Solo Performance | Performance Space New York

The Talking Show

4 STARS “As long as Murrin’s willing to talk, there’s reason to listen. – Paul Menard, Time Out New York

“Perhaps a sequel is in order. Anticipate another Alien invasion.” – Alexis Soloski, The Village Voice

“His performances explode like Rube Goldberg contraptions or car accidents…you can’t take your eyes off his chaotic energy. The performances are exhilarating and unsettling, like a walk down Broadway. They’re about the risk of running into drama – possibly coherent, possibly fragmented – as soon as you put your foot out the door.” – Laurie Stone, Vogue

“Each performance is an electrifying frenzy of information as Murrin scrambles through a maze of carefully positioned props and costumes. . . . His rapid-fire delivery riddles the audience with a barrage of entertaining social commentary so mesmerizing and playful that the unsuspecting hordes may not even realize the full impact of his message.” – Paper (G. Ray & Carlo McCormick)

Fairy godfather of downtown performance Tom Murrin (aka Alien Comic) takes us on a talking tour of his life – and of his travels though avant garde theatre in the 60s, 70s, and early 80s! Murrin has been there from the beginning and lived to tell the tale. Speaking with wild-eyed excitement, Murrin hits you with history, hilarity, and his extraordinary generosity of spirit and innocence. It must be seen and heard to be believed.

Written & performed by Tom Murrin. Directed by Lucy Sexton.
Produced by Lori E. Seid. Lighting Design by Melissa J. Mendez.
Featuring: Kate Benson; Laurie Berg and Heidi Dorow.
Special guests: Mike Iveson (feb 18-28); Salley May and Mimi Goese (Mar 4-7)

WORLD PREMIERE | SOLO PERFORMANCE
Thu, Febuary 18 – Sun, March 7, 2010
Thu – Sat at 7:30pm
Sun at 5:30pm
85 minutes
Free Post-Show Celebrations & Events
for ticket-holders:
THURSDAY NIGHT SOCIAL: Feb 18
OPENING NIGHT PARTY: Sun, Feb 21
THURSDAY NIGHT SOCIAL: Feb 25 + Annual Spalding Gray Award Party
ARTIST TALKBACKS: Sunday, February 28 and Thursday, March 4

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your Talking Show Program online!

Whew! Age

assisted living

“Funny and humorous” – Wired
“Anything but stupid.” – The New York Times

While no audience participation is required, Marisa Olson will invoke the familiar persona of the self-help “guru” in encouraging viewers to think about the role of mindfulness and positive thinking in their interactions with the environment. Her message is ultimately to stop freaking and start chilling out. Expect kitsch and giggles as much as tranquility and a reawakening of your bodily senses.

Marisa Olson is an admitted internet junky and a serious bookworm. This performance is both a product and a trace of her research into fluke epistemologies, the vernacular of digital visual culture, and the intersecting histories of science and superstition, new ageism and DIY/homebrew computing culture.

If you’ll allow her to mix metaphors about body heat, global warming, and other things “hot,” she’ll reward you with a sundry selection of funny videos, chakra realigning musical jams, and the words to make you feel all warm and fuzzy inside.

Marisa Olson’s work combines performance, video, drawing & installation to address the cultural history of technology, the politics of participation in pop culture & the aesthetics of failure.

WORLD PREMIERE
SOLO PERFORMANCE, VIDEO

February 12 – 14, 2010
Fri at 7:30PM, Sat at 7:30 + 10pm, Sun at 5:30PM
50 minutes
$20, $15 (students/seniors)

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your WHEW! AGE Program online!

Mimic

Written and composed by Raymond Scannell
Directed and designed by Tom Creed

“A compelling constellation… vertiginous, playful and poignant” – Irish Theatre Magazine

Best Male Performer, Dublin Fringe Festival 2009

Mimic is a poetic and extraordinarily prescient solo performance about a culture in economic and spiritual freefall. It is a story about a young man, Julian Neary, who becomes a professional Mimic and leaves home to get away from the culture and family life of 1980s Ireland, and about what he finds when he returns home years later. A dark satire about imitation, authenticity, and what happens to a nation that leaves its heritage behind.

Tour Management by Cork Midsummer Festival
Supported by Culture Ireland

Presented as part of COIL 2010

U.S. PREMIERE
Jan 8-17, 2010
60 minutes

Death

death

“It’s nerve is undeniable.”
-The Village Voice

“Sara Juli gives of herself.”
-The New York Times

“A gutsier look at self worth…”
– Gia Kourlas, The New York Times (on The Money Conversation)

“A light of the downtown dance and theatre scene”
-The New Yorker

Death is scary, awkward, fearsome and inevitable-we have no choice but to face our ultimate fate. Following the success of her internationally acclaimed show, ‘The Money Conversation’, Juli asks her audience to address the one thing we all can’t escape.

With her unique arsenal of movement, spoken word, and song Sara confronts the universal demon. Let’s talk about death. No, really. Let’s face it, deal with it, think about it, laugh about it and really talk about it. In other words, let’s not change the subject. In a society that focuses all its attention on staying young, where graveyards are far removed and called the more innocuous cemeteries and “resting places,” the question is not how do we deal with death – but do we deal with death at all?

Listen to an interview with Sara Juli on the InfiniteBody Podcast

Photo courtesy of Andrea Fischman

Oct 24-Nov 2
Wed-Sun 8:30pm

Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors)
$10 (P.S. 122 members)

Impulse to Suck: The Performance of The Apology and The Separation of Sex and State

finley
finley

Karen Finley was in Albany, New York on March 10 waiting to hear a speech from Eliot Spitzer on Reproductive Health. Instead later that day, Spitzer performed an apology with his supportive, devastated wife standing beside him. Finley will speak about the performance of the apology, the erotic transference of the media’s fixation on Spitzer’s frown and the emotional starring role for his wife, Silda.

Finley will perform her latest spoken word text which examines the confession, the apology, the imagining of the sexual encounter, the travel of the escort, the compulsion, the immigrant father’s plan for his son to succeed and the couples imagined therapy sessions. Looking at the psychodrama in the intimacy of our political leaders, Finley poses to see the agony of the son’s need for the approval from the father and the ancient wrestling of the ancient wrestling of the feminine archetypes of mother and whore.

Conceived and performed by Karen Finley
Artwork by Karen Finley
Photo courtesy of Timothy Greenfield-Sanders

August 14, 2008 at 8pm
Tickets from $20
$15 (students/seniors),
$10 (P.S. 122 members)