Archives: Archived Events

The Holler Sessions
Frank Boyd (USA)

Staged as a live radio show, The Holler Sessions centers around one man’s burning obsession for jazz. An explosive Kansas City DJ broadcasts his articulate, profane and impassioned testimony in a music-filled interactive experience. Maniacal rants, razor-sharp insights, and mildly scatological humor are interspersed with extraordinary music and lots of space for listening. The Holler Sessions serves as a jazz primer for the uninitiated, a powerful reminder for jazz fans and an irreverent love letter to the best thing America has ever created, and then forgotten.

Created in collaboration with the TEAM.

Writer and Performer: Frank Boyd
Consulting Directors: Rachel Chavkin, Josh Aaseng
Sound Designer: Matt Hubbs
Lighting Designer: Eric Southern
Stage Manager: Samantha Fremer
Videography: Mehmet Salih Yildirim, Gina Chang.

“Frank Boyd’s one-man theater piece is a vital exhortation on the significance of jazz…it should be required viewing for all musicians, music lovers, pop-culture fiends, artists, art fans and American people over the age of 7.” – City Arts, Seattle

95 minutes running time

Presented by Performance Space 122 in partnership with the Paradise Factory

Jan 6 – 6pm
Jan 7 – 9pm
Jan 8 – 9pm
Jan 9 – 4pm & 10pm
Jan 10 – 2pm
Jan 12 – 9pm
Jan 13 – 8:30pm
Jan 14 – 9pm
Jan 15 – 8pm
Jan 16 – 3pm & 8pm
Jan 17 – 7pm

Paradise Factory
64 East 4th Street, Manhattan

$20 / $15 Students & Seniors

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Frank Boyd is a theater artist based in Seattle. He is a member of the NYC ensembles Elevator Repair Service and the TEAM. With ERS he performed in Gatz (Public Theater), and The Select / The Sun Also Rises (New York Theater Workshop). With the TEAM Frank co-wrote and performed in Architecting (Public Theater UtR, PS122) and Particularly In the Heartland (PS122). Frank has recently been touring with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company in Straight White Men. In Seattle, Frank has worked at Seattle Repertory theater and the Intiman Theater. Frank played Joe Kavalier (Seattle Times Footlight Award) in the world premiere of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay at Book-It Repertory Theater. Frank went to NYU and is from Michigan.

Paradise Factory, located in the East Village of Manhattan, is accessible by the F subway line to 2nd Avenue. The East Village has become a center of the counterculture in New York, and is known as the birthplace of many artistic movements, such as punk rock and Nuyorican literature.

Some staff favorites for great dining in the area include Babu Ji NYC at 175 Avenue B and DBGB Kitchen and Bar at 299 Bowery.

Featured image by Frank Boyd
 
Development of The Holler Sessions was supported by On the Boards and the Seattle Office of Arts & Culture. This project is made possible in part by support from the National Performance Network (NPN) Performance Residency Program. For more information: www.npnweb.org.

Morphia Series
Helen Herbertson & Ben Cobham (Australia)

At the intersection of darkness and spatial depth lies Melbourne-based Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham’s Morphia Series. A set of visual haikus, inspired by Morpheus, son of Hypnos and the god of dreams, this intimate performance for audiences of 12 people at a time hovers in a phantasmal dream world.

Design Concept: Ben Cobham & Helen Herbertson
Performance, Text, Sound Concept: Helen Herbertson
Light: Ben Cobham
Morsels: John Salisbury
Additional performance: Michelle Heaven

“…a beautifully conceived piece…which set a high standard in uncompromisingly abstract, yet accessible work.” —The Guardian

18 minutes running time

Co-presented by Baryshnikov Arts Center and Performance Space 122

Jan 12 – 7pm, 7:45pm & 8:30pm
Jan 13 – 7pm, 7:45pm, 8:30pm, 9:15pm & 10pm
Jan 14 – 7pm, 7:45pm, 8:30pm, 9:15pm & 10pm
Jan 15 – 7pm, 7:45pm, 8:30pm, 9:15pm & 10pm
Jan 16 – 6pm, 6:45pm & 7:30pm

Howard Gilman Performance Space, Baryshnikov Arts Center,
450 West 37th Street, Manhattan

$20

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Melbourne based Helen Herbertson and Ben Cobham share a 20-year work history, as well as extensive individual experience across the scope of the arts profession as active creative participants, in management, design, production and education. Their creative partnership, fueled by a mutual interest in the intersection of light, body and the built form, has yielded an array of groundbreaking and award winning work.
 
“We are interested in providing the audience with visceral entry points to the work, stimulating an imaginative response and the extremities of the viewer’s perception. In creating a cohesive aesthetic for each new project, we work slowly and in tandem, with space for each creative interest to lead the process with a particular detailed focus. Working this way we find the greater the sum of the parts and the richer the outcome.”

Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC) is the realization of a long-held vision by artistic director Mikhail Baryshnikov who sought to build an arts center in Manhattan that would serve as a gathering place for artists from all disciplines. BAC’s opening in 2005 heralded the launch of this mission, establishing a thriving creative laboratory and performance space for artists from around the world. BAC’s activities encompass a robust residency program augmented by a range of professional services, including commissions of new work, as well as the presentation of performances by artists at varying stages of their careers. In tandem with its commitment to supporting artists, BAC is dedicated to building audiences for the arts by presenting contemporary, innovative work at affordable ticket prices. For more information, please visit www.bacnyc.org.

Baryshnikov Arts Center (BAC), located in the Hudson Yards neighborhood on Manhattan’s far West Side, is accessible by the A/C/E and 1/2/3 subway lines. Just a few blocks from the northern end of the High Line, BAC is at the center of a culturally vibrant neighborhood, home to an array of art galleries, theater companies, and shopping destinations. Visitors to BAC can choose from a variety of restaurants, bars, and cafés along 9th Avenue between 34th and 42nd streets.
 

Featured image by Rachelle Roberts
 
Morphia Series is supported by the Victorian Government through Creative Victoria and by the Faculty of VCA & MCM, University of Melbourne. This presentation has been supported by the Australian Government through the Australia Council for the Arts, its arts funding and advisory body.

o’ death
Findlay//Sandsmark + Pettersen (Norway/USA)

Inspired by 1920s blues singer and brimstone pastor J.M. Gates’s songs such as “O Death, Where is Thy Sting?” o’ death is a multidisciplinary performance installation, choreographed by award-winning Norwegian choreographer Marit Sandsmark, that impossibly and playfully attempts to prove that death does not exist and everything we have ever loved is not enough.

Built on a reflexive interaction between sound and movement, the performance comes alive amidst towering styrofoam sculptures and mechanical trees, giving sound a physical presence in movements, objects and flickering lights. o’ death is shaped by notions of ferality and biocentrism, exploring the tension between the natural and the synthetic.

“Death does not exist, only fear of death” – Andrej Tarkovskij

Concept/ Idea/ Production: Findlay/Sandsmark
Director & Designer: Iver Findlay
Choreographer & Performer: Marit Sandsmark
Composer & Musician: Pål Asle Pettersen
Visual Artist: Jason Rogenes
Sound Artist: Jim Dawson
Collaborator: Joey Truman

“Both experimenting with form and intellectual ruminations, this promising performance is a must for a curious audience.” —Scenekunst.no

60 minutes running time

Presented by Performance Space 122 in partnership with Ideal Glass Gallery

Jan 12 – 6pm
Jan 13 – 7pm
Jan 14 – 7pm
Jan 15 – 10pm
Jan 16 – 9pm
Jan 17 – 5pm

Ideal Glass Gallery
22 East 2nd Street in Manhattan

$20 / $15 Students & Seniors

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Findlay//Sandsmark (F//S) is a Norwegian performance company working across the disciplines of dance, theater, live music, and video art. For the past five years the constellation of Iver Findlay and Marit Sandsmark have created several productions in the borderland between performing arts and installation, bending connections and correlations between disciplines to create live art that resonates from a physical and emotional plane. In that brief time, they have made five large-scale performances: now and nowhere else (2010), fractured bones/ let’s get lost (2011/2012), biograph, last year was pretty/shitty (2013/2014), o’ death (2014/2015), and (re)remember study (2015/2016) as well as several other shorter pieces/installations. F//S had their US premiere with their large-scale work now and nowhere else in 2010 at PS122. For each project they invite new collaborators to work with them in an open process based approach, such as: Diane Madden (Trisha Brown Dance Company), Eric Dyer (Radiohole), Joey Truman, Victor E. Morales, Ruud van den Akker (Wooster Group), Jim Dawson, Young Jean Lee, Claudia La Rocco, Jason Rogenes, and Catherine McRae.

Ideal Glass Gallery is an New York-based art collective founded by performance artist and filmmaker Willard Morgan to shock, entertain, and transform. Collaborating with art-wear sculptor Uta Bekaia, visual artist Ayakamay, sound designer John Sully, editor Jessie Stead, the international team explores social activism, gentrification, sexual identity and the slavery of debt-through live performance, sound recording and art video.

Ideal Glass Gallery, located in the East Village of Manhattan, is accessible by the F subway line to 2nd Avenue. The East Village has become a center of the counterculture in New York, and is known as the birthplace of many artistic movements, such as punk rock and Nuyorican literature.

Some staff favorites for great dining in the area include Babu Ji NYC at 175 Avenue B and DBGB Kitchen and Bar at 299 Bowery.

Featured image by Minna Suojoki
 
o’ death is co-produced by Bit-Teatergarasjen, Black Box Teater, Tou Scene and RAS. o’ death is supported by Arts Council Norway, American Scandinavian Foundation, FFUK, Stavanger Kommune, Sandnes Kommune, Rogaland Fylkeskommune, UD/Stikk, Performing Arts Hub Norway, Norwegian Consulate General in New York and FuturePerfect Productions in association with Norway Now: Performing Arts from the Northern Latitudes. Norway Now is an annual event in New York bringing together Norwegian artists and producers with North American presenters, curators and festival directors. PS122 presentation support provided by Mertz Gilmore Foundation, Harkness Foundation for Dance and Jerome Robbins Foundation.

Confirmation
Chris Thorpe & Rachel Chavkin (UK/USA)

Confirmation attempts to have an honorable dialogue, real and imagined, with extremist thinking and the toughest political issues of our time. Set in an arena-style ring, a series of conversations between Thorpe and a British activist from the extreme right unfold; tackling frustrations that happen within political discourse and the phenomenon of “Confirmation Bias”.

Confirmation challenges notions of what it means to be open minded and asks whether any of us are really listening to the other side of an argument. The effects of confirmation bias is often stronger for emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs, an area which Thorpe and Chavkin are not afraid to tread.

Writer & Performer: Chris Thorpe
Director: Rachel Chavkin
Design Consultant: Ben Pacey
Sound Editor: Melanie Wilson
Producer: China Plate
Videography: Mehmet Salih Yildirim

“a fiercely intelligent and relentlessly curious piece that strives for the truth.” – Herald Scotland

85 minutes running time

Co-presented by the Invisible Dog Art Center and Performance Space 122

Jan 13 – 7pm
Jan 14 – 7pm
Jan 15 – 7pm
Jan 16 – 9pm
Jan 17 – 3pm

The Invisible Dog Art Center
51 Bergen Street, Brooklyn

$20 / $15 Students & Seniors

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Chris Thorpe is a writer and performer from Manchester. He is a founding member of Unlimited and is also an artistic associate of Third Angel. He is making a cycle of solo pieces and continues to collaborate with companies like Slung Low, Forest Fringe, RashDash and Soup Collective, with whom he wrote and recorded the piece The Bomb On Mutannabbi Street Is Still Exploding, which has been permanently installed at the Imperial War Museum North. Chris’s plays have been produced worldwide and he has toured with Unlimited and Third Angel in Europe, Africa, Asia and the USA. His new show with Unlimited, Am I Dead Yet? was part of the British Council Showcase in 2015 alongside Confirmation.
 
Recent projects include a trilogy of plays, Overdrama, House/Garden and Dead End for Portuguese company mala voadora, which continue to tour in Europe. His new show with mala, Your Best Guess, opened at Lisbon’s Almada Festival in June 2015. He is also still touring in Third Angel’s show What I Heard About The World, recently to Poland, Brazil, Germany and Lebanon. He also wrote forums performed in Third Angel’s Paradise Project.
 
He worked with poet Hannah Jane Walker in 2010 to make her solo show, This Is Just To Say. Hannah and Chris then worked together again to create The Oh Fuck Moment, which won a Fringe First at Edinburgh Fringe 2011, and I Wish I Was Lonely in 2013, most recently performed at Perth International Festival. He also plays guitar in Lucy Ellinson’s political extreme noise project TORYCORE.
 
As a playwright, Chris revived his show, There Has Possibly Been An Incident, at the Stuckemarkt in Berlin (following an invitation from playwright Simon Stephens). He also wrote Northern Stage’s Christmas Show, Dark Woods, Deep Snow in 2013. Chris is currently writing shows for the Royal Court and the Unicorn Theatre as well as continuing work with Manchester’s Royal Exchange Theatre as an Associate Artist, working towards a new piece in 2017.
 
Rachel Chavkin is a Brooklyn-based director/dramaturg/writer, and the Artistic Director of collaborative ensemble the TEAM. Founded in 2004, the TEAM makes new work about the experience of living in America today, and aims to keep the brain, eyes, and heart of the audience constantly stimulated. Four time winners of the Fringe First, winner of the 2011 Herald Angel, the 2011 EIF Fringe Prize, and ranked Best of 2013 on three continents, the TEAM’s work includes Mission Drift, a new musical composed by Heather Christian that travels through 400 years of history in pursuit of the soul of American capitalism, and RoosevElvis, the story of a surreal road trip from the Badlands to Graceland. The TEAM has been presented at or received commissions from organizations all over New York (including the Public Theater, PS122, and the Bushwick Starr), nationally (including the Walker Art Center and the A.R.T.), internationally (including London’s National Theatre, the National Theatre of Scotland, the Barbican Centre, the Almeida Theatre, the Traverse Theatre, international festivals in Perth and Hong Kong, and the Salzburg Festival’s Young Directors Program).
 
In addition to her work with the TEAM, Rachel collaborates regularly with writers and composers on new work. Recent projects include Dave Malloy’s immersively staged electro-pop opera Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Kazino – commercial transfer; World Premiere: Ars Nova – New York Times, Time Out New York and New York Post Critics’ Picks, and Top Ten); storyteller James Monaco and composer Jerome Ellis’ collaboration Aaron/ Marie; Meg Miroshnik’s The Fairytale Lives of Russian Girls (Yale Rep); Rick Burkhardt, Alec Duffy and Dave Malloy’s Three Pianos (A.R.T., NYTW – Dec ’10/Jan ’11, Ontological Incubator Series – Feb/March ’10, 2010 Obie Award); and repeat collaborations with playwright/performer/activist Taylor Mac including his extravaganza The Lily’s Revenge (World Premiere, Act II) (HERE Arts Center, 2010 Obie Award) and Peace, co-written by Mac and Chavkin (Workshop, HERE Arts Center, 2007).
 
Rachel is a two-time Obie Winner, and was nominated as Best Director for both the Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel Awards for her work on Great Comet. Upcoming work includes multiple projects with Dave Malloy, adapting folk singer Anaïs Mitchell’s album Hadestown, a theatrical concert adaption of Mac Wellman’s intergalactic Ohio-based novel Annie Salem in collaboration with composer Heather Christian, and the TEAM’s multigenerational cover band project, Primer for a Failed Superpower.
 
China Plate is an independent theatre studio that works with artists, venues, festivals and funders to make original, exciting theatre that plays with form and has narrative at its heart.
 
China Plate consists of Ed Collier, Paul Warwick, Kirsten Burrows and Kaya Stanley-Money.

The Invisible Dog Art Center The Invisible Dog Art Center is housed in a three-story former factory building in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. Built in 1863, our 30,000 square foot facility has been the site of various industrial endeavors – most notably a belt factory that created the famous Walt Disney invisible dog party trick, from which they take their name. The building remained dormant from the mid 1990’s to 2009 when founder, Lucien Zayan, opened The Invisible Dog.
 
The Invisible Dog is dedicated to the integration of forward-thinking innovation with respect for the past. In 2009 the building was restored for safety, and has been maintained over the years, but otherwise preserved in tact from its original 1863 form. The rawness of the space is vital to the space’s cultural identity.
 
The ground floor is used for exhibitions, performances and public events, featuring artists and curators from round the world. This floor also includes a new pop-up shop, designed by artist-in-residence Anne Mourier, conceived as a new home for independent, commercial designers in various fields. The second floor and part of the third floor are divided into over 30 artists’ studios.The third floor, luminous and spacious is used for private events, exhibitions, performances and festivals. Finally, the Glass House is a brand new, seasonal exhibition space dedicated to featuring the work of female-identified artists.

The Invisible Dog Art Center is located in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn and is accessible by the F and G subways. This cool and calm region on the northwest side of Brooklyn is home to roughly 20,000 residents. Invisible Dog Art Center sits one block from Dean Street and two blocks from Atlantic Avenue, both boasting a plethora of bars and restaurants.
 
Boerum Hill claims a trendy stretch of Smith Street as its own, and small cafes and stores are dotted throughout the neighborhood’s interior, like the restaurant Building on Bond and the Brooklyn Circus boutique. Some staff picks include: 61 Local, just next door at 61 Bergen Street! Hancos, 85 Bergen St & 134 Smith Street (2 locations); Van Leeuwen, 81 Bergen Street; Bien Cuit, 120 Smith Street; Van Horn Sandwich Shop, 231 Court Street; Ki Sushi, 122 Smith Street.

Featured image by China Plate
 
Confirmation was produced by the Warwick Arts Centre and China Plate and commissioned by Northern Stage and Battersea Arts Centre.