Elevator Repair Service | Performance Space New York

No Great Society

No Great Society

No Great Society

“The best experimental theater troupe in town”
– New York Magazine

“Even in the ranks of avant-garde performers, Susie Sokol stands out as a wonderful weirdo.”
– Time Out New York

“A joy from start to finish.”
– The New York Times

No Great Society is a riveting neo-beat riff by Elevator Repair Service, renowned for their reinvention of found objects and fragments of space and time. In this world premiere, ERS veteran and enigmatic physical performer, Susie Sokol and sonic artist Ben Williams conjure Jack Kerouac and a piano-pattering Steve Allen. A legendary interview threatens to become a one-woman show as Sokol regales with a liquor, jazz and philosophy infused tale and Williams lurks in the shadows.

Photo by Paula Court.
Estimated Running time: 1 hour

Click to read Jason Zinoman’s review in The New York Times “On the TV: Re-enacting Kerouac Interviews.”

COIL 2007 Special Peformances
Presented off-site at NYTW
Friday January 19, 2007 at 8pm
Saturday, January 20, 2007 at 8pm
Sunday, January 21, 2007 at 3pm & 8pm
Monday, January 22, 2007 at 8pm

Original Run: February 2 – 18, 2006

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.

https://www.elevator.org/works/room-tone/

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