Performance | Performance Space New York

Architecting

architecting

“Wake up in 2009 in the hands of a theater company who knows what it’s doing” – Ben Brantley, The New York Times

Architecting is an exhilarating saga that weaves through past and future to create a requiem for modern America. A collision of horses, sex and hoop skirts, burning plantations and nasty hurricanes, this musical, time-bending, multi-media epic rockets between reconstructions, real and imagined, of citizens and nations.

The TEAM is the Theatre of the Emerging American Moment, a theatre company dedicated to dissecting and celebrating the experience of living in America today. 3-time Edinburgh Fringe First Winners (2005 – 2008), 2008 Total Theatre Award, 2007 Best Production Dublin Fringe, and TimeOut New York’s Top Ten 2007. The TEAM’s work has been seen stateside, all over New York, including Performance Space 122; nationally, including the Walker Art Center and Vanderbilt University; internationally, including London’s Battersea Arts Centre, the Bristol Old Vic, Toronto’s Harbourfront Centre, and the Galway Arts Festival.

Photos by Yi Zhao

Architecting was created with support from the National Theater of Scotland Workshop, the Greenwall Foundation, the Panta Rhea Foundation, the Battersea Arts Centre in London, and the Orchard Project.

Architecting was developed at the BAC (May 2007), the 2007 CUNY Prelude Festival (Sept 2007), 3LD Art & Technology Center, New York (May 2008), the Orchard Project (June 2008). Architecting (Part One) made its world premiere at the 2008 Edinburgh Fringe Festival.

Presented by Performance Space 122 as part of COIL 09 and Under The Radar festivals

Extended at Performance Space 122:
Thu, Jan 22 – Sun, Feb 15, 2009
Tuesday – Saturday 7:30pm
Sunday 5pm
Tickets from $25

The Crumb Trail

Praise for Oedipus Loves You:

“Wonderful”
– Time Out New York ****

“Unexpected rewards come to those who wait” – Ben Brantley, NY Times

“…approaches the sublime… the songs are first-rate ear candy”
-Variety

“Listen carefully. Go see this show. It’s the future of theatre.”
-Backstage.com New York

“Oedipus Rex? Perhaps. Oedipus Rocks? Definitely”
-Village Voice

The death of the Fairy Tale. Can we live in a world without fairy tales?
I’ll begin with a confession, Let’s pretend. I enjoy telling lies. I wanted to eat a child. All to myself.

They found my fantasies offensive, pathological, be careful what you wish for…… I was not born a bold girl. I became one. Where did being good ever get anyone? Witch fulfillment if you like.

The Crumb Trail is a decamerous contemporary installation/performance piece dealing with the notion of crisis and engagement. It is a play area where theatrical stuff is shown to the public: made up Films/ Live things all arranged and prearranged for different performances.

Pan Pan has created 17 new productions and has toured throughout Ireland as well as Canada, China, Denmark, Germany, Netherlands, U.K, USA, Italy, Norway Sweden, Poland, Austria, Australia and Korea.
The Crumb Trial is directed by Gavin Quinn, text by Gina Moxley, designed by Aedin Cosgrove. Cast: Aoife Duffin, Gina Moxley, Bush Moukarzel, Arthur Riordan. Photos by Oliver Paul. Kindly supported by Culture Ireland, The Arts Council of Ireland and Dublin City Council.

Presented as part of COIL 09 January 6 – 13, 2009 and Under The Radar festivals
Extended: Thu, January 15 – Sat, January 17, 2009
Thursday – Saturday 8pm

Additional show: Sat, January 17, 2009 10:30pm
Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (PS122 members)

Eight

architecting

“One of the most self-assured, startlingly well-written and moving pieces of theatre around.”
– The Herald

“Stunningly well performed…this is a truly impressive and exciting hour of theatre”
– The Scotsman

Winner of the 2008 Carol Tambor Best of Edinburgh Award and Fringe First Award Winner, EIGHT is a collection of extraordinary tales of remarkably self-aware young adults smartly crafted by breakout playwright Ella Hickson.

From high-class hookers to those who make friends in morgues, to single mothers and bereaved gallery owners, Eight gives all of these otherwise neglected characters center-stage, including the moving, politically punchy portrait of a man who has lost everything except his memories of the 7/7 London bombings. Marginal behavior is integrated into the mainstream and apathy blazes across it all. ‘Eight’ works to find the glimmers of faith in a world of wholesale cynicism. Incisively witty yet touching and potent, these eight monologues present what those reaching adulthood in The Naughties would be saying – if they could be bothered.

Writer Ella Hickson has written and published poetry since her late teens and completed her first novel in 2004. In addition she has worked as a producer for BBC comedy troupe The Penny Dreadfuls, Offstage Theatre, The Edinburgh Film Festival and in 2006 established her own production company, Escape Artist.

Photo credit: Tom Bishop

best of edinburgh

Presented as part of COIL 09 January 6 – 13, 2009
Extended: Wed, January 14 – Sun, January 25
Wednesday – Saturday 8pm
Sunday 5pm
Tickets from $25
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Guruguru

guruguru

By Ant Hampton, with Joji Koyama and Isambard Khroustaliov

“Hugely entertaining… This smart, mysterious exercise in programmed thinking and collective chaos is strange but exhilarating.” – The Times

“You may find yourself frantically looking for yourself again in the moments after the performance has finished.” – The Guardian

You have been told what to do every moment of the day, for years on end. The voice in your headphones has understood who you are and gives instructions which mirror what you’d be doing anyway. A life free of dither and uncertainty! In your job, this voice is a career-saver… but the day has come when you need to come ‘off the headphones’. You need help.

Five participants enter a brightly lit room, there are five chairs positioned around a TV. A session begins, and as each audience member follows different instructions via headphones, they begin to understand ‘who they are’. Proceedings are led by an on-screen, animated character – whose twin roles of marketing and spiritual Guru are confused by his reliance on untested and accident-prone technologies. The overproduced, digital sheen of our focus-group world cracks open into a colourful volcano of boiling absurdity. A hilarious chaos develops, exposing today’s consumer-mad inability to distinguish between what we want, and what we need.

A Rotozaza Production By Ant Hampton, with Joji Koyama and Isambard Khroustaliov

Commissioned by Fusebox Festival, Texas
Produced by ArtsAgenda

Presented as part of COIL 2010

Supported by the British Council.

50 minutes
January 6-12, 2010
Jan 6 – 8, Jan 11 – 12:
Performances daily 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 10pm
Sat, Jan 9: Performances 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 8pm, 9pm, 10pm
Sun, Jan 10: Performances 3pm, 4pm, 5pm, 6pm, 7pm, 10pm
$10

Coil 2009

Pan Pan – The Crumb Trail
The death of the Fairy Tale. Where did being good ever get anyone?
It’s a sort of detective story, sharp and blunt. Detecting where we are at – but in the dark.
Can we not engage with reality anymore? Ice caps are melting and I’m watching people I don’t know on ‘I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here.’ Run time: 1 hour 20
Wed, Jan 7 6:30p |
Thu, Jan 8 10:30p |
Fri, Jan 9 2:30p |
Sun, Jan 11 7p |
Mon, Jan 12 3:30p |
Extended: Jan 15 – Jan 17
More info

Joseph Silovsky – Jester of Tonga
“Wonderfully sweet and quirky” – Culturebot
At last, the man known as one of downtown’s technological wizards steps out from behind the curtain. Silovsky and his robot Stanley tell the very true and complex story of Jesse Dean, the sensational modern-day Court Jester to the Tongan Royal Court. Run time: 1 hour
Wed, Jan 7 10p |
Fri, Jan 9 7:30p |
Sat, Jan 10 2:30p |
Mon, Jan 12 9:30p
More info

Lewis Forever – LEWIS FOREVER: Freak the Room
LEWIS FOREVER is three sisters and a brother, a director, two dancers and a musician. What happens when we freak the fiction of cultural and familial identification? There is play, fantasy, sex and violence. There is an impostor. Words seem to come out almost right. Reactions test their relationships to actions and everything appears as more than it seems. Performance Space 122 is their living room – and they will freak it. Run time: 1 hour
Wed, Jan 7 7p |
Fri, Jan 9 10p |
Sat, Jan 10 6:30p |
Tue, Jan 13 3p
More info

Okwui Okpokwasili – Pent Up: A Revenge Dance
Bessie Award-winner and beloved downtown actress Okwui Okpokwasili spins a modern multi-character folktale. In it, she portrays a woman in exile who sees and seeks revenge as a way of reconciling her present impoverished condition with the belief that she’s a direct descendant of the sun. Run time: 1 hour
Sun, Jan 11 7:30p |
Mon, Jan 12 2:30p | Extended: Feb 10 – 22
More info

Ella Hickson/Tantrum Productions – Eight
A collection of extraordinary tales of remarkably self aware young adults: a politically conservative prostitute keeping old values alive; a hugely successful stockbroker walking out of his life; a gallery owner discovering the suicide of his partner hanging by an Hermes scarf. Run time: 2.5 hours
Tue, Jan 6 7:30p |
Thu, Jan 8 7:30p |
Fri, Jan 9 2pm | Sun, Jan 11 2pm | Extended: Jan 14 – 25
More info

Temporary Distortion – Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road)
“A daring performance about memory and identity.” – Village Voice
Part road movie, part fractured memory, part love story. A hybrid of theater and cinema, staged in Temporary Distortion’s claustrophobic boxlike installation. Run time: 1 hour
Wed, Jan 7 10:30p |
Thu, Jan 8 2:30p |
Sat, Jan 10 7p |
Tue, Jan 13 7:30p
More info

The Shalimar – Trash Warfare
“The most exciting young American company I have seen up here so far this century.”
– Financial Times
Phaedra. The original MILF. Live music, frenetic dance, fierce boxing, raw meat, and nobody’s telling the truth. 8 wild performers satirize America’s celebrity obsession in the midst of war. Grab a ringside seat and be careful of blood splatter. Flash photography is encouraged. Run time: 75 minutes
Thu, Jan 8 3p |
Sat, Jan 10 10p |
Mon, Jan 12 6:30p |
Tue, Jan 13 7p
More info

LeeSaar – Geisha
“Geisha,” by LeeSaar The Company, is a trio with a sexy, raw edge that belies an underlying sense of vulnerability. – The New Yorker, 2008
“LeeSaar’s dances always require unwavering attention, they are powerful. “Geisha” is one of their strongest and most fascinating excursions into territory whose physical and emotional atmospheres are a coolly seething whole.”
-Jennifer Dunning , The NY Times, 2008. Runtime: 1 hour
Sat, Jan 10 2p |
Mon, Jan 12 7p

The BodyCartography Project – Holiday House
“The pleasure of viewing is so intense here, so fun as to be nearly guilty.”-Minneapolis St. Paul Magazine. On holiday the normal sequence of time unravels, regular activities, chores and spatial awareness of ordinary places are deconstructed or completely altered, perception bends. Reality shifts. Dance and video artists Olive Bieringa and Otto Ramstad are co-directors of the BodyCartography Project and have been collaborating for ten years. Run time: 50 minutes
Fri, Jan 9 7p |
Sat, Jan 10 10:30p |
Mon, Jan 12 10p |
Tue, Jan 13 3:30p

Palissimo – Blind Spot
“Blind Spot casts a potent spell.” – Deborah Jowitt, The Village Voice
Pavel Zustiak, the 2007 recipient of The Princess Grace Award in Choreography, reprises the acclaimed Blind Spot at Performance Space 122 and creates a world where that which is no longer seen, heard, nor felt reoccurs as an unwelcome guest. Numb senses retrieve their former abilities and experience the world as if for the first – or last – time. Run time: 1 hour
Thu, Jan 8 7p |
Fri, Jan 9 10:30p
More info

Reid Farrington – The Passion Project
“One of the most satisfying theatrical experiences I’ve had in ages” writes Claudia La Rocco
Carl Th. Dreyer’s 1928 immortal masterpiece is exploded into three dimensions. With multiple projection surfaces and one single actor, Farrington explores the intersection of live performance and film giving us a complete look at the outtakes and reels that were lost to fire, like Joan of Arc herself.
Jan 10 – 17: 3p & 9:30p | Jan 13 – 3p ONLY | Jan 14 – 9:30p ONLY
More info

The TEAM – Architecting
“a remarkable piece of work…” -The Financial Times
A collision of horses, sex and hoop skirts, burning plantations and nasty hurricanes in this musical, time-bending, multi-media epic that weaves through the country’s future, present and past in a modern American requiem. Reconstructions, real and imagined, of citizens and nations.
Fri, Jan 9 8p | Sat, Jan 10 1p | Sun, Jan 11 7p | Wed, Jan 14 7p | Thu, Jan 15 7p | Sat, Jan 17 7p | Sun, Jan 18 2p | Extended: At Performance Space 122, Jan 22 – Feb 15
More info

Jan 6-14, 2009