Performance Space 122 presents 500 Clown to infuse the holiday season with jaw-dropping hilarity, off the hook festivity, and twisted tales of horror and delights.
500 Clown is the award-winning company that wields circus arts, improvisation, and action-based performance to produce theatre that catapults the performers into extreme physical and emotional risk. Their work shifts the audience from passive to active observers and creates a super-charged environment that celebrates the unpredictable power of the moment.
Composer/musician John Fournier joins 500 Clown to create a clown-rock-pop-jazz-theatre-concert-party(!) Diving into the dark and light sides of the all consuming consumer-driven yet still surprisingly touching Christmas season, 3 clowns and a 3 piece band throw a celebration to make Fezziwig proud, complete with a holiday toast, gift-giving, and original live music written by the incisive John Fournier.
Performance Space 122 presents its annual winter event The Coil Festival featuring some of the best up and coming artists in New York’s underground performance scene. Dancers, actors and performance artists round out this incredible line-up for January 2008.
1927
London-based 1927 bring their award-winning hit Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea to PS122 from January 9-27. This wildly inventive cabaret combines music, animation, and film to create a surreal satire that has delighted audiences all over the world. “I doubt you will see anything this deliciously nasty all year.” -The Guardian.
Winner, 2007 Edinburgh Fringe First Award, Herald Angel Award, Total Theater Award for Best Emerging Company, and the Carol Tambor Award.
SHOWTIMES: Jan 9th at 7pm, Jan 11th at 7pm, Jan 12th at 10pm, Jan 13th at 3pm, Jan 14th at 9pm. Production continues until January 27th, shows at 8pm.
more info
Deganit Shemy and Company
Lauded Israeli choreographer Deganit Shemy premiers a new work entitled Iodine which meticulously dissects self-exploration and self-consciousness. In a static landscape of hidden potential movement, Deganit explores the violence of a gesture, boundaries between the beautiful and grotesque and deftly interweaves morality and immorality. Prepare to squirm. https://dganit-shemy.com
SHOWTIMES: Jan 10th at 7pm, Jan 13th at 6pm.
more info LaS Company
Czech artists Kristina Lhotakova and Ladislav Soukup present a unique piece of documentary dance-theater using “real people” as the performers with surprising and sexy results. Set in winter 1996 in Rockville, Maryland, the story involves a family, a few guests, assorted farm animals, and a badly behaved dog. https://www.lascompany.com/
SHOWTIMES: Jan 9th at 10pm, Jan 10th at 10pm, Jan 12th at 7pm, Jan 13th at 9pm
more info
Maria Hassabi
Named by Time Out New York as one of “25 Ace New Yorkers
to Keep an Eye On” in 2006, choreographer Maria Hassabi presents a
fascinating duet with Hristoula Harakas that mesmerizes audiences with
living sculpture that becomes a tour of their own fantasies.
“The boundaries between dance, artwork, installation and performance are subtly blurred… every sculptural position suggests unverifiable meaning.” –New York Times
SHOWTIMES:, Jan 11th at 10pm, Jan 12th at 3pm
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the TEAM Visit a Kansas where parents vanish, aliens grow in cornfields, New Yorkers fall from the sky, and dead democrats stop by for Christmas dinner…
The TEAM returns to PS122 for a limited engagement following last spring’s sold-out run, awarded 5-Stars by Time Out New York: “Simultaneously intelligent, rueful, celebratory, delightful and devastatingly sad… the show actually lives up to its ambitions.”
Sold-out in London and at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Winner of Best Production Dublin Fringe 2007 and the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe First Award, Particularly In the Heartland is a hilarious new play about losing sight of America and trying to fall back in love with it. https://www.theteamplays.com/ EXTENDED RUN EXTENDED RUN: Jan 23-27
Wed – Sun at 7:30 pm
more info Banana Bag and Bodice
With lyrics as lacerating as they are poetic, Banana Bag and Bodice creates this hit theatre/music event that tells tall tales of a legendary punk band on a tour through the Scandinavian Oil Rig circuit. “…brilliant satire that sends up conventional thought about irony, sincerity, contemporary theatre, while kicking up buckets of piss and vinegar throughout”
– FlavorPill
Winners of Best Production, Dublin Fringe 2006. https://www.bananabagandbodice.org/
SHOWTIMES: Jan 10th at 6.30pm, Jan 11th at 9:40pm, Jan 12th at 3.30pm, Jan14th at 9.30pm and Jan 15th at 9.30pm Extended Run: Jan 17, Jan 18, Jan 19 at 8:00 p.m.
more info
John Moran and Saori What if Saori Had a Party? is the latest opera-ballet from the composer Philip Glass called the most important working composer today. Through a masterful rendering of sound and synchronized action, this show tells the story of a delightful animated television host who desperately wishes for a birthday. Read the Village Voice Review.
SHOWTIMES: Jan 9th at 9.30pm, Jan10th at 3:30pm, Jan 11th at 6.30pm, Jan 12th at 9.30 pm and Jan 13th at 6.30pm
more info
Paola Prestini and VisionIntoArt
Enter the strange and beautiful world of Italian born composer Paola Prestini and Serbian composer Milica Paranosic in their newest transmedia creation, VioLens. Walking the line between humor and horror, using sculptures and visual art by Erika Harrsch, projections by Carmen Kordas, animation by Martha Colburn, and breathtaking new musical compositions, Violens explores three classic children’s tales and their modern counterparts. https://www.visionintoart.com/
SHOWTIMES: Jan 13th at 3.30pm and Jan 14th at 6.30pm
Rob Roth and Theo Kogan
Conceived and directed by Rob Roth with Theo Kogan and her band “Theo and the Skyscrapers”, Screen Test is a live theater rock concert that blends haunting romantic imagery and modern apocalyptic paranoia with the gritty sensibility of underground NYC. Iconic punk front woman, Theo Kogan, hypnotizes the audience in this sci-fi dreamacape of hard rock, lush projections, and 1950s Hollywood. https://www.rob-roth.com/works/screen.htm
SHOWTIMES: (off site at Abrons Art Center, 466 Grand St.) Jan 12th and Jan 13th at 8.30pm
more info
C’est Duckie!
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.
more info
Andrew Dinwiddie and Jeff Larson aim to destroy your mind with their latest installment of the Catch series – CATCH 27. This festival celebrating the rough and ready presents a stunning array of emerging artists and downtown luminaries over two weekends of performance to devastate your whole deal.
Week One features asubtout’s Lady Centaurs Show (dance theater) and Week Two Laura Berlin Stinger’s Keeping It Down (play). These 45 minute pieces will be buttressed by short works from two handfuls of the most exciting emerging and established artists on the downtown scene including Ivy Baldwin, Big Dance Theater, Ursula Eagly, K.J. Holmes, Taylor Mac, Dean Moss, Heather Olson, Heidi Schreck, Anna Sperber, Nellie Tinder and the Theater of a Two-Headed Calf!
featuring:
asubtout ! Dec 13, 14, 15
Laura Stinger ! Dec 20, 21, 22
with:
Taylor Mac ! Dec 13
Ivy Baldwin ! Dec 14, 15
Anna Sperber ! Dec 20, 21
Keith Biesack ! Dec 20
Neal Medlyn ! 22 Dec
Big Dance Theater ! Dec 22
Sebastian Calderon Bentin and
Sean Donovan Dec 15 Andrew Dinwiddie ! Dec 20
Ursula Eagly ! Dec 15
K.J. Holmes ! Dec 13
Jennifer Monson ! Dec 22
Dean Moss ! Dec 21
Nellie Tinder ! Dec 21
Heather Olson ! Dec 14
Heidi Schreck ! Dec 14
Theater of a Two-Headed Calf ! Dec 13
December 13-15 and December 20-22, 2007
Thurs-Sat at 8:00 p.m.
Performance Space 122 presents 500 Clown to infuse the holiday season with jaw-dropping hilarity, off the hook festivity, and twisted tales of horror and delights.
500 Clown is the award-winning company that wields circus arts, improvisation, and action-based performance to produce theatre that catapults the performers into extreme physical and emotional risk. Their work shifts the audience from passive to active observers and creates a super-charged environment that celebrates the unpredictable power of the moment.
In 500 Clown Frankenstein, three clowns embark on a madcap journey to construct Dr. Frankenstein’s laboratory. Challenging and elaborate period costumes, poor lighting, difficult language, and an ornery table prevent them from properly telling Mary Shelley’s classic tale. Comic mayhem takes a sharp turn to a devastating climax when one clown is forced to play the role of the creature and suffer abuse and abandonment. The result is the creation of unexpected horror.
The Archery Contest, a Radio Play is an abstract sex comedy which follows the al fresco adventures of a quintet of players trapped between the Christian rules of the past and the Nihilistic chaos of the future.
A Reverend and his wife pursue a young girl and boy in a contest to claim them as secondary spouses. Encouraged by the teenagers’ guardian – a cemetery Sexton – the chase reaches its zenith during the ritualistic celebration of a long forgotten holiday.
Designed as a serial radio play in 4 parts, the work invokes visuals that remain unseen, challenging the notion that theatre exists only in the realm of the visual stage. A studio recording of Part 1 will be online at ART Radio WPS1.org in October 2007, while Part 2 will be recorded live in a staged performance at PS122 before going online. Part 3 and 4 will appear in 2008. The Archery Contest is an ongoing multi/media theater project whose goal is to embrace modern technology, especially the internet, as a means of disseminating theatrical content to a larger audience.
Written and Directed by John Jahnke
Soundscape by Kristin Worrall
Sound Installation by Andrew Schneider
photos by Plamen Petkov
Presented in association with Art Radio WPS1.org Web Radio Station.
1927
Deganit Shemy and Company
LaS Company
Maria Hassabi
the TEAM
Banana Bag and Bodice 
John Moran and Saori
Paola Prestini and VisionIntoArt
Rob Roth and Theo Kogan 
C’est Duckie!
