Reggie Watts | Performance Space New York

Festival of Ideas for a New City

Festival of Ideas For A New City
Rhythm and Repetition:
Reconfiguring Performance Practice Across Genres

May 7, 4pm

A Conversation with Reggie Watts and Heather Kravas as part of Festival of Ideas for a New City.
Working in dance and technologically-enabled comedic performance, Reggie Watts and Heather Kravas are hailed as multidisciplinary innovators in their respective spheres. RadioPlay, Watts’s current collaboration with Tommy Smith, remixes historical radio dramas of yesteryear to produce a contemporary sonic hybrid. Kravas’s The Green Surround emulates traditional balletic forms in an endeavor to transform them, offering a critical commentary on the language of classicism. Rhythm and Repetition: Reconfiguring Performance Practice Across Genres brings together Watts and Kravas to discuss the intersections in their most recent work, and their respective methods for envisioning new models of practice. Moderated by Jenn Joy.

Jenn Joy teaches seminars in critical theory and writing at Rhode Island School of Design and is a PhD Candidate in Performance Studies at Tisch School of the Arts/NYU. She edited Planes of Composition: Dance, Theory and the Global with André Lepecki (Seagull Press, 2009) and has recently published essays on Danspace Project blog for Platform 2010, Movement Research Performance Journal, Studies in Gender and Sexuality, Dance Theatre Journal and Women and Performance. She founded and directed jennjoygallery in San Francisco from 1997-2000.

Publishing Networked Performance:
Live Art Almanac Vol. 2 NYC Launch

May 8, 5pm

A panel discussion and conversation as part of Festival of Ideas for a New City Published as a collaboration between Live Art Development Agency, Live Art UK, Performance Space 122 (NYC), and Performance Space (Sydney, Australia), The Live Art Almanac Vol. 2 represents a critical sampling of texts on performance in the 21st-century. Its contributors comprise the luminary scholars, professionals, and artists in the field from Guillermo Gomez-Pena to Rabih Mroue.

In this discussion celebrating its launch, PS122 Artistic Director Vallejo Gantner and aesthetic anthropologist, Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, PhD, will be joined on Skype by representatives from the Live Art Development Agency, London and Performance Space Sydney. Their transcontinental conversation will explore publishing as a strategy for engendering dialogue between an internationally networked community of performance practitioners.

The Festival of Ideas for the New City, May 4-8, 2011, is a major new collaborative initiative in New York involving scores of Downtown organizations, from universities to arts institutions and community groups, working together to affect change. A first for New York, the Festival will harness the power of the creative community to imagine the future city and explore the ideas destined to shape it. It will take place in multiple venues Downtown and is organized around three central programs: a three-day slate of symposia; an innovative StreetFest along the Bowery; and over eighty independent projects and public events. The Festival will serve as a platform for artists, writers, architects, engineers, designers, urban farmers, planners, and thought leaders to exchange ideas, propose solutions, and invite the public to participate. For more information, visit festivalofideasnyc.com.

Rhythm and Repetition
Saturday May 7, 2011 4pm

Publishing Networked Performance
Sunday May 8, 2011 5pm

Radioplay

Reggie Watts & Tommy Smith
RADIO PLAY

“Radio Play is meant to be listened to more than seen, which is why much of it occurs in the dark. Inspired by a media that is now virtually extinct, it features songs, stories and even commercials in the model of an old-time radio program. But these aren’t your grandma’s stories…”- The Wall St. Journal

“This freewheeling, beat-boxing, musical-comedy madman blows minds and steals hearts whether he’s opening for Conan O’Brian, appearing on Comedy Central in his own special or doing ten minutes in a Williamsburg bar.” – Time Out NY

“Nakedly entertaining! Watts, with his cloud of black hair and surprisingly beautiful voice, is loads of fun to watch”
– Variety

“Expect a nonlinear, surreal spin of songs, stories, and soundscapes that play with the politics of pop culture. Embrace the retro-fueled fun with your eyes closed and ears open.” – The Village Voice

Modeled after radio programs of yesteryear, RADIO PLAY gathers a group of actors, musicians and sound-effects artists to create a surreal sonic entertainment. Songs, stories and soundscapes collide in a comedic mash-up of non-temporal quasi-political pop-cultural tropes.

Reggie Watts (co-creator, performer, composer, musician, writer) and Tommy Smith (co-creator, writer) create absurd experimental comedic theatricals for modern performance spaces. TRANSITION played at The Under The Radar Festival at The Public Theater, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art’s Time Based Art Festival and On The Boards (Seattle); it was also the winner of the MAP Fund Award and Creative Capital award. Their previous theater piece DISINFORMATION was seen at the UTR Festival, PICA: TBA, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), The Warhol Museum (Pittsburgh), and ICA (Boston). DUTCH A/V, a live environmental film performance and winner of the MAP Fund Award, was workshopped at IRT Theatre (New York) and premiered at the 2011 Under The Radar festival. When not collaborating together, Reggie and Tommy work on their “A-Side” careers, which can be seen at www.reggiewatts.com and smithsmith.wordpress.com, respectively.

Written by Reggie Watts & Tommy Smith. Directed by Kip Fagan. Performed by Reggie Watts, with H.I. Bonner, Beth Hoyt, Mary Jane Gibson, Marshall York, and Jen Rondeau on the Theremin. Lights by Seth Reiser. Additional writing by Mary Jane Gibson.

Made possible with commissioning support from Performance Space 122 and the Jerome Foundation.

COMEDY, AUDIO, THEATRE
Friday May 6 – Saturday May 28, 2011
Wednesday – Saturday at 8PM, Sun at 6PM
Late shows at 10PM:
Saturday, May 14 / Saturday, May 21 / Friday, May 27 / Saturday, May 28

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your Radio Play program online!

AGA Fall 2010

agafall2010

Hosts and guest curators: Bridget Everett & Kenny Mellman

Fasten your seatbelts for PS122’s 2-night interdisciplinary festival — a nightly bento box of performance shorts that “always ends up exploding into an all-out party.” (Flavorpill)

FRIDAY:

Erin Markey, Jenn Harris, Julie Atlas Muz, The Kitty Litter, and Corn Mo

SATURDAY:

Reggie Watts, Erin Markey, Amber Martin, Adrienne Truscott, The Kitty Litter, plus Marga Gomez & Dan Fishback

With more guests to be confirmed for each evening! PLUS, the top of each evening will be meta-framed by a signature extravagant welcome from the epic and glittery Salley May, AGA coordinator.

Tony-nominated Kenny Mellman was the co-creator and “Herb” half of the internationally acclaimed duo Kiki and Herb. His solo show “Kenny Mellman is Grace Jones” has played NYC, London, Portland, Philadelphia, and both Melbourne and Sydney Australia. At Least It’s Pink, the show he co-wrote with Bridget Everett and Michael Patrick King (Sex and The City) was one of TimeOutNY’s top 10 Cabaret shows of 2006. He is an Obie, Bessie, Glammy, Glaad Media and MAC award winning performer. He wrote a children’s musical for the Soho Theatre in London and in 2008 wrote and performed a workshop of his musical “Say Seaboy, You Sissyboy?” at Dixon Place as one of their Mondo Cane Commissions. With Bridget Everett, Neal Medlyn, Brendan Kennedy and Ada Calhoun, he created Our Hit Parade which was named one of the best cabaret shows of 2008 and continues as a monthly show at Joes Pub. He wrote the music and lyrics and played the score for Jennifer MIller’s Cracked Ice at PS122. Recently, he was named one of TimeOut New York’s 40 favorite people in NYC.

Bridget Everett has been dubbed “Wynona Judd meets Melissa Etheridge, via the local bar floozy, on a rocket ship out of Twin Peaks” by The Village Voice’s Michael Musto. Having grown up in Manhattan, Kansas, Bridget received her degree in vocal
performance at Arizona State University. Soon after, she promptly abandoned it all to move to New York, sing karaoke and work as a waitress. Bridget played Lynn Chenney in Taylor Mac’s Red Tide Blooming at PS122. She is the cohost of Automatic Vaudeville at Ars Nova, has performed on the Murray Hill show at Mo Pitkins, sung with the Isotoners, with Jim Andralis and Larry Krone, and plays R Kelly’s sister in the show Neal Medlyn Plus Kenny Mellman Equals R Kelly. You can also catch her wearing gold lame in Times Square along side the Varisty Interpretive Dance Squad in Moby’s music video “new york, new york.”

WORLD PREMIERE
Mini-Festival: Theatre/Dance/Music/Art | Upstairs
Friday, October 1 –
Saturday, October 2, 2010
Party after the show both nights

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your AGA program online!

AGA Fall 09

avant garde arama

“Orchestrated mayhem and the excitement that ensues are the only predictable variables…Try as it may to maintain theatrical composure, always ends up degenerating, or exploding, into an all-out party.” – Flavorpill

PS122’s longest-running series, this multidisciplinary mini-festival features an exuberant and eclectic line-up of the wildest experimental performance shorts to be found in N.Y.C.

FRIDAY:

Performances by: Karen Therese & Lizzie Thomson, Joey Arias, M. Lamar, Maria Hassabi, Carmelita Tropicana and Maureen Angelos, Carol Lipnik and Spookarama
Band: GoonSquad
Video:OBSCENITY, from Sex Crimes Cabaret, By L. Gabrielle Penabaz, with special guest star Nicole Blackman
Installation by: Andrew Schneider
Party music by: DJ Scott Ewalt

SATURDAY

Performances by: Karen Therese + Lizzie Thomson, Jackie Hoffman, Beadz on Nude Illusion, enemyResearch, Adrienne Truscott, Reggie Watts, Andrew Schneider
Band: GoonSquad
Installation by: Andrew Schneider
Party music by: DJ Joro-Boro

*line up subject to change

Fri, Sept 18 + Sat, Sept 19 8pm

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your program online!

PS122 at Bumbershoot

Presented in association with Bumbershoot

This Labor Day weekend, Performance Space 122 delivers a live bento box teeming with a delectable assortment of technology-infused multimedia, mind-bending dance, inflammatory theatre and addictive live art to Bumbershoot, Seattle’s premiere music and performing arts festival.

Sample bites from five of NYC’s vanguard of genre-defying artists. Come hungry.

Witness Relocation
– The Panic Show

“A dance-theater anarchist’s Utopia” – Performing Arts
Journal

Witness Relocation combines dance & theater with the energy
of a rock-show.
The Panic Show attacks mass hysteria, hyper-ventilation,
stress, fight or flight, self help techniques, not to mention “Panic Room”,
that mess of a film starring Jodie Foster.
This wild ride includes dances,
dark confessions, confetti, and real time performance tasks that will whip both
the audience and performers into a lather.
Co-commissioned by
Dance New Amsterdam.

Reggie Watts / Tommy Smith – RADIO PLAY

“Nakedly entertaining! Wouldn’t it be strange if this is what the
future of theatre looks like?”- Variety

“Sharp, wry and elusive … moves seamlessly from skits to songs to
off-kilter stand-up.” – New York Times

Join sonic auteurs REGGIE WATTS & TOMMY
SMITH for RADIO PLAY.
Modelled after radio programs of yesteryear, RADIO PLAY
gathers a group of actors, musicians and sound-effects artists to create a
surreal sonic entertainment.
Songs, stories and soundscapes collide in a
comedic mash-up of non-temporal quasi-political pop-cultural tropes.
Performed in the dark!

REGGIE WATTS (performer) and TOMMY SMITH
(director) create absurd experimental comedic theatricals for modern
performance spaces.

LeeSaar The Company – GEISHA

“LeeSaar’s dances always require
unwavering attention, they are powerful.”
– The New York Times

“This is the kind of work that could awaken a love
for modern dance.” Oregon Arts & Culture

A feminine woman and a virile man are locked in a seething
and sensual duet interwoven with a surreal concert performance by an
over-the-top Celine Dion-esque diva .
Navigating a world that is alternately
disturbing and seductive, intimate and extroverted, ultimately Geisha opens the
door to an intensely voyeuristic and hypnotic experience.

31 Down radio theatre & JAPANTHER – THE
SCREAM CONTEST

Japanther is “A New York-based band whose music conveys what I would call springing life”- Art Forum

31 Down provides “mind-shattering spiritual enlightenment” – Time Out New York

A startlingly cathartic installation of alt-punk proportions: 31 Down challenges you to The Scream Contest, with music written by punk band Japanther and performed live by the duo Breelah (featuring members of TacocaT). Sign up to read a short radio theatre scene ending with a blood curdling scream provided by YOU. Like a sideshow at a county fair where people test their strength by pounding a hammer and ringing a bell, The Scream Contest rewards the best set of lungs. The winner of each day is decided by the SCREAM-o-METER and receives a mystery prize.

The 39th annual Bumbershoot: Seattle’s Music and Arts Festival, Presented by Samsung Mobile will showcase a wide range of arts over Labor Day Weekend (September 5 – 7). The Festival stretches across the 74-acre Seattle Center, located beneath the city’s iconic Space Needle, and programs 20 indoor and unique outdoor venues. This progressive Festival features a comprehensive arts program including live music, comedy, visual and literary arts, theatre, dance, film, and urban crafts.

Single day-specific and three-day Festival passes are available NOW at bumbershoot.org, and Ticketmaster outlets. Single day-specific tickets are $50; three-day passes are $120. For more ticket information visit bumbershoot.org/tickets.htm.

Photos by: Justin Bernhaut, Jules Hil, Rachel Roberts, Jay Ryan

Sept 5 and 6, 2009
Saturday and Sunday at 6pm
The Seattle Center