Yehuda Duenyas | Performance Space New York

Avant-Garde-Arama Spring 2008

agaspring08

AVANT GARDE ARAMA KEEPS HOPE ALIVE

“Try as it may to maintain theatrical composure, always ends up degenerating, or exploding, into an all-out party.”
-flavorpill.net

P.S. 122’s longest-running series (25 years) is an action-packed, eye-popping multi-disciplinary mini-festival that always culminates in a DJ dance party. The latest eruption of breakout dance, music, theatre, performance, video/film and more are presented in 8 minutes or less. The ever-popular “40-Second-Street” segment invites the audience to sign-up and present their own express performance contribution, be it prepared or made up on the spot.

Hosted by Yehuda Duenyas, Normandy Sherwood, and Jonathan Jacobs of
the National Theater of the United States of America

Installation by the Love Everybody Movement with
Laminated Love by Cat
Celebrezze
Corridor piece by R.RABBIT
Special appearance by Guerilla Dance Team

Friday, May 9th

Red Terror Squad
Ryan Trecartin
Mr Fashion (Dir. Jacob Burckhardt)
DuPree and Friend
Leah Meyerhoff
Lavinia Co-op
Fiasco

Saturday May 10th

Martha Wilson / Barbara Bush
M. Lamar
Natalie Agee & Diana Y Greiner with Baby Blue
Bradford Scobie
Leah Meyerhoff
The Dana Leong Band

Curated by Salley May, Tom Murrin, Henry Baumgartner,
Joe E. Jeffreys and Miss Joan Marie Moossy

Lavinia Co-op photo by Ande Whyland

May 9 and 10 2008
Tickets from $10

Purity

purity

Following last season’s critical success, Prophet, playwright provocateur Thomas Bradshaw takes on race, academia, pedophilia, drug and alcohol abuse, promiscuity and infidelity in his signature stunning style. Directed by NTUSA‘s Yehuda Duenyas (Pastoralia), this explosive creation is not for the faint of heart.

Approximate running time: 70 minutes

WARNING: Purity contains scenes of a graphic sexual and violent nature that may not be suitable for all audiences.

Photo by: Shital Patel

“Tom Bradshaw’s most important contribution to society is snatching narrative and its elements back from the clutches of the Ordinary”
– Richard Maxwell

“…an ugly fantasy… Purity lures you with a comic touch and makes your laughs catch in your throat”
– The New York Times

“Vicious and harrowing… a profoundly disturbing play… the gratuitous detail is almost unbearable.”
– New York Sun

“…Not for the faint of heart. A whip-smart exercise in sublime discomfort…a brutal fantasia of sex, drugs, and racial politics.”
– Backstage

“Authentically hard-hitting and provoking.”
– nytheatre.com

“…achieves the trifecta of what it had been after all along – it frightens, it provokes and it causes contemplation. For those who have pushed through the more repellent moments of Purity, there is something satisfying here.”
– Americantheaterweb.com

“The line between Purity and pornography is a very fine one indeed… still had to admire Bradshaw’s furious bravado. If you have the stomach for this sort of thing, go with my blessings. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
– Gay City News

COME SEE THE SHOW THE NEWARK STAR LEDGER CALLS:

“cliched…deliberately offensive…potty-mouth…trash. A sloppily-written…crude cartoon of loathsome behavior…devoid of insight or inspiration. Nakedly depicted in excruciating detail.”

January 6 – 23, 2007

Opens Saturday January 6

Wednesday – Saturday at 8:30 p.m.

Saturday and Sunday at 4:30 p.m.

Jan 18 – 23: Additional performances during the COIL Festival 2007

$15($10 Members)

Pastoralia

Yehuda Duenyas has performed and toured with Richard Maxwell and Richard Foreman and is a founder of the National Theater of the United States of America. Here he has adapted and directed award-winning writer George Saunders’s “Pastoralia” – a darkly comic story of Ed and Janet, live-in employees at a historically-themed amusement park where they simulate the day-to-day life of early humans in a display cave dwelling: they roast goats, draw pictographs, and grunt at one other. The park has fallen on hard times; as a result, layoffs threaten Ed and Janet’s jobs. In this hilarious, heartbreaking tale, Ed and Janet are put to the test and ultimately must choose between their families’ livelihoods and their own dignity.

“This wonderful show amusing and bizarre…it strikes a chord within you that makes you leave feeling a tad unsettled.” -The Gothamist

“A potent, funny adaptation…heartbreaking and acutely familiar…” –The New Yorker

“Saunders has an ear for everything fraudulent and insidiously illogical about corporate America, and Duenyas has a reputation for bringing the illogical to life. Be forewarned: The absurdist take on corporate life although set in a papier mache cave here may seem to you too true.” –New York Press

“My advice to theatergoers is simple: Go… The two leads are superb… This play, with its story that is so human, so funny, and so sad, is a perfect example of how a false world can contain reality and of how good storytelling works.”
-Nytheatre.com

“The director and adaptor Yehuda Duenyas…creates a faithful and absurd comic style.” -The New York Times

Join George Saunders for Pastoralia Benefit Oct 8
4:30 Performance of Pastoralia
6:30 Post-show talk back with George Saunders & Yehuda Duenyas

September 21-October 9, 2005
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:30 p.m.
Saturday and Sunday at 4:30 p.m.
Benefit with George Saunders Sat Oct 8

$20($10 Members)