Political satirist and puppeteer Paul Zaloom unleashes his latest solo extravaganza, Mighty Nice. Told in Zaloom’s signature hyper low-tech style, the show employs intense and bizarre found object manipulation for three separate mini-shows: The Punch and Jimmy Show features hand puppets in the wild and ribald tradition of the 450-year-old “Punch and Judy Show”. In this updated version, incorrigible cad Punch, now gay and living with his boyfriend Jimmy and adopted baby Precious, deals with love, murder, law enforcement, and perhaps paying the consequences. Don’t! is a mock anti-drug presentation in the age-old form of cantastoria (story telling with pictures), hosted by a State Police Drug Information Officer and his compliant, drug-addled, life-size dummy pal, Billy. Issues such as property seizures without criminal convictions, incarceration statistics, and the demise of the 4th Amendment are turned into an uproarious, liberating amusement. 2222 is a frenetic, apocalyptic vision of the year 2222. This sci-fi fantasy glimpse into the glorious future wackily predicts ocean-front property in Kansas, intergalactic garbage disposal, animals growing human parts, Total Information Awareness, and the lonely life of the last wild fish.
Category: Performance
NONE OF IT: more or less Hudson’s Bay, again
On a dog sled loaded down with Pepsi and compressed medical gases, toxic twins, naked and high in Hudson’s Bay, fly across the frozen tundra through the endless night, chasing the Aurora Borealis on the icy road to Utopia.
PERFORMED:
P.S. 122, November-December 2002
REVIEWS:
Village Voice, Alexis Soloski Radiohole Pillages Mutes, Canada
“…Whether it’s drinking or farting or whatever it is”
Theater 2k, Brook StoweÊ Radiohole Pillages Mutes, Canada
“…Imagine, if you haven’t already tried it, watching “Ice Station Zebra” on some really good acid and witnessing stoic Rock Hudson melt into a pair of questing female twins/split psyches/fucked-up bitches as they swirl in a delirious downward spiral of murder, death, the possible second coming of Christ, Pepsi, and the swinging Hudson Bay club scene while up top behind them, a tattooed bald guy in red overalls spins syrupy vintage luau vinyl upon a really unsafe-looking swaying platform. ”
Lapse
A year in the life of a woman in a coma as measured by holidays.
Devised, designed and directed by Ken Nintzel.
A co-production of the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris: Performance on 42nd Series, Boo Froebel curator and Performance Space 122 (NYC) Mark Russell Executive Director.
Whitney:
Choreography by Beth Portnoy
Costumes: Erin Berry and Happy Davis
Sound: Anne DeMare and DJ Mendel
Performances: Darren Anderson, Chuck Balsius, Ryan Bronz, Stacy Dawson, William Donovan, Jesse Hawley, Beth Kurkjian, Ellen LeCompte, Beth Portnoy, Kate Ryan, Josh Stark and Susan Tierney.
Performance Space 122:
Lighting: Frank Dendanto III
Production Stage Management: Judson Kniffen
Performances: D. Anderson, C. Blasius, Judy Braun, R. Bronz, W. Donovan, Mark Doskow, Juliana Francis, J. Hawley, B. Kurkjian, B. Portnoy, K. Ryan and Katie Workum.
Lapse was funded in part by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, The Whitney Museum of American Art, Italo Portasani and Reece and Alicia Bader.
Room Tone
A haunting, humorous, yet sincere meditation on spiritual belief, Room Tone draws on touchstone texts by the eminent turn-of-the-century Harvard psychologist William James, and his brother, the novelist Henry James.
While William’s approach to the ineffable was scientific, Henry explored the same topic through fiction. Each in his own way, these fathers of modern American philosophy and literature, grappled with how and why religious and spiritual beliefs form — a question that still very much haunts the world today.
With Room Tone, ERS reconceives William’s landmark Varieties of Religious Experience as theatrical monologues and Henry’s great novella The Turn of the Screw as a disorienting vision. With strangely intimate performances, intricate choreography set to powerfully resonant Balinese gamelan music, sound and lighting design that are both simple and sophisticated, a penchant for slapstick, and innovative staging that takes nothing for granted, we’ve created a piece that hovers between hallucination and sight, public performance and private reverie.
The result is a tragicomic ghost story — our darkest work yet, literally and otherwise.
Black Spot
Gray will debut his latest solo piece, Black Spot—about the accident in Ireland—at P.S. 122 this fall. The show is a work-in-progress and will run Mondays Oct. 7 through Dec. 30.
Gray was celebrating his 60th birthday when traveling in Ireland. According to press materials, the crash happened on the day after the longest day of the year. The monologue will also feature bits on Irish culture, socialized medicine, a further operation in the U.S. and Gray’s family’s move into a bigger house. Scheduled moving day: Sept. 11, 2001.