Performer Alexia Monduit and musician/composer Thomas Rannou have adapted New York writer Sapphire‘s classic work Push. Monduit interprets the improbable liberation of Push‘s central character Precious Jones as a creation myth. A sexually abused, HIV-positive, obese, illiterate, pregnant teenage mother, Precious battles these conditions amid the violence, drugs, unemployment and homelessness epidemic in Harlem in the 1980’s. Monduit and Rannou have collaborated on many multimedia theatre pieces combining performance, text, live music and visual installation. Working closely with Push’s French translator Jean-Pierre Carasso, Monduit and Rannou have radically reconstructed this powerful novel of urban poverty, struggle and redemption. An extraordinary sound environment chronicles the
birth of Precious’ voice with churning phrases that shift and gain strength like tectonic plates under extreme pressure. Beats, samples and “found” sounds ricochet in and out of rhythm, slip into stillness and thunder. Echoing, modulating, faltering, repeating, becoming. . . the “amplified reading” is a song in the act of being written.
Performed in French with English subtitles.
Two late night underground concerts.
Direct from France – you won’t believe your eyes – or ears!
Ideal Daim / Thomas Rannou +audio
Assume the attitude of a perfect stag. Ideal Daim, chanson pure, is a program of songs written, composed and performed by Thomas Rannou. The sound process is specific to this program – a dozen small speakers are deployed for the broadcast of the song, affording the listener intimacy and proximity to the words and the voice itself. The style is sober and conspiratorial, the tone off-handed and sincere.
Definitively Frenchy.
45 minutes – in French
Click here to Listen to “Rocking Chair” by Thomas Rannou on mp3.
Fuckin’ Dirty Birds / Alexia Monduit + Thomas Rannou
The song of Alexia Monduit is a battle of words. Her first English text is a poetic sound journey between a body, a speech, a breath, and image – that of Antigone. A lonely mythical recreation on a musical floor.
25-30 minutes – in English
Free for PS122 members, ticket holders to any performance dates of Push, Itching of the Wings, and Schoolhouse Roxx’s Suicide, The Musical – hold onto your stubs and fasten your seatbelts.
November 3-13, 2005
Opens Thursday, November 3.
Wednesday-Saturday at 7:30 p.m.
Sunday at 4 p.m.
Sunday Afternoon Discovery
on November 13
$20($10 Members)