Archived Events | Page 84 of 96 | Performance Space New York

Gorilla Man

Kyle Jarrow

Directed by Habib Azar
Produced by Chris Kam

Puberty is hard enough without the insatiable thirst for blood.

Obie Award winner Kyle Jarrow brings you this theatrical spectacle about a boy becoming a monster. Filled with bombastic rock songs and peopled with lonely freaks, it’s a pulse-pounding mix of comedy, concert, and carnival.

Waking one morning to find thick fur growing on the backs of his hands, young Billy discovers the awful truth his mother has been hiding from him for 14 years. Cast from his home, he sets out on a journey to find his father, the legendary Gorilla Man. Combining influences as diverse as Tod Browning, Tom Sawyer, and T. Rex, Gorilla Man is a strikingly original new music-theater piece. It’s a darkly comic coming-of-age tale that explores issues of violence, identity, and free will against the backdrop of a warped American landscape.

Check out the Gorilla Man website at Gorilla-Man.com

Kyle Jarrow penned the Off-Broadway hits A Very Merry Unauthorized Children’s Scientology Pageant (OBIE Award), Armless (FringeNYC Overall Excellence Award), and President Harding is a Rock Star. The New York Times described him as “New York’s hipster playwright.” The LA Times called him an “iconoclast.” The Village Voice wrote, “Jarrow is a playwright both droll and humane.” His plays have been performed in New York, Boston, and Los Angeles. Kyle is also part of the glam-rock band The Fabulous Entourage (fabulousentourage.com) which The New Yorker described as a “a quintet of youthful punk-popsters hell-bent on bringing theatrics back to rock-and-roll.”

March 10-27, 2005

Pullman, WA

Young Jean Lee

Pullman, WA is a play about what to do if you’re unhappy and everyone around you is kind of an asshole, including yourself.

Written and directed by Young Jean Lee, co-created and performed by Tom Bradshaw, Pete Simpson, and Tory Vazquez.

Young Jean Lee has directed her plays at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals) and Soho Rep (The Appeal). She has performed with the National Theater of the United States of America (What’s That On My Head!?!), studies playwriting with Mac Wellman at Brooklyn College, and is a member of 13P.

March 10 – 27, 2005

The Last Word

gamal chasten - the last word

Mixing the lively pace of a three-ring circus with the soulful spirit of a New Orleans jazz processional, Gamal Chasten explores the hopes, dreams and regrets that accompany the death of a loved one in his music-theater piece The Last Word. As the ring leader to this segmented narrative, Chasten guides us through a series of stylized scenes ranging from Vaudeville to classic musical theater to 50’s drama and reality TV, each offering a light-hearted glimpse at one dysfunctional family as they cope with the loss of their father.

Gamal Chasten is a founding member of the acclaimed poetry/theater ensemble Universes.
As a playwright Chasten has presented Slanguage, The Last Word and God Took Away His Poem. As an actor he has been seen in Slanguage, Reg E.Gaines’ TIERS, In Case You Forget, You Can Clap Now, God Took Away His Poem and in the film Jails, Hospitals and HipHop.

Feb. 24 – March 6, 2005

They Are Not Falling

alejandra martorell

They are not falling is inspired, in part, by some of the works of photographer and video artist Michal Rovner, specifically in them, the occurrence and erasure of gesture within large group movements. Drawing from images where populated spaces paradoxically suggest a shared isolation, the piece explores presence and absence, relationship in regards to space, and the expression of these relationships in gesture, posture and movement. Using three distinct configurations: a large group, a duet and a solo, shifting its focus and scale accordingly to seize simple gestures within the group as well as ornate dances in the solo. The three pieces come in and out of each other creating a seamless landscape. They are not falling maps out a two-way road from outer to inner, from many to few and then fewer, from gesture to dance and story. A video piece works alongside the dance to underscore the play on size and scale, and make manifest the fleeting nature of the body’s many attempts at relating to other bodies.

Choreographed by Alejandra Martorell with performers:
Astrud Angarita, Sigal Bergman, Jasmine Ben-Reuven, Keith Biesack, Mi Sun Choi, Dawn Eshelman, Kiyoko Kashiwagi, Lise Serrell, Johanna S. Meyer, Edgar Rodriguez

Music by Guy Yarden and Doug Henderson
Lighting Design by Erik Bruce
Video by Maya Ciarrocchi
Dramaturgy by Clarinda Mac Low

Alejandra Martorell’s first full-evening work, m.o (modus operandi) was presented last year at Performance Space 122. Her work also has been seen at Dixon Place, Movement Research at the Judson Church, BAAD!, Painted Bride in Philadelphia, Studio 303 in Montreal, and in Puerto Rico. Alejandra is one-third of Tryst (with Clarinda Mac Low and Paul Benney), a collaborative team that conjures free outdoor performance situations. She collaborates in Spanic Attack, a conglomeration of multidisciplinary Latin American artists. She has worked with Sally Silvers and was part of Jennifer Monson’s Bird Brain project. She has also performed recently in the works of Karen Sherman and Sigal Bergman among others.

Read a review in:
The NY Times
The Village Voice

Feb. 17 – 20, 2005
Post-show reception: February 17
Thursday – Saturday, 8 p.m.
Sun. at 5 p.m.

My Price Point

Monologuist Mike Albo returns with his latest solo show My Price Point. Albo brings his fast-paced mix of dance, monologues, and vignettes back to Performance Space 122 for a full-frontal solo assault on our time of placed products, screeching divas, botoxic beauty, and constant reality show orgasms. With a quick wit and speedy delivery, his frenetic satirical commentary (punctuated, as always, with dance) dissects our insane existence within the Plastic Pig that is America.

Directed by David Schweizer
Co-written with Virginia Heffernan

Chrissa Theodore – producer
AnnaCatherine Rutledge – production manager
Jeremy Chernick – scenic designer
Rie Ono – lighting designer
Luke Simcock – costume designer
Cary Curran – choreographer

Special thanks to adidas

Read a review of the show in:

The New York Sun (subscription needed)
Theatermania.com
americantheaterweb.com
The New York Times
The Village Voice

And read this mini-interview with Mike on Culturebot.org

Jan. 28 – Feb. 13, 2005