CULTUREMART 2017 Kicks Off Tonight at HERE

The OBIE-winning HERE presents CULTUREMART 2017, taking place tonight, March 15, through March 25.

In this annual festival, CULTUREMART, process becomes the focus, offering a first look at live performance in various stages of development from the boundary-breaking artists in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) as they journey to mainstage production. CULTUREMART 2017 features 11 workshop performances that blur the lines between dance, theater, music, new media, puppetry, visual art and more.

HERE's producing residency programs (HARP & Dream Music) commission and develop cross-disciplinary performance work through residencies lasting 1-3 years, focused on mid-career artists. While in residence, artists have opportunities to present work at various stages of development through work-in-progress showings and more fully developed workshops in CULTUREMART, offering a vital step in the evolution of new work. Resident artist projects seen at CULTUREMART culminate in mainstage productions at HERE. CULTUREMART alumni include Young Jean Lee, Taylor Mac, Lisa D'Amour, Faye Driscoll, Erin Orr, Troika Ranch, Corey Dargel, Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf, and many more.

CULTUREMART 2017 takes place in both of HERE's theaters: the Mainstage and the Dorothy B. Williams Theater. Full schedule follows.

HERE is located at 145 Sixth Avenue (entrance on Dominick Street).
A $15 CULTUREcard grants access to any performance. Student Rush: FREE with valid Student ID at the box office. OFF-OFFten Club members see all CULTUREMART shows for free. For tickets and information, visit www.here.org or call (212) 352-3101. In-person sales at the Box Office after 5pm on show days only. For more info, visit www.here.org.

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CULTUREMART 2017 SCHEDULE:

Wednesday, March 15 & Thursday, March 16 @ 7:00PM / Dorothy B. Williams Theater Assembled Identity by Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting & Mariana Newhard What makes a human authentic? Is it their genome sequence? Their DNA profile? Their life experience? Exploring ethnic ambiguity, race and identity, this duet uses original and found text, live cinematography and contemporary music to delve into the science of identity, including genomics, genetics, eugenics, and cloning, all of which impact our culture. A HERE Artistic Director Production.

Wednesday, March 15* & Thursday, March 16 @ 7:00PM / the Mainstage The Accountant by Trey Lyford Surrounded by papers and an inbox filled to the ceiling, a forgotten office clerk's mind slowly slips from the tedium of work into a comical and haunting world of memory and regret. A HARP Alum Presentation. *followed by Talkback with Suli Holum

Saturday, March 18 & Sunday, March 19 at @ 7:00PM / Dorothy B. Williams Theater Hybrid Suite No. 2: Carmen Variations by Gisela Cardenas & Milica Paranosic / InTandem Lab Hybrid Suite No. 2: The Carmen Variations is a piece inspired by Bizet's Carmen. Mixing opera, text and performing objects, this project excavates The Remains of the feminine archetype. It is the story of Elizabeth Sherman, an archeologist curating an exhibition of fiction.

Saturday, March 18* & Sunday, March 19 at @ 7:00PM / the Mainstage ThisTree by Leah Coloff ThisTree, an autobiographical song cycle, sews together music, family stories, animation, home movies and handmade objects to explore identity, legacy and loss, propelled by the question - "What do we leave behind when our family tree has died?" *followed by Talkback with Aya Ogawa

Tuesday, March 21 & Wednesday at March 22 @ 7:00PM / Dorothy B. Williams Theater Soundstage by Rob Roth Soundstage is a theater and film hybrid performance piece created by artist Rob Roth. This 'meditation on the muse' explores the parallel vulnerabilities of the sexually confident beautiful woman - the screen goddess - and the effeminate homosexual male - her adoring follower. Roth will perform the original music from the upcoming production.

Tuesday, March 21* & Wednesday at March 22 @ 7:00PM / the Mainstage American Weather by Chris Green American Weather, created by Chris Green with an ensemble of multi-disciplinary performers, uses off-the-shelf goods, minimalist puppets, animated video, audience participation and original songs to closely examine the messy 'look and feel' of a nation that may have lost its narrative, but still has plenty to sing about. *followed by Talkback with Jim Findlay

Friday, March 24 & Saturday, March 25 @ 7:00PM / Dorothy B. Williams Theater The Black History Museum...According to the United States of America by Zoey Martinson / Smoke & Mirrors Collaborative The Black History Museum delves into the fraught relationship between black Americans and the criminal justice system. Inspired from town hall discussions held after fatal shootings of unarmed black Americans, this production explores modern millennial identity in response to incarceration and #BlackLivesMatter. *followed by Talkback with James Scruggs

Friday, March 24 & Saturday, March 25 @ 7:00PM / the Mainstage Ding Dong It's the Ocean by Jeremy Bloom & Brian Rady / RADY&BLOOM Collective Playmaking An arts collective gathers to celebrate their director's birthday. With Moscow mules and assorted belongings, they sprawl freely in all manners across the floor. As the night unfolds, the play that they are building (a piece about our planet's ailing oceans) pervades every conversation, until the party guests find they are performing it. Written by Alex Borinsky.

Saturday, March 25 @ 2:00PM / Dorothy B. Williams Theater The Bourgeois Oligarch by Taylor Mac / HERE Playwright in Residence The Bourgeois Oligarch is part III of Taylor Mac's Dionysia Festival: four plays that deal in some way with our cultural polarization (which will be premiered separately but, at some point, will be performed in an all-day festival mirrored after the Greek Dionysia). Set on an Opera House stage and consisting of a thirty-minute ballet at the top of Act II, the play tells the story of a gauche philanthropist as he prepares an acceptance speech. This CULTUREMART presentation will be a reading of the 2nd draft of this new play.

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The OBIE-winning HERE (Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and Kim Whitener, Producing Director), named a Top Ten Off-Off Broadway Theatre by Time Out New York, is a leader in the field of producing and presenting new, hybrid performance viewed as a seamless integration of artistic disciplines-theater, dance, music and opera, puppetry, media, visual and installation, spoken word and performance art. Standout productions include Eve Ensler's The Vagina Monologues, Basil Twist's Symphonie Fantastique and Arias with a Twist, Hazelle Goodman's On Edge, Trey Lyford & Geoff Sobelle's all wear bowlers, Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, Corey Dargel's Removable Parts, Taylor Mac's The Lily's Revenge, Kamala Sankaram's Miranda and Robin Frohardt's The Pigeoning, among many others. In 2008, following an extensive renovation, HERE re-opened the doors to its long-time downtown home for the arts, where it continues as a vibrant, welcoming haven for artists and audiences alike.
The HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) has been HERE's signature development and producing program since 1998. HARP commissions, develops and premieres new hybrid performances. Productions developed at HERE challenge existing boundaries between disciplines. Through HARP, the Resident Artists are given the unique opportunity to develop their projects for up to three years through free works-in-progress showings, workshop presentations in HERE's annual CULTUREMART festival, culminating in full-scale productions.

Each season, HERE premieres several of these Resident Artist productions as mainstage works. These innovative projects are grown in a diverse artistic community where artists receive career development resources and hands-on training. HARP has been widely recognized as a unique model for artistic development for the field to emulate. In honoring HERE with the 2009 Ross Wetzsteon Award, the OBIE Committee noted, "it's become increasingly hard for artists to find a place to take risks, a safe haven where they can develop daring new work. One theater has regularly bucked the trend, making its mission to ensure that artists have a home for their research and development, and that theatregoers can sample the exciting results."

HERE proudly hosts adventurous artists, companies and productions, whether emerging or acclaimed, through its SubletSeries. It also presents work from New York, across the country, and around the globe through the Dream Music Puppetry Program (co-curated with Basil Twist), and the widely acclaimed PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now festival of opera-theater and music-theater, co-produced with Beth Morrison Projects.

HERE's 2016-2017 Season launched with Ship of Fools, a Dream Music Puppetry Program production by Resident Artist Jessica Scott (October 12 - 22, 2016); and continues with Chiflón, El Silencio del Carbón, a Dream Music Puppetry presentation by Chile's Silencio Blanco (February 23 - 26, 2017); the season continues with CasablancaBox, a HERE Resident Artist production by Sara Farrington & Reid Farrington (April 5 - 29, 2017); Dark Circus, a Dream Music Puppetry presentation by France's STEREOPTIK (May 30 - June 4, 2017); and The Reception, a HERE Resident Artist production by Sean Donovan & Sebastián Calderón Bentin (June 13 - 24, 2017). The season also includes the two annual highlights, PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now (January 5 - 15, 2017), the premier global festival of opera-theatre and music-theatre in New York City, co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects and HERE; and HERE's annual CULTUREMART Festival (March 15 - 25).

Pictured: Assembled Identity by Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting & Mariana Newhard. Photo by Benjamin Heller.