Temporary Distortion | Performance Space New York

newyorkland

newyorkland
Temporary Distortion (NY)
Newyorkland (NY Premiere)

“Theater-artist Kenneth Collins and filmmaker William Cusick—just keep elevating their game.” – Time Out New York

“Seamless and gorgeous… a dreamy, poetic, abstracted and sometimes scary meditation.”
– The Stranger

“Newyorkland is a fascinating window into a cop’s often isolating experiences.”
– The Seattle Times

“A compelling, self-contained world from which it’s impossible to avert one’s eyes… an original and important evening of theater.”
– Crosscut

” hypnotic and sumptuous theatrical presentation… wonderful palliative for those who need a break from the tyranny of straightforward narrative storytelling.”
– Seattlest

“Mind-blowing video images and theatrical tension.”
– The New York Times

An intertextual assemblage, Newyorkland combines popular cop movies and TV police procedurals with first-person accounts from real-life police officers. Acclaimed director Kenneth Collins and prominent video artist William Cusick merge visual and performance art, documentary realism, cinéma vérité, and pure fiction as they follow four police officers struggling with the high costs of working within the demanding, dangerous, and secretive society of the NYPD.


Newyorkland is commissioned with support from Performance Space 122 and the Jerome Foundation. Newyorkland is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Additional support provided by the Arts Collaboration Lab, a partnership between Columbia University School of the Arts and Performance Space 122 in July 2011, and The Greenwall Foundation.

temporarydistortion.com

Presented as part of the
7th Annual COIL Festival
Baryshnikov Arts Center’s
Howard Gilman Performance Space

450 West 37th St., Manhattan, NY
January 12 – Feb 4
Jan 12 at 7pm;
Jan 13, 14, 17-21, 24-28 at 7:30pm;
Jan 15 at 6pm


Americana Kamikaze


“Go to the theatre to see death performed live to really test your limits.”

“Refracting a Japanese ghost story through an American experimental sensibility, Temporary Distortion, integrating mind-blowing video images and theatrical tension, has created a nightmarish pop aesthetic that deserves your attention.”
-Jason Zinoman, The New York Times (Read full review here)

“It’s an impressive achievement and pretty frightening” – Jason Fitzgerald, Backstage

Americana Kamikaze is a sleek translation of the unconscious mind into a postmodern theatrical experience that knows pictures tell a better story than live actors. You are not likely to see anything like it. And if you do you may very well be dreaming.” – Richard Hinojosa, NYTheater

Following sold-out runs at Performance Space 122 in 2008 and 2009 Temporary Distortion return and climb back inside one of their signature box structures to unspool a theatre-cinema hybrid so new it can only be called bleeding-edge as they delve into the world of Japanese ghost stories and J-Horror. Americana Kamikaze is haunted by vengeful spirits, impossible physical manipulations, elliptical storylines, creepy sound designs, equally creepy cinematography, and bizarrely happy endings.

American and Japanese performers are doubled by video doppelgangers in this East-meets-West psychological horror story that fractures reality and narrative beyond existence. Americana Kamikaze explores the fluidity of time and space, the thin line between madness and reason, and the capacity for acts of extreme violence to transform otherwise unremarkable lives.

Americana Kamikaze features Brian Geer, Yuki Kawahisa, Lorraine Mattox, and Ryosuke Yamada. Written & Directed by Kenneth Collins; Video Projections by William Cusick; Costumes by TaraFawn Marek; Music & Sound by John Sully; Motion Graphics by Jon Weiss; Set & Lighting Design by Kenneth Collins.

Co-producers: Maison des Arts de Créteil (Paris), Le Manége (Maubeuge), Performance Space 122 (New York). Additional support provided by The Greenwall Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, The Nancy Quinn Fund, a project of A.R.T./New York, a Commission Grant from the Jerome Foundation and the generous support of individual donors. Photo by Jon Weiss

Past praise for Temporary Distortion:
“I’ve never seen anything like this on the stage…so compelling, so haunting, so thoroughly absorbing.” – Nytheatre.com (on Welcome to Nowhere: Bullet Hole Road)

“Discover Temporary Distortion…intimate theater for our time.” – Le Monde

For more info visit Temporarydistortion.com

World Premiere
Presented as part of COIL 2010


SPECIAL MIDNIGHT SHOW: Fri, Jan 8
Sat, Jan 9 10pm
Sun, Jan 10 7:30pm
Mon, Jan 11 5pm
Fall 09 Premiere: Sat, Oct 24 – Sat, Nov 14

Help PS122 Go Green by viewing your Americana Kamikaze program online!

Welcome to Nowhere

roadtonowhere

roadtonowhere

“A captivating, hypnotic, and mesmerizing work of art, easily one of the best plays I’ve seen this year… So compelling, so haunting, so thoroughly absorbing. I loved this show.”
– NYTheater.com

“Equal parts installation art and surreal montage.”
– New York Magazine online

“A daring performance about memory and identity. Welcome to Nowhere captures beautifully the psychic haziness it takes on as a major theme.”
– Village Voice

“The show draws you into an intimate embrace, as if the characters are whispering in your ear while you watch their dreams.”
– Gothamist

“The video sequences in Welcome to Nowhere are so beautifully shot they put most major films to shame.” – Off Off Blogway

“Though cloaked in shadow and speaking in muted tones, hold their listeners spellbound… Like the powerful acting, much of the imagery contained in the film proves mesmerizing. One recurring desert starscape is just as transportive as any planetarium.”
– Queens Chronicle

Part road movie, part fractured memory, part love story…Welcome to Nowhere (bullet hole road) is a hybrid of theater and cinema. During the performance, a constant stream of video is projected above the cast. In scenes of prolonged stillness, silence and impassivity, doppelgangers of the characters we meet onstage navigate a hyper-real cinematic landscape as if lost in a dream, creating parallel narratives that echo, reflect and refract each moment of the play.

Staged in one of Temporary Distortion’s signature, claustrophobic boxlike installations, the live performers’ softly spoken words are amplified by microphones. Referencing filmic styles of performance, underplayed and restrained, they tell the story of a man who is haunted by his past and drifting across America. There is blood across the dashboard, headlights in the rearview mirror and the vague memory of a hitchhiker who may have been a dream.

Conceived by Kenneth Collins
With Video by William Cusick
CAST: Ben Beckley, Stacey Collins, Brian Greer, Lorraine Mattox, Jessica Pagan, Stephanie Silver
Costumes: TaraFawn Marek
Music & Sound: John Sullivan
Motion Graphics: Jon Weiss
Assistant Director: Christine Vartoughian
Video Assistant: Anh Dang

Temporary Distortion has a reputation for pushing the boundaries of theatre by staging plays in claustrophobic boxlike structures, with little physical movement and a unique restrained style of acting.

Welcome to Nowhere was developed at The Ontological-Hysteric Theater and received its N.Y. premiere at The Chocolate Factory in 2007 as part of its Visiting Artist Program. It will be performed in March and April at the Via Festival in Maubeuge, France and at the Exit Festival in Paris.

Original PS122 Run: Feb 20 – 23, 2008
Also playing in the COIL 2009 Festival

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