Archived Events | Page 56 of 96 | Performance Space New York Spring Gala

Democracy in America

Annie Dorsen, critically acclaimed co-creator and director of the hit rock musical on Broadway, Passing Strange, continues to break molds with her new performance event Democracy in America.

An episodic and juicy collage made from the cacophonous jumble of ideas, opinions and attitudes floating in the American ether, Democracy in America is a continually shifting 4-dimensional billboard advertising and animating the desires and dreams of the multitude. As a dynamic, interactive experiment in political performance, Democracy in America is not art about politics or ideology – instead, it is art made in a political way.

As a performance experiment, Democracy in America is continually evolving. During phase 1, the consumers were the creators. Through an online store that was open from November 26 through February 29, the public was invited to imagine and purchase the entire show – part and parcel – including the content. Any and all elements of what would be seen and experienced on stage were for sale. Shoppers submitted text, personal anecdotes, stories and jokes, physical or non-verbal actions, themes and concepts, and all elements of the design. One might’ve chosen to see a particular image or gesture, or performed a kiss, a dance, a cartwheel. Another may have chosen to buy a costume, a sound cue or a prop.

Now the shopping is over and Ms. Dorsen, together with her creative team, is tying it all together into a live art event that is sure to surprise.

Democracy in America will be performed by three of NYC’s most celebrated downtown artists, Okwui Okpokwasili, Philippa Kaye and Anthony Torn. The creative team includes video artist Kate Howard, lighting designer Sarah Sidmon, sound designer Bart Fasbender, and dramaturg Katherine Profeta.

Do you get what you paid for? Yes, you do. This wild ride will indeed include ancient Roman texts, a fan dance to Ride of the Valkyries, a tapioca explosion, and – O.K. people, who ordered the rim job?

Check out Behind the scenes at Democracy in America
Democracy in America is a co-presentation of Performance Space 122 and The Foundry Theatre

More about Annie Dorsen
Annie Dorsen is a director, writer and dramaturg. Dorsen is director and co-creator of the Broadway hit Passing Strange; a piece she developed with musicians Stew and Heidi Rodewald, which opened at the Belasco Theater in February 2008 to rave reviews. Passing Strange has previously been seen at The Public Theater and Berkeley Repertory Theater. She is currently developing Truckstop with string quartet Ethel for BAM’s Next Wave Festival in Fall 08.

Dorsen is the recipient of several awards and fellowships, notably the Audelco Award for her direction of Passing Strange, the Sir John Gielgud Fellowship for Classical Directors from SSDC, and both the Boris Sagal and Bill Foeller Fellowships from the Williamstown Theater Festival. She is a founding member of PAF (PerformingArtsForum), an artist-run research and residency space in St. Erme, France.

Photos by Yi Zhao

Sunday, March 30 – Sunday, April 20, 2008
Tickets from $20

Bride

☆☆☆☆ “In the church of puppet artistry, Augustine is divine.”
– David Cote, Time Out New York

Psychologically dark and brutally poetic, Bride is an epic puppet work for adults. Making its world premier at P.S.122 this season, it is written and performed by Kevin
Augustine and accompanied by a woodwind quintet conducted by Andrea La Rose of Anti-Social Music. Teasing the existential and macabre out of religious history and influenced by the works of Samuel Becket and Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein, Bride investigates the fate that befell the ancient Goddess-The Great Mother-while taking a critical look at the bloody legacy of her patriarchal successor, God the Father. Five puppeteers, a solo dancer, and complex aerial puppetry sequences bring Bride to life.

Kevin Augustine is artistic director of Lone Wolf Tribe; a one-man theatre ensemble composed of himself (the wolf) and his tribe of foam rubber puppets. In Augustine’s hands (as well as feet) ordinary foam is transformed, hand carved for maximum expressiveness, into living breathing creatures-strangely unsettling while at the same time extremely tender. This bizarre and evocative partnership makes Lone Wolf Tribe performances a truly powerful, and uniquely mesmerizing theatre experience. Established in 1997 LWT is winner of the San Francisco Fringe Festival Critic’s Choice Award and the New York International Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award for Solo Show and has performed at prestigious theatre festivals and artistic centers in the US and abroad.

Monday, March 17, 2008
March 19 – 30
Wednesday – Saturday at 8pm,
Sundays at 7 pm

Hello Failure

” a rare sort of poet who can bring you along on rhapsodic flights of storytelling, like an expert rafter running the rapids of a wild and unruly word river. ”
– Misha Berson, The Seattle Times

“One of the best new plays of the season”
– George Hunka

“the fluid, quirky groove is Kosmas’ powerfully evocative writing. Kosmas’ is a sharp, prismatic voice that refracts her characters’ language into a new world both oddly familiar and intriguingly foreign. “
– Brook Stowe, theater2k

Kristen Kosmas’ newest work is a sprawling associative neo-realistic comedy of beauty involving seven submariners’ wives, one counterfeit civil war ghost, one lusty renegade hairdresser and a poignant potted plant all making it through the day…barely.

Acclaimed playwright and co-founder of Obie-Award winning Little Theater, Kristen Kosmas will premier her new work Hello Failure at PS122 this season. In Hello Failure, Kosmas’ singular voice and distinctive theatrical sensibility create an oddly affecting and delightfully disorienting world, where bridges and communication collapse, and little attempts at kindness are botched or lost in the mail. Misha Berson of The Seattle Times says Kosmas is “a rare sort of poet who can bring you along on rhapsodic flights of storytelling, like an expert rafter running the rapids of a wild and unruly word river.” Kosmas’ work has been seen across the country and in New York City at venues including Dixon Place, Little Theater, Barbes, BRIC, Nada, the Ontological/Hysteric Downstairs Series, and The Ohio.

Directed by:
Ken Rus Schmoll

Featuring:
Michael Chick,
Benjamin Forster,
Janna Gjesdal,
Megan Hart,
Joan Jubett,
Kristen Kosmas,
Matthew Maher,
Aimee Phelan-Deconinck,
Tricia Rodley
and Maria Striar

Previews: March 2 – 4, 2008
Runs March 6 – 22, 2008
Mon, Thurs – Sat at 8:00pm,
Sundays at 6:30pm
Tickets from $18, $15 (students/seniors)

Avant-Garde-Arama Spring 2008

agaspring08

AVANT GARDE ARAMA KEEPS HOPE ALIVE

“Try as it may to maintain theatrical composure, always ends up degenerating, or exploding, into an all-out party.”
-flavorpill.net

P.S. 122’s longest-running series (25 years) is an action-packed, eye-popping multi-disciplinary mini-festival that always culminates in a DJ dance party. The latest eruption of breakout dance, music, theatre, performance, video/film and more are presented in 8 minutes or less. The ever-popular “40-Second-Street” segment invites the audience to sign-up and present their own express performance contribution, be it prepared or made up on the spot.

Hosted by Yehuda Duenyas, Normandy Sherwood, and Jonathan Jacobs of
the National Theater of the United States of America

Installation by the Love Everybody Movement with
Laminated Love by Cat
Celebrezze
Corridor piece by R.RABBIT
Special appearance by Guerilla Dance Team

Friday, May 9th

Red Terror Squad
Ryan Trecartin
Mr Fashion (Dir. Jacob Burckhardt)
DuPree and Friend
Leah Meyerhoff
Lavinia Co-op
Fiasco

Saturday May 10th

Martha Wilson / Barbara Bush
M. Lamar
Natalie Agee & Diana Y Greiner with Baby Blue
Bradford Scobie
Leah Meyerhoff
The Dana Leong Band

Curated by Salley May, Tom Murrin, Henry Baumgartner,
Joe E. Jeffreys and Miss Joan Marie Moossy

Lavinia Co-op photo by Ande Whyland

May 9 and 10 2008
Tickets from $10

Welcome to Nowhere

roadtonowhere

“A captivating, hypnotic, and mesmerizing work of art, easily one of the best plays I’ve seen this year… So compelling, so haunting, so thoroughly absorbing. I loved this show.”
– NYTheater.com

“Equal parts installation art and surreal montage.”
– New York Magazine online

“A daring performance about memory and identity. Welcome to Nowhere captures beautifully the psychic haziness it takes on as a major theme.”
– Village Voice

“The show draws you into an intimate embrace, as if the characters are whispering in your ear while you watch their dreams.”
– Gothamist

“The video sequences in Welcome to Nowhere are so beautifully shot they put most major films to shame.” – Off Off Blogway

“Though cloaked in shadow and speaking in muted tones, hold their listeners spellbound… Like the powerful acting, much of the imagery contained in the film proves mesmerizing. One recurring desert starscape is just as transportive as any planetarium.”
– Queens Chronicle

Part road movie, part fractured memory, part love story…Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) is a hybrid of theater and cinema. During the performance, a constant stream of video is projected above the cast. In scenes of prolonged stillness, silence and impassivity, doppelgangers of the characters we meet onstage navigate a hyper-real cinematic landscape as if lost in a dream, creating parallel narratives that echo, reflect and refract each moment of the play.

Staged in one of Temporary Distortion’s signature, claustrophobic boxlike installations, the live performers’ softly spoken words are amplified by microphones. Referencing filmic styles of performance, underplayed and restrained, they tell the story of a man who is haunted by his past and drifting across America. There is blood across the dashboard, headlights in the rearview mirror and the vague memory of a hitchhiker who may have been a dream.

Conceived by Kenneth Collins
With Video by William Cusick
CAST: Ben Beckley, Stacey Collins, Brian Greer, Lorraine Mattox, Jessica Pagan, Stephanie Silver
Costumes: TaraFawn Marek
Music & Sound: John Sullivan
Motion Graphics: Jon Weiss
Assistant Director: Christine Vartoughian
Video Assistant: Anh Dang

Temporary Distortion has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of theatre by staging plays in claustrophobic boxlike structures, with little physical movement and a unique restrained style of acting.

Welcome to Nowhere was developed at The Ontological-Hysteric Theater and received its N.Y. premiere at The Chocolate Factory in 2007 as part of its Visiting Artist Program. It will be performed in March and April at the Via Festival in Maubeuge, France and at the Exit Festival in Paris.

Original PS122 Run: Feb 20 – 23, 2008
Also playing in the COIL 2009 Festival