Theater | Performance Space New York

Tale of 2Cities

TALE OF 2CITIES

TALE OF 2CITIES

Bi-Coastal World Premiere,
Presented in association with UCLA Live
and Fomenting ARTS Unlimited, Inc.

“Once again, Ms. Woodbury has built a sweet and sweeping play with breathtaking range”
-The New York Times

“Breathtakingly enthralling… bears comparison to the titanic undertakings of Anna Deavere Smith and Tony Kushner.”
-The L.A. Times

“A triumph of unfettered creativity” – Variety

“With her keen observations, she works as a sort of social historian molding gut-wrenching truths and hilarious caricatures into a portrait of the family of man- past and present.”
-Chicago Sun Times

Heather Woodbury, winner of the inaugural Spalding Gray Award, crafts an ambitious and touching journey in her first ensemble play, Tale of 2Cities, which won the Kennedy Center Fund for New American Plays Award while in development. Inspired by the Brooklyn Dodgers’ move to L.A. in 1957, this two-part epic delves into the lasting effects of that upheaval – and subsequent acts of urban erasure – on three generations of characters from both coasts. A modern-day Latino DJ spins together this collision of life stories, spanning decades and neighborhoods, connecting a multitude of American lives to our own.

Featuring Winsome Brown, Michael Ray Escamilla, Tracey A. Leigh, Leo Marks, Diane Rodriguez, Ed Vassallo and Heather Woodbury. Directed by Dudley Saunders. Photo Courtesy of Los Angeles Public Library.

Running time for each part is 140 minutes plus intermission. Parts I and II may be purchased as a package (highly recommended), or may be purchased separately. Flexible Play Package (Parts I and II, pick your own combination of dates): $30, $15 (PS122 Members). On weekends, Parts I and II are separated by an extended dinner break

Tune into select readings and exclusive preview images from Tale of
2Cities now at heatherwoodbury.com

Tale of 2Cities is also a featured presentation in the Impact Festival

The Spalding Gray Award

The Spalding Gray Award is a new commissioning award created in his honor by Performance Space 122 and UCLA Live Arts Program. The Award supports gifted artists who fully realize Spalding’s legacy, who are fearless innovators of theatrical form, who reach into daily experience and create resonant, transcendent work that makes us all bigger, wider, wiser and, somehow more than we were when we entered the theater. The recipient receives a full production of his or her work during the upcoming seasons at PS122 and UCLA Live.

PRESS CORNER

Read Jason Zinoman’s review of Tale of 2Cities in The New York Times.

Read Charles McNulty’s review in
The LA Times.

END PRESS CORNER

October 12 – 29
Opens Thursday, October 12
Tale of 2Cities is one play
presented in two parts:
Part I “Grifters, Drifters and Dodgers”
Part II “Mega Mixicana Waltz”

Tuesdays and Thursdays: Part 1 at 8 p.m.
Wednesdays and Fridays: Part 2 at 8 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays: Part 1 at 2 p.m., Part 2 at 7 p.m.
$20, $15 (students/seniors),
$10 (members)

FLUKE

FLUKEFLUKE

FLUKE

“…they keep the performance ahead of the art.” – Village Voice

“Never, under any circumstances, invite them to dinner.” – The New York Times

Recognized as one of the most unpredictable and adventurous forces in American theatre Radiohole revels in and reinvents both new and archaic technologies through unexpected and inexplicable applications. Created with proprietary PEEK-A-BOO™ technology, Fluke dives into an entire ocean on stage. This strange and thrilling tale atomizes reality, magnifies perception and is poised to usher in a new era of “Oceanic Times.”

Join us for a talkback with the artists after the performance Sunday April 30

Friday, April 21: Join us for The Underwater Party

So much to celebrate… Taylor Mac’s aquatic extravaganza… Opening Night of Radiohole’s Fluke… the announcement of the 2006 recipient of the Ethyl Eichelberger Award. Dive in – the party begins in the upstairs theatre immediately after both shows.

Member Exclusive: Underwater After-Party

PS122 Members will get complimentary admission to the new nightclub Element for their exclusive party Just Dance!

Benny Soto In Association With Robbi present…
JUST DANCE!
FRIDAY, APRIL 21ST!
MUSIC BY…ANTONIO OCASIO, FRANKIE FELICIANO, MR. V, MKL

element
225 East Houston St
@ Essex St / Avenue A
Directions: F and V Trains to Second Avenue
Info &Tables 212.254.2200 | reservations@elementny.com
Doors at 10pm, 21+
www.elementny.com

April 21 – May 7, 2006
Opens Friday, April 21
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday at 4:30 p.m.
$20($10 Members)

The Pumpkin Pie Show

The Pumpkin Pie ShowThe Pumpkin Pie Show

The Pumpkin Pie Show

Celebrating its tenth year, the Pumpkin Pie Show is a rigorous storytelling session amplified by its own live soundtrack. In junta high, Clay McLeod Chapman, a New New Stuff 2005 favorite, crafts a Sweet Valley-styled high school for terrorists where cheerleaders double as suicide bombers and guidance counselors are taken hostage by the A/V club. Holy causes worth dying for galvanize school spirits, blood is shed on the football field every Friday night and the Hungry March Band fervently plays on.

Original music written and performed live by the Hungry March Band.

Thursday, March 23: SPECIAL POST-SHOW PANEL DISCUSSION
with Michael F. Oppenheimer and Paul Rieckhoff.
Perception v. Reality: An in-depth conversation about government policy, media representation and what’s happening in Iraq – as well as the crucial role of the arts in addressing this ever-widening disconnect.

See what the Press are saying about junta high:

Under the collective name the Pumpkin Pie Show, novelist-monologuist Clay McLeod Chapman and a rotating roster of performers have spent the past decade reinventing the art of the campfire tale by injecting live music with visceral theatricality. This planned evolution takes a disturbing and invigorating turn in Chapman’s latest effort, Junta High.

Staged as a pep rally (replete with color guard and wooden gym floor), this is no mere collection of monologues — the high intensity of the performers is scored throughout by the Hungry March Band, a kick-ass brass ensemble that helps turn this storytelling huddle into an orgasmic nightmare of school spirit gone violently wrong. The concept casts the grim effects of complex geopolitical struggle as the rivalry between opposing high school football teams: A lethal homecoming queen (the electric Hanna Cheek) relates the discovery of a mass grave under the bleachers, for instance, and a team mascot (the wickedly gleeful Abe Goldfarb) provides an infectious demonstration of fascist antics.

Though this sassy approach may prove offensive to some, its aim is neither to glorify intramural sports nor to diminish global horrors. Junta High is not metaphor, but something akin to Brecht’s alienation effect: a fresh light that forces you to read in a new, left-field context the bloody international headlines that have grown dull with repetition. At a certain point, the laughter gives way to darker emotions, and the stories start hitting a bit too close to home. Luckily, the band kicks in to make us clap our hands and stomp our feet – but that just implicates us even further, doesn’t it?
– TimeOut New York

“Social anxieties, competing cliques, and the rival pressures to stand out and conform can certainly make high school feel like a battlefield. But arch-monologuist Clay McLeod Chapman replaces the figurative with the literal in this tale of warrior football players, terrorist cheerleaders, and guidance counselor hostages. Hungry March Band supplies the music.”
– The Village Voice, Spring Arts Preview

“The art and literature world find themselves with a strange, wonderful treat on their hands… The Pumpkin Pie show is a crazy, jubilant convergence of art and words and it seems like it sprung, fully-formed, from the mind of Clay McLeod Chapman. (P)ut this on your calendars. We promise it won’t be dull.
– The Gothamist

“Chapman writes complex, witty noir fiction — but it’s doubly enjoyable to see him perform…
– Flavorpill NYC

“Think of it as (Gus van Sant’s) Elephant times ten plus tubas.”
– FREEWilliamsburg


“Makes Columbine look like kindergarten… (The Hungry March Band) is a bombastic Brooklyn-based brass outfit with a known talent for getting jaded hipsters on their feet.”

– Theatre Today

March 16 – 26, 2006
Opens Thursday, March 16
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday at 4:30 p.m.
$20($10 Members)

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

Prophet

ProphetProphet

Prophet

“Fasten your seatbelts. ‘Prophet,’ Thomas Bradshaw’s lacerating satire, has begun.”-The New York Times

Emerging playwright and provocateur Thomas Bradshaw (Strom Thurmond Is Not a Racist) has had his work produced at venues such as Walkerspace, Richard Foreman’s Ontological Theatre and Bard College. In his new work Prophet, Bradshaw continues to provoke and intrigue. A man wakes up one morning and decides he must kill himself. He is angry with himself for not hitting his wife every time she has an independent thought (as Abraham and Moses would have done). After she dies and God reveals to him that he is the new Prophet, the man takes a new wife, dresses her in slave chains, and begins to preach his newfound gospel of male domination. Simultaneously humorous and disturbing, Bradshaw’s Prophet explores controversial issues in startling and unexpected ways.

Photo: Daniel Rhatigan

Click to read the rave review in The New York Times.

November 30-December 17, 2005
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturdays and Sundays at 4:30 p.m.
$20($10 Members)

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