Theater | Performance Space New York

A Visit to Habit in Rehearsal

On Wednesday, our intern from Copenhagen, Mette, dropped by Habit in rehearsal. Here are some of her impressions:

Today I had the fortunate opportunity to able to watch some of the rehearsals for David Levine’s installation/performance/play Habit, which makes its New York premiere on Friday.

Three actors, a woman and two men are playing a text by Jason Grote in a continuous loop in a new set design. It’s a full functioning house with a toilet, TV and kitchen made by Marsha Ginsberg. The set is built inside a raw and empty space in the Essex Street Market, Lower East Side – close to where I live, at the moment.
Continue reading “A Visit to Habit in Rehearsal”

There There

There There
Kristen Kosmas (USA)

“Nobody, and I mean nobody, holds a candle to writing. No gimmicks, no flash just sheer poetic brilliance” – Andy Horwitz, Culturebot

Christopher Walken, on tour in Russia with a solo show inspired by everyone’s favorite Chekhovian sociopath, mysteriously falls off a ladder and is unable to perform. Karen, who apparently proofread the script once, is asked to go on in Walken’s place. A precarious bilingual performance duet ensues between Karen and her Russian interpreter, Leo. There There is a wildly unpredictable theatrical roller coaster about being the completely wrong person in the totally wrong place at the exact wrong time doing all the most wrong things. Directed by Paul Willis, performed by Kristen Kosmas & Larissa Tokmakova, design by Peter Ksander, translation by Matvei Yankelevich.

TRANSPORTATION NOTE: 7 trains from Manhattan are NOT running this weekend. As an alternate, take the N, Q train to Queensboro Plaza and then the free shuttle bus to Vernon Blvd-Jackson Ave. You can also find more alternate routes here: www.mta.info

Co-commissioned & presented by Performance Space 122
& The Chocolate Factory

Dec 18 – 22 8pm
Jan 3 – 5 8pm
Jan 9 – 11 8pm
Jan 12 at 6pm
PERFORMANCES ADDED!
Jan 10 at 10pm
Jan 11 at 10pm

$20 / $15 students, seniors (at door)
Purchase Tickets
Chocolatefactorytheater.org

#COIL13

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Playwright and performer Kristen Kosmas and director Paul Willis have collaborated on numerous projects over the last 15 years, including her solo performance play The Scandal!, which received critical acclaim in Seattle and was nominated for a New York Independent Theater Award for Best Short Script in 2009. Kosmas’ plays and solo performances have been produced in Seattle, Austin, Boston, Chicago, and in numerous venues in New York. Kosmas is a founding member of the OBIE Award-winning performance series Little Theater; the Brooklyn-based experimental writer’s collective Machiqq/The Ladies’ Auxiliary Playwriting Team; and The Twenty-Five Cent Opera of San Francisco, a monthly event for the enactment of texts and theatricals.

The Chocolate Factory is Long Island City based incubator for new developments in experimental performance. The work of founding artists Brian Rogers & Sheila Lewandowski emphasizes collaboration combining movement, music, video and text to devise a means of storytelling that is immediate, collage-like, highly visual, and dependent on new technologies. These curatorial values tend to lead to work that is not easily categorized and requires new methods, more time, and a new kind of audience.

“It feels a little bit like the first New York I knew in the ’70s and ’80s. Not in a retro way at all, but art and residence and commerce were in a more balanced relationship than they are now. It’s not a reference to that time, just a little place where that is occurring again.” – Tere O’Connor, in a New York Times profile of the Chocolate Factory

The Chocolate Factory is located in Long Island City, at the first stop on both the 7 and G trains into Queens. L.I.C. is a waterfront neighborhood which in recent years has become known for its thriving arts community, and has among the highest concentration of art galleries, art institutions (among them MOMA’s PS1, the Institute of the Moving Image, Socrates Sculpture Park, Isamu Noguchi Museum) and studio space of any neighborhood in New York City.

Playwright/Performer Kristen Kosmas
Director Paul Willis
Translator Matvei Yankelevich
Designer Peter Ksander
Performer Larissa Tokmakova

Made possible with commissioning support from PS122, The Chocolate Factory, and the Jerome Foundation. Developed in residencies at NACL Theater and Abrons Art Center.

The Past is Grotesque Animal

Mariano Pensotti (Argentina)
El pasado es un animal grotesco
(The past is a grotesque animal) (US Premiere)

“Pensotti has a fine facility with irony, with the fine balance between comedy and tragedy and, most of all, with the ability to capture an epic psychosis in an unpretentious nutshell.” – British Theatre Guide

Damaged photographs pieced together by an indie rock anthem by Of Montreal tell the epic and cinematic chronicle of the lives of four young Argentinians between 1999 – 2009. This record, bittersweet, fragmented, and fast-paced, displays past lives – both true and imaginary – across a slowly revolving stage.

In Spanish with English subtitles.

Made possible by the Performing Americas Program (PAP), a partnership between the National Performance Network (NPN) and the Network of Cultural Promoters of Latin America and the Caribbean (La RED) designed to increase artistic exchange in the Western Hemisphere. Performing Americas Program is supported by the NPN with funding provided by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation. Co-produced by Grupo Marea, Kunstenfestivaldesarts, Norfolk & Norwich Festival, Festival de Otono de Madrid and Theaterformen.

marianopensotti.com

Presented by The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival and Performance Space 122 as part of the 7th Annual COIL Festival
The Public Theater
425 Lafayette St., Manhattan, NY
January 7 – 15, 2012

The Rehearsal

Cuqui Jerez – The Rehearsal

In this highly original and intriguing US Premiere, Spanish choreographer Cuqui Jerez employs the simple process of the rehearsal, an integral component of traditional theater practice, as a starting point from which she explores and questions the audience’s reality.

“The curtain rises and we see the fiction within the fiction within the fiction within the fiction. The curtain falls.”
– Cuqui Jerez

Directed by Cuqui Jerez. Created and performed by Maria Jerez, Cristina Blanco, Cuqui Jerez, Amaia Urra and Gilles Gentner. Technical director: Gilles Gentner

A Long Table on Performing the Real

Is it true or did we just make it up?

The Long Table is an experimental public forum originally developed by performance artist Lois Weaver. The Long Table experiments with participation and public engagement by re-appropriating a dinner table atmosphere as a public forum, and encouraging informal conversations on serious topics. It is literally a very long table set up with chairs and refreshments where anyone and everyone is welcome to come to the table, ask questions, make statements, leave comments, or simply sit, listen and
watch.

Saturday, October 15 4pm to be held at The Performing Garage
(33 Wooster St., Soho, NYC)

FREE – Reservations encouraged

More about Cuqui Jerez
Jerez studied dance in Madrid and New York. In 1987 she graduated in classical ballet at Real Conservatorio de Música y Danza of Madrid. Since 1990 she has been working as a dancer and performer in several companies,
films and productions. She created the following pieces: “Me encontrare bien enseguida solo me falta la
respiración” (1995), “Digase en tono mandril” (1996), “Hiding Inches” (1999), “A space odyssey (2001)” (2001), “The Real Fiction” (2005); and “The Rehearsal” (2007) as part of the larger project “The Neverstarting Story” in collaboration with Maria Jerez, Cristina Blanco and Amaia Urra.

More about The Neverstarting Story
The Neverstarting Story is a project in collaboration between Amaia Urra, Cristina Blanco, Maria Jerez and Cuqui Jerez – four independent artists who work in a border field between choreography, performance, video and theatre, insisting that their work it is not about mixing all these disciplines but trying to generate a new field that slides “in between”. In this project they looked for a way of collaborating and working together without arriving to consensus, that is to say, keeping the independence inside itself. The starting point was some common material and questions that had been developed inside a principle of non-property of the ideas. Finally they took the decision to accompany each other in four different directions of work proposed by each of them. The result of these four directions are two performances: The Set Up by Cristina Blanco and The Rehearsal by Cuqui Jerez; one film: The Movie by Maria Jerez; one video installation: The Thing by Amaia Urra; and a short film, Cinthy Tuloh, created in collaboration.

More about Crossing the Line

Crossing the Line, the annual fall festival of the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF), is conceived as a platform to present vibrant new works by a diverse range of significant transdisciplinary artists working on both sides of the Atlantic. It is initiated and produced by the FIAF in partnership with leading New York cultural institutions.

More about The Performing Garage

THE PERFORMING GARAGE presents performances and work-in-progress showings curated by The Wooster Group at the company’s home base theater in SoHo. More info on the 2011-2012 season at theperforminggarage.org

October 12 – 15, 2011
Wednesday – Saturday 8pm
NO LATE SEATING

The Performing Garage,
33 Wooster St., Manhattan, NY

Co-presented with FIAF’s Crossing the Line festival and The Performing Garage
Dance, Performance | US Premiere | Spain

The US premiere of ‘The Rehearsal’ is Co-presented with French Institute Alliance Française’s Crossing the Line, The Performing Garage and Performance Space 122. Co-produced by Consejeria Cultural de la Embajada de España en Colombia; Centre chorégraphique national de Montpellier Languedoc Roussillon – Programme ReRc (résidence de recherche); Beurs- Schouwburg, Brussels; Parc de la Villette (Paris) dans le cadre des Résidences d’artistes; Consejería de Cultura y Deportes de la Comunidad de Madrid.

Made possible by La Mekánica, Barcelona; La Parrala Centro de Creación Escenica de Burgos; Vooruit, Gent; PACT-Zollverein, Essen; Mugatxoan – Arteleku Gipuzkoako Foru Aldundia, San Sebástian – Fundação de Serralves, Porto; La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Aula de Danza Estrella Casero de la Universidad de Alcalá de Henares; Miguel Jerez and Beatriz Quintana.

UK Festival

UK Festival
The UK Comes to the EV

With support from the British Council, Performance Space 122 brings 3 companies across the pond for a taste of the UK’s hottest contemporary performance experiences.”Each of these 3 companies represent different generations of English performance and all exemplify the very essence of live art.”
– Vallejo Gantner, PS122 Artistic Director

Action Hero – Watch Me Fall

June 1 – 2, 2011

“An ecstatic atmosphere.” – Metro

We’re going over a barrel, hitting the ramp at 90mph and clearing 10 double-decker buses, and we’re not stopping until every last sonofabitch in the place is cheering us on.

Drawing on footage of Evel Knievel jumps, interviews with Niagara Falls daredevils, the speeches of American presidents and transcripts from Chuck Yeager’s supersonic flights, Watch Me Fall questions the obsession with those who attempt the impossible, the futility of their attempts and their inevitable fall from grace. With language taken from Mexican wrestling matches, drag races, 100,000 seater stadiums, human cannonballs and daredevil stunts, it is both an epic and intimate piece that explores the relationship between audience and event, the nature of risk and the complicity of the audience in increasingly violent and questionable acts in the name of entertainment.

Curious – The Moment I Saw You I Knew I Could Love You

June 4 – 5, 2011

4 STARS: “Film and live performance, soundscape and installation combine in this love story to offer glimpses of an endless horizon as well as intimate close-ups… There is something immensely wistful about a piece that demonstrates that we are merely chemical compounds, and yet also shows us how to discover equilibrium.” – The Guardian

This is how I dream it. This is how it feels. And I am not a sailor. I cannot steer a craft. I cannot tie a reef knot. I cannot swim. But still this is how it ends. I am out here with the lost mariners, the castaways, the ship wrecked and the sea swallowed.

Designed for life-raft sized groups of audience members, “The Moment I Saw You…” plunges at your gut feelings, your fight/flight and freeze reactions, your impulses, love and undefended moments.

Helen Cole – We See Fireworks

June 4 – 11, 2011

An installation and a performance archive of audience voices, We See Fireworks is a curated collection of memories of past performances or performative moments whispered softly into the darkness. They talk of religious ceremonies, accidents, lovers’ meetings, loss, homesickness, adolescence, fairgrounds, car parks, fetish clubs and school halls. Articulated by strangers, these words are viral, searing into the consciousness, until the deepest memories become yours.

The installation is open Saturday, June 4 – Saturday, June 11, 2011
From the hours of
2 – 9pm on Saturday / Sunday
4:30 – 9pm Tuesday – Friday

The installation is closed on Monday, June 6, 2011

If you would like to add your voice to this growing collection,
opportunities for individual recordings are available June 4, 5, 7, 8, 2011
between 4:30 – 6:30pm & 7 – 9pm.

Your ticket is valid for the entire day, but please note that entry is based on a first come first served basis.
Free, reservations required.

Produced by Inbetween Time Productions. Funded by Arts Council England. Commissioned by New Theatre Architects. Technical Consultation and production Alex Bradley.

Long Table on Live Art vs Performance Art. UK vs America. A Special or Essential Relationship. Discuss.
Saturday, June 4, 2011 at 2pm

The Long Table is an experimental public forum originally developed by performance artist Lois Weaver. The Long Table experiments with participation and public engagement by re-appropriating a dinner table atmosphere as a public forum, and encouraging informal conversations on serious topics. It is literally a very long table set up with chairs, microphones and refreshments where anyone and everyone is welcome to come to the table, ask questions, make statements, leave comments, or simply sit, listen and watch.

Lois Weaver is a lecturer in Contemporary Performance at Queen Mary University London. Her work included live art, solo performances, feminist and lesbian theatre, performance and human rights. She is founding member of splitbritches with Peggy Shaw. www.splitbritches.com.

Watch Me Fall
Wednesday, June 1 – Thursday, June 2, 2011
8PM
$20, $15 (students / seniors)

The Moment I Saw You I Knew I Could Love You
Saturday, June 4 – Sunday, June 5, 2011
5, 6:15, 7:30, 8:45PM
$20, $15 (students / seniors)

We See Fireworks

Saturday June 4 – Saturday June 11, 2011
Free, reservations required

Long Table Discussion
Saturday, June 4, 2011 at 2pm
Free and open to the public.