Vidas Perfectas

VIDAS PERFECTAS is an all new, Spanish language version of the classic avant-garde television opera from the 1980s: PERFECT LIVES.

Robert Ashley’s Perfect Lives challenges the ways in which we perceive the relationship
 between language and music, mixing chanting, storytelling, meditation and ecstatic
 revelation. And as the world’s first ‘television opera,’ has almost single-handedly
 changed the way we think about opera, television, and performance.

In 2010, Issue Project Room was awarded an NEA grant to produce a new version of
 Perfect Lives in co-operation with Robert Ashley and Alex Waterman. The NEA grant
 provided the funds necessary to begin, but it constitutes only a fraction of the cost of
 a live performance run and an even smaller fraction of the cost of the television
 production.

Vidas Perfectas will be produced for television and appear in seven 30-minute episodes. We are now seeking partners throughout the country to co-produce the
 remaining episodes in the series. The newly completed installments will premiere at the hosting institution, joined by all episodes completed at the time of staging. This cumulative way of working allows us to spread the fund-raising and labour of creating a 3 hour opera, over a longer period of time. We can get deeper into the music and create shorter, more realistic goals along the way.

At the finish of all seven episodes, we intend to tour the full production (specifically 
in the U.S., Spain and Latin America), and to mount a complete television version on
 Spanish- and English language television. Furthermore, we plan to publish the
 resulting production as a CD and DVD.

Aug 19, 2011 | Categories: Announcements, performance, theater, upcoming events | Tags: alex waterman, perfect lives, peter gordon, robert ashley, vidas perfectas | Comments Off

John Moran + Saori (…in Thailand)

Performances on 6/24 & 6/25

Ticketing page is the same for both performances

Since 2007, New York performance-duo John Moran…and his neighbor, Saori have created a quiet sensation among presenters across European touring-circuits. A series of small, intimate performances have developed a reputation as being both “revolutionary”, and unusually simple to present. Having toured extensively throughout the UK, Germany, Poland and Fringe Festivals all across Europe, composer John Moran and dancer Saori Tsukada are currently planning their first U.S. tour, beginning in New York City in June 2011.

(more…)

Apr 20, 2011 | Categories: Darmstadt2011, events, music, performance, theater | Tags: John Moran, music, saori, theater | Comments Off

Share – free audio & video jam – Featured guest: Golden Diskó Ship

What is share?

Mar 17, 2011 | Categories: discussion, events, music, performance, technology, theater, Uncategorized, upcoming events, video | Tags: cello, computer music, drum machine, electric guitar, experimental, multichannel audio, percussion, share, video | Comments Off

Ann Liv Young presents Cinderella

Photo by Michael A. Guerrero

Ann Liv Young’s Cinderella is a reinterpretation of the classic fairy tale, inspired by versions as disparate as Disney’s and the macabre Grimm brothers’. It is a one-woman show starring Sherry, Young’s southern wildcat alter ego. Sherry, playing all characters, confronts personality extremes of kindness, helplessness, and wickedness in conjunction with the stereotype she deals with most directly in her own life, the aggressive woman. We watch as Sherry and these storybook characters tackle decisions together and learn from one another. What unlikely similarities will we find? Why does one tend to prefer the demure Cinderella over the bold and assertive Sherry? Ultimately, Sherry critiques male authorship which created one-dimensional female characters (Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, the wicked Stepmother and Stepsisters) in ways which were pleasing to men. Our version of Cinderella pleases no one.

Ann Liv Young was born on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and has been creating performance work for over eight years. She is one of the youngest artists to be presented at major venues in New York City and Europe, such as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122, Judson Church, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Flea Theater, Laban Centre London, Impulstanz, Springdance, The Arches, Tanz Im August, City of Women, Théâtre de la Bastille, Kampnagel, Brute-Wien, Gender Bender and Inkonst, among others. A 2003 graduate of Hollins University’s prestigious dance program, Young has also studied at Laban Centre London. She was featured in Michael Blackwood’s documentary New York Dance: States of Performance (2010). Ann Liv performed “Sherry” in “Girl Monster Orchestra” presented by Chicks on Speed in Switzerland and Sweden in March 2010. She’s reinterpreted the stories of Snow White (2006–2008), George and Martha Washington (in The Bagwell in Me [2008–2009]), and, now, Cinderella.

Aug 06, 2010 | Categories: dance, events, music, performance, theater, upcoming events, video | Comments Off

Ann Liv Young presents Cinderella

Ann Liv Young’s Cinderella is a reinterpretation of the classic fairy tale, inspired by versions as disparate as Disney’s and the macabre Grimm brothers’. It is a one-woman show starring Sherry, Young’s southern wildcat alter ego. Sherry, playing all characters, confronts personality extremes of kindness, helplessness, and wickedness in conjunction with the stereotype she deals with most directly in her own life, the aggressive woman. We watch as Sherry and these storybook characters tackle decisions together and learn from one another. What unlikely similarities will we find? Why does one tend to prefer the demure Cinderella over the bold and assertive Sherry? Ultimately, Sherry critiques male authorship which created one-dimensional female characters (Cinderella, the Fairy Godmother, the wicked Stepmother and Stepsisters) in ways which were pleasing to men. Our version of Cinderella pleases no one.

Photo by Michael A. Guerrero

Ann Liv Young was born on the Outer Banks of North Carolina and has been creating performance work for over eight years. She is one of the youngest artists to be presented at major venues in New York City and Europe, such as P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center, Brooklyn Museum, The Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop, P.S. 122, Judson Church, Danspace Project at St. Mark’s Church, Flea Theater, Laban Centre London, Impulstanz, Springdance, The Arches, Tanz Im August, City of Women, Théâtre de la Bastille, Kampnagel, Brute-Wien, Gender Bender and Inkonst, among others. A 2003 graduate of Hollins University’s prestigious dance program, Young has also studied at Laban Centre London. She was featured in Michael Blackwood’s documentary New York Dance: States of Performance (2010). Ann Liv performed “Sherry” in “Girl Monster Orchestra” presented by Chicks on Speed in Switzerland and Sweden in March 2010. She’s reinterpreted the stories of Snow White (2006–2008), George and Martha Washington (in The Bagwell in Me [2008–2009]), and, now, Cinderella.

Aug 04, 2010 | Categories: dance, events, music, performance, theater, upcoming events, video, visual art | Comments Off

ISSUE PROJECT ROOM and SAGIndie present “ACTOR AS AUTEUR” with STEVE BUSCEMI

John Hockenberry Leads Brunchtime Conversation

To Benefit ISSUE Project Room

Actor, writer, film director and ISSUE board member Steve Buscemi will talk with Emmy Award-winning journalist and Co-Host of WNYC Radio and PRI’s The Takeaway, John Hockenberry, about creating unforgettable characters that ultimately drive a film’s narrative and impact. The brunch which is presented in collaboration with SAGIndie, an organization that unites working thespians of the world with passionate filmmaking mavericks who buck the system.  The afternoon will feature film clips from the actor’s career and will be held at Bussaco located in Park Slope, Brooklyn.

Actor as Auteur – There are numerous iconic characters in film history, from The Little Tramp to Charles Foster Kane to Colonel Kurtz to Travis Bickle, all of them well drawn and directed. However, had Chaplin, Welles, Brando or DeNiro not played these roles would the film had the same powerful impact on our culture? Can a case be made for actor as auteur?

It is difficult to imagine Buscemi’s roles and their indelible effect on each film without his personal, stylized approach in bringing them to life. They emit essential energies striking a balance between deeply held neuroses and outward bombast. From lead roles in films like Fargo, Resevoir Dogs, Living in Oblivion, Trees Lounge, and Ghost World to supporting roles and cameos in films such as The Big Lebowski, and Barton Fink, his presence breathes life into every corner of a film. “Buscemi is a quiet tyrant of artistic fury who threatens to overrun every frame he’s in with the inner desperation he projects even in his most subtle performances,” says Hockenberry.

An active Board Member of ISSUE Project Room, Buscemi began his career in, and continues to support experimental theater, writing and performance. All proceeds from the event will benefit ISSUE Project Room, one of the country’s preeminent centers for experimental culture.

“Actor as Auteur” Brunch To Benefit ISSUE Project Room, Presented in Collaboration With SAGIndie
Sunday, June 6, 12 pm – 2 pm
Bussaco, 833 Union Street, Brooklyn, NY 11215
$125 Per Person ($95 tax-deductible, three-course brunch is included.)

SEATING IS LIMITED. Buy Tickets

For more information please call 718-330-0313.

May 10, 2010 | Categories: discussion, events, film, Funding News, fundraising, master class, performance, radio, theater, upcoming events | Tags: benefit, Bussaco, John Hockenberry, SAGIndie, Steve Buscemi | 1 Comment »

Trans-Historical-Post-Colonial Dinner Theatre-Burlesque

SPECIAL EVENT

MENU

Leon Johnson is a convergent media artist and educator, born and raised in Cape Town, South Africa. He is the proprietor of The Long Bell Press, and founding member of Creative Material Group. He performed  ”Faust/Faustus: A Duet For Devils” in the UK, in the summer of 2000, with the film version being selected for the KunstFilmBienale, Cologne, Germany, and the Raindance Film Festival, London in 2003. He is the recipient of the Jackson Pollock/ Lee Krasner Foundation Grant and a Yaddo Fellowship, and the Ersted Award for innovative teaching. He assumes the Chair of Fine Arts position at CCS Detroit in 2010.

BLUE HAMMER: A Trans-Historical-Post-Colonial-Dinner-Theatre-Burlesque

Supported by a Maine Arts Commission Grant, the launch of Nomadic Convivial Operation #7! Creative Material Group intends this premier performance to seed the beginning of a long-term dinner theater, incubating and presenting new convergent-media performance works in collaboration designers, chefs, bakers and farmers.

This performance project unfolds in a late-night cable television studio, between two live broadcasts: a cooking show, HOT POT, and BLUE HAMMER, presented by a host who professes to have toured Africa during the Mau-Mau uprising in Kenya, and the Belgian occupation of the Congo. His name is Vin Pays and he believes there is a vivid connection between the Jacobean play he performed, The White Devil, and colonial Africa. A guest joins him, the former leading-lady of the African tour [and of Hammer Horror films] named Tabula Rasa, who appears only to disrupt and dispel, an angel of death whose memories of Africa are harder to maintain than Vin’s nostalgia.

A post-performance dinner will be served to the 50 members of the audience in custom produced porcelain bowls. In addition, throughout the run of the show, we will operate a graphic-arts production workshop in the gallery issuing press-releases, posters, pamphlets and contemporary propaganda. We feature 8-track video mixing, including GPS analysis, a prototype portable kitchen, and custom porcelain bowls.

Blue Hammer Company 2010:

Kristopher Logan
Odelle Bowman
Michael Chestnutt, SPOT Architecture
ZU bakery/Barak Olins
Megan O’Connell/The Dead Skin Press
John Schmor
Ksenya Samarskaya
Chris Archer Studio
Scott Fuller Studio
Cole Caswell
Jessica George
Justin Taylor
Iain Kerr
Luke Bertus/supaflu studio
Leander Johnson
Joey Bargsten
Raphael DiLuzio
Ten Apple Farm

–
Projects + Speculations
http://www.leonjohnson.org

Dinner Theater
http://thephoenix.com/Portland/Arts/81723-Conversation-piece/
http://www.leonjohnson.org/cmg.html
http://bluehammer.wordpress.com/

RISD Public Engagement Associate
http://www.risdpublicengagement.net/id15.html

Dec 02, 2009 | Categories: events, performance, theater, Uncategorized, upcoming events | Comments Off

Winsome Brown with David Soldier and Sheryl Moller

Winsome Brown at Issue Project Room

“Monologues in Stereo”

Including

Hit the Body Alarm

By Samuel Corso

Performed by Winsome Brown

With music written & performed by Dave Soldier

Miss Furr & Miss Skeene

By Gertrude Stein

Performed by Winsome Brown & Sheryl Moller 
 
 

Winsome Brown—filmmaker, performer, writer, director—most recently wrote and directed “The Violinist” (2009, 44 min), a 16 mm silent experimental narrative with an opulent score by Dave Soldier. It was her second collaboration with noted avant-garde filmmaker Jennifer Reeves, who was director of photography for the film. She is currently developing the live Performance Concert of Soldier’s music for performance across the US and internationally. As a film actor, Winsome has performed in “Heights” (Merchant Ivory, dir. Chris Terrio) for which the Seattle Weekly awarded her a two-minute Oscar, the B-movie “Nightfall” with David Carradine, “Shadows Choose Their Horrors” (2005, dir. Jennifer Reeves, New York Film Festival, Vancouver Film Festival) which she also co-wrote, “On-Line” (2001, Sundance, Berlin Film Festival) and more. As a theatre actor, Winsome most recently won an Obie award for her performance in Heather Woodbury’s “Tale of 2Cities: An American Joyride on Multiple Tracks,” (2007) at the UCLA Live festival in LA and PS 122 in New York. Selected stage credits: “Taking Sides” (Odyssey Theatre, LA), “Welcome to Winsomeland” (Tamarind Theatre, LA). American Living Room Series (HERE), Blueprint Series (Ontological-Hysteric Theatre). Her series of one-woman shows, “Fits & Starts” played in New York, Los Angeles, and Hyderabad, India. Winsome’s writing has been published in Elle India, The Outrider (Toronto), Gothtober.com, Boiler Magazine, City Magazine, and more. She is a founding member of the international theatre ensemble Hopballehus. Winsome attended the University of Toronto Schools (Toronto) and Harvard College (Cambridge, MA) where she graduated with a degree in English. She serves on the board of the Church Street School for Music & Art in Tribeca. She is in the process of completing her first novel. 
 

Dave Soldier (Music) lives two lives: as neuroscientist and as composer, violinist, guitarist, and producer. He founded the seminal punk chamber group the Soldier String Quartet in 1985, pioneering the use of amplified instruments and a repertoire that erased boundaries between classical and popular music, and now leads the Andalusian band the Spinozas and the Delta punk group the Kropotkins. He founded the first orchestra for animals, the Thai Elephant Orchestra of Lampang, in 2000. Recordings and scores of many of his works written for classically trained players are available from Mulatta Records (mulatta.org). He has recorded almost 100 albums as a composer, leader, arranger, and/or musician. As Dave Sulzer (his real name) he is professor in the Neurology and Psychiatry departments at Columbia University, as well as head of a neuroscience laboratory. 

Nov 04, 2009 | Categories: events, music, theater | Comments Off

Lesley Flanigan + Connie Beckley

Speaker Synth is a kinetic, sculptural instrument built by Lesley Flanigan to play the sounds of speaker feedback. Her performances with these instruments are a process of sculpting noise to make music as she samples sounds from her voice and feedback to create a pallet of melodies and rhythms. The interplay of feedback and voice takes metaphors of noise as material, instrumentation as form, and amplification as communication to build a performance of new electronic music originating entirely from human voice and speaker feedback.

Speaker Synth can be performed as a musical instrument and arranged in various configurations to create immersive sound works from spatial soundscapes to electronic music compositions. These installations and/or performances reveal a sculptural process shaping noise to make sound. The main components of Speaker Synth are amplifying circuits between a piezoelectric microphone and speaker, on/off control, volume, and the hands of the performer. Additional controls include switches that communicate with a computer to allow for remote sampling of sounds and sequencing of on/off states during an installation or performance, and create the sense that the speakers have a life of their own. With these basic elements, a wide range of speaker feedback tones and rhythms can be “sculpted”. Speaker Synth has been presented and performed at numerous clubs, conferences, and art venues including Exit Art (NYC), Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral (NYC), The Bent Festivals (NYC and LA), and Monkey Town (Brooklyn); and will be featured in the 2nd edition of Nicolas Collins’ “Hardware Hacking: The Art of Handmade Electronic Music.”

Connie Beckley

“…Connie Beckley is a composer and performance artist of distinct individuality; her work is suffused with a cool methodology that can clarify emotion or confound it … [her] performances occupy that elusive but powerful nether world between theater and music– a form of small scaled but intense lyric drama that may some day soon blossom into full-dress opera.”
                                                                                    – John Rockwell, New York Times

Connie Beckley continues to occupy the above mentioned nether world. And the work has blossomed. Her special talent of composing music that illuminates her original texts by way of abstract visual ideas has become more theatrical in nature, yet no less thoughtful. This was apparent in her work entitled The Aquarium: A Meditation on Life in the City, premiered at Lincoln Center Festival 97. Her current work, “from: a masque in seven inventions,” while existential in its thinking, further emphasizes Ms. Beckley’s strong roots in art and music.

Ms. Beckley’s interdisciplinary sensibility was forged with her appearance as a singer and actor in the 1976 seminal production of Einstein on the Beach by Philip Glass and Robert Wilson. As a classically trained composer and visual artist who had been told she had to choose between art and music, she rejected the choice and experimented with sound installations in conjunction with sculpture and performance. She coined the term “temporal sculpture” to distinguish her work from the more stage-oriented works of other performance artists. 

For instance, in Spiral Cloud 1986, while a pianist played a theme and variations on a baby grand piano in an open field, surrounded by a tethered spiral of black helium balloons, she gradually released the balloons to form an evolving and rising spiral.

In The Funeral of Jan Palach, 1990, based on the dreamy, tragic poem by David Shapiro, singers became living sculptures within a set consisting mainly of light, one of her preferred materials.

Ms. Beckley has presented her work in both commercial and public cultural institutions throughout Europe and North America, including the New Music America Festivals, the Venice Biennale, the Paris Biennale, and the Museum of Modern Art. Reviews and articles appear in publications including The New York Times, Art in America, Arts, Artforum, Tel Quel, Flash Art, and Art Press. Her musical composition from The Aquarium, initially released by Steirischer Herbst Festival, Graz, Austria, has been re-released in New York by Composers Recordings, Inc.

May 09, 2009 | Categories: events, music, performance, theater | Tags: baloons, contact microphones, extended technique, loudspeakers, opera, speaker synth, theater, voice | Comments Off

Karen Finley

photo: timothy greenfield sanders

IMPULSE to SUCK

The performance of the apology and

The separation of sex and state

Karen Finley was in Albany, New York on March 10 in the Capital for a conference waiting to hear a speech from Governor Eliot Spitzer on Reproductive Health. Instead later that day, Spitzer performed an apology with his supportive, devastated wife standing next to 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 approval from the father and the ancient wrestling of the feminine archetypes of mother and whore.

Apr 20, 2009 | Categories: events, literary, performance, theater | Tags: body art, feminism, performance art, sexual politics | Comments Off

John Jesurun

Mar 24, 2009 | Categories: events, literary, theater, video | Comments Off

Kate Valk & Andrew Schneider

Kate Valk began working with The Wooster Group in 1979 and since then has co-composed and performed in all of the Group’s productions. Valk has also worked on and been featured in all of The Wooster Group’s radio, film, and video projects.  Valk founded and directs The Wooster Group’s in-school partnership with Dr. Sun Yat Sen Middle School and the Summer Institute, a performance intensive for public high school students conducted at The Performing Garage every summer. Valk received an OBIE Award for Sustained Excellence, a BESSIE Award for her performance in TO YOU, THE BIRDIE! (PHÈDRE) and a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Arts Individual Artist Award.  This year Ms. Valk has been chosen as  a mentor for The Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative. 

Kate Valk has co-composed and performed in the following Wooster Group projects:

HAMLET – 2006

WHO’S YOUR DADA?! – 2006

HOUSE/LIGHTS (reprise) – 2005

POOR THEATER – 2004/5

Brace Up! – 2003

To You, The Birdie! (Phèdre) – 2002

North Atlantic (reprise) -2000

House/Lights – 1999     

The Hairy Ape – 1995     

Fish Story – 1994

The Emperor Jones  – 1993

Brace Up! – 1991

North Atlantic – 1984 

The Road to Immortality

Frank Dell’s The Temptation of St. Antony-1987

LSD (Just the High Points)-1984

Route 1 & 9-1981

Hula & For the Good Times (two dance pieces)-1981 & 1983

Miss Universal Happiness & Symphony of Rats-1985 & 1988

–written and directed for the company by Richard Foreman 

Radio

The Peggy Carstairs Report-2002

Racine’s Phèdre-2000

The Wooster Group’s The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill-1998

–each radio piece was a BBC Radio 3 Broadcast of a Festival Radio Production 

Film & Video

House/Lights DVD and DocumentarY-2003

The Emperor Jones by Eugene O’Neill-2000

Wrong Guys-in progress

Rhyme ’Em to Death-1994

White Homeland Commando-1992

Flaubert Dreams of Travel But the Illness of His Mother Prevents It-1986

Andrew Schneider is a multimedia designer and performer. He is the co-founder and Associate Artistic Director of the Chicago-based theatre company, bigpicturegroup. His performance work has been seen at P.S. 122, The Prelude Festival, The Conflux Festival, The Tank, and O’Reilly Media’s ETech. His multimedia work has been featured in Art Review, The Wall Street Journal, Wired, TimeOut NY, Make, SIGGRAPH, DorkbotNYC, Sony Tech Wonder Labs, the Telfair Art Museum, and at the Center Pompidou in Paris. His Solar Bikini has been featured in galleries internationally.  His latest projects include Experimental Devices for Performance (.com) and Acting Stranger (.com). Andrew Holds a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU. He is currently working with The Wooster Group and Fischerspooner.  More at andrewjs.com.

Mar 23, 2009 | Categories: events, literary, theater, video | 1 Comment »