blog | Performance Space New York

Around the World and back

Editor’s note: A long-time PS122 family member (previous box office manager and performer) asked me to help spread the word on this and I couldn’t be more excited to do so. Not only is this a prime example of collaboration from multiple playwrights stationed around the globe (which I love), but it’s also FREE with wine + cheese to enjoy at the end of it (which I doubly love). Thursday night date, anyone?

The Staged Reading of the Second Annual
Around-the-Globe Chain Play
March 27th, 7pm
@ The Lark Play Development Center
311 West 43rd Street, NYC

Starting and ending in NYC, a play is being written as it travels around the world making 15 stops with playwrights from across the globe. Each playwright will contribute the next one to four pages of text, moving the plot forward from where the previous playwright left off.

Featuring: Charles Browning, Holly Chou, Jamie Effros, JoJo McCabe, Reynaldo Piniella, Patricia Randell, Evan Thompson, and Sarah Todes

Directed by: Sherri Kronfeld

The playwrights include Lisa Kron (USA, NYC), Aditi Kapil (USA, Minneapolis), Nicolas Billon (Canada), Luz Estrada (Colombia), Thomas Sainsbury (New Zealand), Nick Yu (China), Anuvab Pal (India), Oded Liphshiz (Israel), Lily Bevan (United Kingdom), Nina Mitrovic (Croatia), Phillip M Dikotla (South Africa), Amy Conroy (Ireland), Lana Nasser (The Netherlands), Sol Rodríguez Seoane (Argentina), and Chisa Hutchinson (USA, NYC).

The reading will be followed by a World Theatre Day Reception where a number of NYC theatre luminaries will read the International Theatre Institute’s World Theatre Day Message that will be written this year by South African playwright, designer, director, and installation-maker, Brett Bailey.

TICKETS ARE FREE; reservations required
nycwtdchainplay2014.eventbrite.com
The reading will also be live streamed on innovativetheatre.org/live.

My LYFE Survey

This week’s RAMP showing by Glass Ghost has a unique audience-controlled element – they have created a fictional company called LYFE™ which asks audience members to take a bizarre survey which involves recalling childhood memories, drawing a picture, and taking a selfie. The survey results will be incorporated into the performance in surprising ways:

LYFE™ is a fictional software company that has the ability to track and analyze users emotions anywhere online. Glass Ghost’s PS122 show, “Welcome to Lyfe™, ” creates a fictional “expo” for this company, inviting clients and users alike to see the wonders of the company’s motto,“Getting to know you better than you know yourself.”

Thirty minutes before the show (or advance online), LYFE™ invites the audience to take the “My LYFE Survey,” asking them cryptic questions, and to take a “selfie” as well as to join all LYFE™ social media. Glass Ghost’s interactive set is played against a backdrop of audience members’ emotions and memories, which are featured on the three projection screens as a showcase of LYFE’s powerful Emot-alytic™ software.

The goal of “Welcome to LYFE™” is to question who we are and become in the process of data mining, and to explore online targeting as a way to quantify and mold the elements of our emotions that makes us all unique, vulnerable and human. How much of our lives do we want to be “known” and “sold?” How much can software really know us? What does it mean to be authentic in the 21st century? The music of Glass Ghost serves as an underpinning for these questions.

Get tickets and more info on the Glass Ghost page.

RAMP Curated Post: Molly and Eleanor

Editor’s Note: This past weekend, Molly and Eleanor performed a work-in-progress showing of material and ideas generated over the two weeks of their RAMP residency. If you were in attendance and would like to share your thoughts, observations, feedback, reflections and the like, feel free to leave a comment at the bottom.

Each piece that we make is a choreographic collaboration between the two of us and we are always the only performers. The texture of the work comes from making decisions together; it emits a tension and pliability that results from being extracted and configured between two different minds. Expressing the imaginative realm through movement is our performative challenge, and is supported by the camaraderie and charge of the duet practice we have established.

Meanwhile, a tone of loneliness pervades our work. We perform in a sparse, intimate, and feminine environment of just our two bodies. Our process of making dances begins with, and is sustained by, improvisation. We have been improvising together for the last six years. We find moments we value when improvising, cultivate these moments into performative expressions, and then (try to) perform them. Our performances therefore express ideas that were originally understood through movement. They are at once highly imaginative, and simply about being with one another while considering an audience.

Thank you for joining us this past Saturday.

Salvaged Tiles from the Ethyl Dressing Room

We just received some pictures of the tile work from Ethyl Eichelberger’s honorary dressing room at PS122. During the ongoing construction at our home at 150 First Avenue these were saved and we’re hoping to find a place to display them somewhere in the new building.

The tiles spell out the lyrics to Ethyl’s song We Are Women Who Survive:
“We are women who survive, but we will live to fight another day.” Full lyrics and mp3 can be found on our Ethyl page.

Announcing GPS Co-chairs

PS122 is proud to announce the co-chairs of our Give Performance Space campaign, a capacity campaign coinciding with the renovation of our home at 150 1st Avenue. Give Performance Space is a campaign to launch Performance Space 122’s growth as an organization with the goal of better serving the artists and audiences of New York City. The co-chairs are acclaimed actor, photographer and activist Alan Cumming; producer, writer and director Stella Schnabel and PS122 Board Vice President Charles L. Kerr, partner at international law office Morrison & Foerster.

Since PS122’s start as an East Village artist squat, we’ve grown from a scrappy under dog providing artists a space to experiment to a globally renowned leader in the performance field. PS122 has launched careers, supported innovation and developed new art practices that have enriched the cultural life of New York City and contemporary performance worldwide.

The City of New York has begun work on a code renovation of the organization’s beloved East Village home. The funds raised during the Give Performance Space campaign will ensure that PS122 can successfully navigate the institutional and physical growth necessary to take full advantage of this renovation. It will give PS122 the flexibility to take risks, adapt and grow as a leader within the cultural ecology of New York City by providing a much-needed, multi-disciplinary medium-sized venue to the performing arts sector.

The Give Performance Space campaign is still in the leadership-giving phase. PS122 will release public information in 2015 as they move into the public phase of the campaign. Visit ps122.org/GPS for more information.

READ THE FULL PRESS RELEASE HERE

via Andaz on 5th Instagram