwelcome guest. Numb senses retrieve their former abilities and experience the world as if for the first – or last – time. Run time: 1 hour
Thu, Jan 8 7p |
Fri, Jan 9 10:30p
More info

Reid Farrington – The Passion Project
“One of the most satisfying theatrical experiences I’ve had in ages” writes Claudia La Rocco
Carl Th. Dreyer’s 1928 immortal masterpiece is exploded into three dimensions. With multiple projection surfaces and one single actor, Farrington explores the intersection of live performance and film giving us a complete look at the outtakes and reels that were lost to fire, like Joan of Arc herself.
Jan 10 – 17: 3p & 9:30p | Jan 13 – 3p ONLY | Jan 14 – 9:30p ONLY
More info

The TEAM – Architecting
“a remarkable piece of work…” -The Financial Times
A collision of horses, sex and hoop skirts, burning plantations and nasty hurricanes in this musical, time-bending, multi-media epic that weaves through the country’s future, present and past in a modern American requiem. Reconstructions, real and imagined, of citizens and nations.
Fri, Jan 9 8p | Sat, Jan 10 1p | Sun, Jan 11 7p | Wed, Jan 14 7p | Thu, Jan 15 7p | Sat, Jan 17 7p | Sun, Jan 18 2p | Extended: At Performance Space 122, Jan 22 – Feb 15
More info

Jan 6-14, 2009

C’est Duckie!

“C’est delightful, C’est divine, C’est trés magnifique!”
The Guardian

“Delicious bite sized burlesque”
Time Out London

The perfect show and nightclub for a swanky holiday night out!
Patrons please note: A dress code of suitably swanky evening wear is encouraged!

Performance Space 122 imports London-based performance troupe Duckie and their smash hit, C’est Duckie!, the Olivier award-winning, interactive nightclub performance experience, for a wild and absolutely outrageous alternative to traditional holiday fare.

Following sold-out seasons in London, Sydney, Berlin, and Tokyo, C’est Duckie!, “London’s Table Top Christmas Performance Palais,” serves up a menu of daring, delectable and devious entertainments that result in tailor-made, table-top shows from a top class talent troupe of soubrettes, hoofers, and starlets from the London performance scene as well as special guest artists from New York City including: Taylor Mac, Jessica Delfino, the Wau Wau Sisters, and Dynasty Handbag!

Armed with Duckie dollars upon entering, guests at each table can order from a show menu of craftily titled “acts” at will. Shows include a variety of theatrical fare – vaudeville, ventriloquism, balloon modelling, broken down burlesque – with over 30 kunst-cabaret turns from the suggestive to the transgressive to the downright offensive.

Pitching popular commercial entertainment against contemporary performance provocation, Duckie prove that Performance Art is the new table dancing in this all-singing, all-dancing shameless crowd-pleaser. At last, whether they’ve been naughty or nice, New Yorkers can experience this swanky showbiz spectacular for themselves.

As featured in the Sunday Times

As featured in Time Out New York

As featured in the Village Voice

Patrons please note a dress code of swanky evening wear is requested.
Recommended for ages 18 and over; 21+ to drink alcohol.

Presented in association with Foster Entertainment.

Supported by the British Council.

Running time: 2 hours

Photos by Hugo Glendinning.

OFF SITE LOCATION: CSV Cultural Center
107 Suffolk Street (map)
between Rivington and Delancey

Thursday, December 20 –
Saturday, January 19, 2008

Meow Meow

David Binder, Josh Wood and Performance Space 122 present Meow Meow
in ‘Meow to the World!’

Named one of the Best Cabaret acts of 2007, Meow Meow “Leaves audiences dangling helplessly at her feet”
– Time Out New York

After wowing audiences around the world, and selling out Speigelworld, The Sydney Opera House, The Glamour Room Shanghai, and Joe’s Pub, the “postmodern cabaret diva” Meow Meow brings her unique brand of kamikaze cabaret kitsch and performance art exotica to The Highline Ballroom for the world premiere of “Meow to the World!”

Meow Meow is the recipient of numerous awards including the New York Franklin Furnace Performance Art award (2005), DAAD for theatre in Berlin, Adelaide Fringe Festival “Best Cabaret Award” winner 2008, and multiple Australian Theatre Green Room Award winner “Best Cabaret Artist”, “Best Musical Direction”, “Best Cabaret Production” 2007.

She has created numerous full length works for various international arts festivals and venues including “Beyond Glamour: the Absinthe Tour”, “Beyond Beyond Glamour: The Remix”, “My Mouth is a wonder…”, “Shanghai Demise” and most recently “Insert the Name of the Person you Love” (for Sydney Festival) and VAMP for Sydney Opera House. She is a regular guest with the Spiegeltent’s “La Cirque” globally, and “Absinthe” for Spiegelworld NYC. She is currently performing at Bar Jeder Vernunft Berlin, and will work next with Pina Bausch.
‘Meow to the World!’ will feature Musical Director Lance Horne

LANCE HORNE has received a 2008 Emmy Award for Best Original Song. As a singer and pianist, he has played this season with Amanda Palmer, Jake Shears, Ana Matronic, Meow Meow, Nellie McKay, Justin Bond, Alan Cumming, and opened for Death Cab for Cutie, appearing in Carnegie’s Berlin in Lights series, the David Bowie-curated HighLine Festival, Weimar NY at the Green Door, Shanghai, and with Meow in Berlin, Ann Arbor, Sydney, and Edinburgh Festivals, Pina Bausch Tanzfestival, and the Dresden Dolls Tour. More information about Lance can be found at lancehorne.com
To read more about Meow Meow’s solo performances, collaborations, recordings, and upcoming performances, please visit her at
www.meowmeowrevolution.com or
www.myspace.com/meowmeowrevolution

Photo: Harmony Nicholas

Wed, Dec 17 – Dec 21, 2008