The Performing Arts Center, Purchase College (SUNY) will present the En Garde Arts company's production of Basetrack Live on Saturday, November 22, 2014 at 8pm. This new multimedia work seeks to give veterans a voice in telling their stories and deepen our understanding of what it means to have your "boots on the ground."
Writing of the world premiere of Basetrack Live, the critic for The Daily Texan noted, "At its core, Basetrack Live is about the human cost of war. Recently, it seems that mainstream media has dealt with this topic more and more, following the soldiers who fight the war rather than the people who command them. However, Basetrack Live promotes this message by allowing its audience to be fully immersed in the action rather than spectate from their seats."
Basetrack Live is a collaboration between En Garde Arts and corpsmen from 1st Battalion/8th Marines, inspired by an online citizen journalism project called One-Eight Basetrack. The theatre piece, created by Edward Bilous and directed by
Seth Bockley, is a fully immersive and gripping show about the impact of war on veterans, their families, and communities. Live music, film and a cascade of images from independent photojournalists in Afghanistan and post-deployment veteran film makers punctuate a performance drawn exclusively from verbatim text from social media exchanges and interviews.
Basetrack Live was inspired by Basetrack, an experimental media project that tracked the deployment of 1/8- 1st Battalion, Eight Marines throughout the duration of their deployment to Southern Afghanistan. Headed by photojournalist Teru Kuwayama, who was embedded with the Battalion, a website and Facebook page evolved, that, supported by a network of technologist, analysts, artists and journalists from around the world, connected over a thousand Marines and Corpsmen to their families, and the broader public to the longest war in U.S. History.
"As I'm sure is the case for many of you, I have a personal connection to this story," says Harry McFadden, Director of The Performing Arts Center. "My nephew and godson, Matt, volunteered to serve his country and is now a proud Marine stationed, for the time being, at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina. I will be in the audience on the 22nd; I want to try to understand what he and the brave men and women of our military experience when they are shipped far from home and into harm's way. I urge you to take the time and come see this piece. It confronts the complex truths and ambiguities of modern military experience head on, and it will leave you changed."
Teaming up with the Veterans of Westchester (
veteransofwestchester.org), The PAC has set up a collection bin that will continue through December 4, 2014. Collection hours are 9am-6pm, Tuesday through Friday, and during performances on the weekends. Items that will be gratefully accepted include clothing, shoes, and household items in good and clean condition. Please do not contribute furniture, food, items requiring assembly, bath vanities, exercise equipment, and mattresses.
En Garde Arts, a pioneer in creating site-specific theater, is noted for developing iconoclastic theatrical productions from the ground up, marrying story with place, and content with community. En Garde has garnered vast acclaim for its 360-degree approach to producing theatre, commissioning both emerging and established artists to create immersive, theatrical work inspired by physical space-architectural sites, landmarks, neighborhoods-and critical social issues of our time. Past productions have been honored with six OBIEs, two Drama Desk Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Award.
Tickets for Basetrack Live are $45 and $35 and are available at The Performing Arts Center's Box Office at 735 Anderson Hill Road in Purchase, NY; by phone at
914-251-6200; or 24/7 online at
www.ArtsCenter.org.
"Create Your Own" ticket packages, for which patrons purchase tickets for three or more performances during the season, also offer the best available seats. The discount for three or four events is 15%, and the discount for five or more events is 20%.
