Performance | Performance Space New York

Terrible Things

“Next time D’Amour and Pearl bring their enchanting work to town be sure to take it in.” – John Del Signore, The Gothamist

“The collaborative team of playwright Lisa D’Amour and director Katie Pearl make beguiling, innovative theatre pieces.” – American Theater Magazine

Science Tuesday meets Oklahoma angst as Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl flip PS122 into a low-rent IMAX and get up close and in between molecules, quarks and memories. Have you ever wondered if all those lives you’ve imagined yourself living are actually happening in a parallel world(s)? Terrible Things takes audiences on a T-R-I-P inside the many lives of Katie Pearl and her action-figure literary mom. Expect an in-your-body out-of-body experience shaped by Katie Pearl, three killer dancers: Emily Johnson, Morgan Thorson, and Karen Sherman, two Brazilian Jiu Jitsu wrestlers, and 1000 marshmallows. Featuring the choreography of Emily Johnson.

With funding from The Moore Family Fund for the Arts of the Minneapolis Foundation and made possible with public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts, a state agency.
Photo by Shelly Reese

“Contemporary Performance and the Multiverse”

December 9th at 7pm
Location: Sony Wonder Technology Lab, 550 Madison Avenue (at 56th Street)
Free with RSVP

On December 9th, PS122 will host the second discussion in its new Conversations with Culture series, “Contemporary Performance and the Multiverse.” The conversation uses as its launching pad PS122 artists Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl’s work Terrible Things, a new collaborative work exploring the multiverse though personal narrative, particle physics, and a shifting “set” of 600 marshmallows that stand in for particles, potential energy, and the sub-atomic realm. Panelists will discuss the role and ramifications of contemporary performance as a mode of articulating scientific theory and expressing our human experience of the laws and mysteries of the physical universe. These events are free and open to the public and endeavor to reinsert performance into the cultural, economic, and environmental debates coursing through contemporary society, from which it has recently largely been excluded.

Participants Include:

David Z. Albert, Frederick E. Woodbridge Professor of Philosophy at Columbia University, Author of Quantum Mechanics and Experience and Time and Chance
Lisa D’Amour and Katie Pearl– co-creators of Terrible Things, which premieres at PS122 on December 4th.
Brian Schwartz, Director of the Science & The Arts program at the CUNY Graduate Center and 2009 winner of the Andrew W. Gemant Award, given annually by the American Institute of Physics to recognize significant contributions to the cultural, artistic, or humanistic dimension of physics.
DJ Spooky, creator of Terra Nova: playing at BAM
Dec 2 -5. https://djspooky.com/
Richard Easther, Professor of Physics at Yale University

WORLD PREMIERE
Fri, December 4 – Sun, December 20, 2009
Thu – Sat 8pm, Sun 6pm
Late shows: Sat, Dec 12/Fri, Dec 18/Sat, Dec 19 10 pm
Additional shows Mon, Dec 14 + Wed, Dec 16 8pm
No show Thu, Dec 17

$20, $15 (students/seniors)

Also presented as part of COIL 2010

Fri, January 8, 2010 6:30pm
Sat, January 9, 2010 9:30pm
Sun, January 10, 2010 7pm
Tue, January, 2010 12 4:30pm

For more info visit the all new pearldamour.com or visit their blog.

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your Terrible Things Program online!

ZEE

Zee

ZEE is a rigorous mindscape; a hallucinatory architecture of light; a dream machine.

An enclosed space is filled with a dense, odorless fog that completely obscures the walls, floor and ceiling. Individuals freely roam this environment, while flickering light filters through the haze, inducing hallucinations and sensory distortions within each viewer. A droning soundscape intensifies this full-immersion experience, shifting dynamically according to changes in the color, frequency and intensity of the light.

Exhilarating and meditative, Hentschläger’s pulsing, stroboscopic and mind-altering ZEE pushes the boundaries of human perception and creates an intensely riveting audiovisual journey.

“Hentschläger’s piece delivered literally on the hackneyed promise that art will refashion one’s way of seeing the world.” – Kenneth Baker, Art Critic, San Francisco Chronicle, November 2008

ZEE was originally commissioned by OK-Center Linz, and Wood Street Galleries, Pittsburgh in 2008.

Kurt Hentschläger is Managed and Represented by Richard Castelli / Epidemic

Supported by: BMUKK -Austrian Ministry for Education, Art & Culture and MEDA(TM) – vision beyond

Production Assistance: Shane Mecklenburger / Technical Assistance Touring: Alexander Boehmler, Ian Brill

Important information: Anybody with the following conditions should not attend ZEE: photosensitive epilepsy; asthma, breathing and heart problems; abnormal blood pressure; migraine & headaches; all kinds of eye & ear diseases; claustrophobia or anxiety. Pregnant women are also advised to refrain from attending. Please note: The artificial fog being used is proven, even in extreme intensities, not to be of any health risk; the stroboscopes used in the show are standard theatrical units.

Kurt Hentschläger

A constant innovator and one of the most influential figures in the field of contemporary art and technology, Hentschläger merges conceptual art, sound, video, performance,and technologyin his large-scale installations. Since launching his career in 1983, his work has been commissioned worldwide, including: NoiseGate 2000 for Creative Time’s Art in the Anchorage as part of the Austrian duo Granular-Synthesis, representing Austria at the 2001 Venice Biennale, and his most recent installations ZEE, RANGE and KARMA/X are currently touring. www.kurthentschlager.com

About FuturePerfect

ZEE is the inaugural event of FuturePerfect, a new initiative that researches and presents hybrid performance practices, media forms, and artistic ideas that continue to emerge as computer technologies and electronic networks mature and become inseparable from contemporary culture. In particular focus is the future of live performance and related visual culture. FuturePerfect 2011, a performance festival and exhibition, is slated for New York City during Spring 2011. Wayne Ashley is FuturePerfect’s founding artistic director, the former Director of Arts in Multimedia at Brooklyn Academy of Music, BAM. Contact: Wayne Ashley at waynewayneashley.net. More info: www.futureperfectfestival.org

New York Premiere

October 28 – November 15, 2009

3LD Art & Technology Center, 80 Greenwich Street, near Rector St., Lower Manhattan

Time: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 5-9pm; Saturday, Sunday 2pm-9pm

Project begins on the hour and the half hour; approximately 20 minutes.

Kurt Hentschläger’s ZEE is now previewing BY INVITATION ONLY for individual visits by the press, curators, and professionals in the art and performance community. Due to limited capacity, entrance is by confirmed RSVP only -please contact rsvp@futureperfectfestival.org and include your phone number.

Panel Discussion: Performance, Installation and Immersion–Free

Presented by FuturePerfect and CPR–Center for Performance Research

Venue: CPR–Center for Performance Research

361 Manhattan Avenue, Unit 1, Williamsburg, Brooklyn

Sunday, October 25, 2009

1:30pm – 3:30pm

In conjunction with the opening of ZEE, FuturePerfect, CPR–Center for Performance Research, 3LD Art & Technology Center, and PS122 invite you a panel on Performance, Installation, and Immersion. Panelists include: Kevin Cunningham (Director, 3-Legged Dog Media and Theater Group), Kurt Hentschläger (Artist, Austria/US), Kora Van den Bulcke and Thomas Soetens (Workspace Unlimited, Artist Collective Belgium/Canada), Allen Feldman (Associate Professor, Anthropology, NYU). Discussants include: Vallejo Gantner (PS122), Morgan von Prelle Pecelli (PS122), Wayne Ashley (FuturePerfect), Jonah Bokaer (CPR–Center for Performance Research), Dr. Frank Hentschker (Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, CUNY), and others to be announced. https://www.cprnyc.org

Assember Dilator

31 down

“31 Down is an amazing and groundbreaking company and their work deserves a broad audience.” -Martin Denton

The Assember Dilator is a sonic meltdown of science fiction and perversion focused on the development of x-ray vision and its consequences, obvious and unknown. Through hypnotic aural and visual design 31 Down is confronting issues of medical research, sources of funding and the responsibility of science in the near future. Dealing with themes of transcendence, control and greed, specific notions of human interaction with science and nature are unraveled. This is an intense work featuring a doctor and a nurse’s journey, as they become lab rats in their own hallucinogenic medical trial.

This work was developed with the support of: free103point9, Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, The Bushwick Starr and OfficeOps.

WORLD PREMIERE
Thu, Oct 8 – Sun, Oct 18

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your program online!

The Archery Contest

“Dandy theatrical experimenteur…mind bending sex comedy.” – Time Out, New York

“…one of the highlights of the fall season at Performance Space 122.” – NY Times

Downtown’s enfant terrible delivers a frisky and hyper-stylized sex comedy that shoots straight into the heart of marriage in America. Behind this Technicolor Romantic Pastoral lies a glittering and scathing indictment of rules and regulations, rituals and rites of spring. A foursome and a sexton breach the boundaries of matrimonial shackles and dive headlong into a hedonistic lifestyle with complex consequences.

The Archery Contest sends up the tragic-comic foibles of human desire straight-jacketed by antiquated dogmas and outdated notions of marriage, ultimately asking: in a country steeped in tradition yet hungry for change, how can we escape our puritanical past and move into an unfettered future?

Hotel Savant, a theatre company based in New York City, explores the seminal ideologies of history and mythology and their impact on contemporary narrative. Utilizing a variety of performance techniques that include pageantry, dance and tableau, they create original works and revive obscure texts that correlate to present day topics.

Featuring: Richard Toth, Hillary Spector, Carey Urban, Alexander Borinsky, Jeff Worden
Playwright/Director: John Jahnke; sound designer Kristin Worrall; set designer Peter Ksander; lighting designer Miranda Hardy; video designer Andrew Schneider; and costume designer Carlos Soto.

Presented by Performance Space 122. Developed at 3LD Art & Technology Center; with additional support from Art International Radio (AIR), NYSCA, NY Department of Cultural Affairs and The MacDowell Colony and a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation. Photo (c) 2009 Josef Astor.

Running Time: 100 minutes

www.hotelsavant.com

WORLD PREMIERE
Jump to Conversation
Fri, October 2 – Sun, October 18, 2009
Wed – Sat 8pm, Sun 6pm
$20, $15 (students/seniors)

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your program online!

Crime or Emergency

“…my favorite, favorite thing that I have encountered in the last few years…
I froze into that enchanted immobility that only the most spectacular shows provoke…
I would actually buy your ticket to this show. I want you to see it that much.
See you at PS!” – Helen Shaw via Claudia La Rocco’s Performance Club Blog Post “The A-List” on WNYC.org (9/19/09)

“Nervy, bewitching performance” – John Del Signore, Gothamist

Two iconoclastic downtown performers entertain, tantalize, beguile, and finally threaten to break the elbows of our Aristotelian/Stanislavskian conceptions of contemporary American theatre and identity as we safely understand them in a new play by Sibyl Kempson. In other words:

Mike Iveson, with his demonic arrangements of the indigenous music of their native New Jersey, joins Kempson in a rapturous and obsessive melodrama of consciousness. Together they distill this 11-person play into a desperate and harried duet.

Part cabaret fiasco, part aesthetic holocaust, their dual dueling performance pits them in a life-or-death struggle for the right to devour the soul of the play.

BONUS EDITIONS:
PLUS Exclusive Late Night Edition: “Emergency or Crime”
Please note that at the Late Shows, the part played by Ms. Kempson will be played by Mr. Iveson; and the part and piano played by Mr. Iveson will be played or appear to be played by Ms. Kempson.
In this compulsory late night companion piece to “Crime or Emergency”, a fifth dimension of dementia ensues. Recommended for those who have already seen Crime and Emergency or who do not get out of bed until 930 PM (wake up Spaniards!) Warning: Ears and eyes may bleed.
Single Tickets: $20 or get The Package: see both for $30.

PLUS Exclusive Holiday Bonus Edition: “Lost Acts of Crime or Emergency”
Ms. Kempson & Mr. Iveson take past performers involved in the evolution and development of “Crime or Emergency” and hold them hostage, forcing them to relive their parts in a weird and festive Stockholm Syndrome-inspired atmosphere surrounded by the infamous debauchery of the PS122 Annual Red & White Party, downtown’s definitive holiday bash. Drinking helmets recommended. Star Hostages: Kate Benson, Kourtney Rutherford, Jason Schuler, Andrew Dinwiddie, Eben Moore, Eleanor Hutchins, Susie Sokol, Jim Fletcher, Johanna S. Meyer, and more to come.
Note: tickets to the 12/15 one-night-only OFF SITE extravaganza are included with admission to PS122 Red and White Party

Developed at Dixon Place, Soho Rep, Fusebox festival, Austin TX. , Supported by a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation.

WORLD PREMIERE
Fri, Dec 4 – Sun, Dec 20
BONUS EDITION “Emergency or Crime”
Sat, Dec 12 and Sat, Dec 19 at 10pm
Single Tickets $20, $15 (students/seniors)

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your Crime or Emergency Program online!