CalArts Closes AFTER MARIENBAD Puppet Theater Performance, 12/16

California Institute of the Arts' (CalArts) School of Theater delves into new levels of mystery and movement as director Yelena Zhelezov, an MFA3 student in the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts, guides audiences down the ever-shifting lanes of memory in After Marienbad. After Marienbad will run Friday, December 11 and Saturday, December 12, and Monday, December 14 through Wednesday, December 16. The show will be performed each night at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. except for Wednesday, December 16, which will offer only an 8 p.m. performance. Seating is very limited. All performances will take place at the CalArts Butler Building 2 (BB2) performance space, 24700 McBean Parkway, Valencia CA, 91355. Admission is free and by reservation only. Ticket reservations can be made online at www.calarts.edu/events.

Zhelezov's After Marienbad is a contemporary distillation of the iconic 1961 French film Last Year at Marienbad. The film, written by Allain Robbe-Grillet and directed by Allain Resnais, takes place in the lavish and ornamental settings of a grand hotel. Three main characters wander through the hotel both searching for and avoiding each other. In her adaptation for puppets and actors, Zhelezov focuses on the elements of space surrounding the characters, isolating and outlining them in the narrative while tracing their progress through dimensional corridors of memory. The characters interior emotions are reflected in the miniature architecture around them; their recollection of past events at the hotel begins to revise the space of memory, and reshape the setting.

The puppets in the show are based on the film actors, and are redrawn from projections, frozen in time and wood. This intimate 35-minute performance, viewed from both front and back, is choreographed on top of six columns for a 20-person audience.

Yelena Zhelezov is a Belarus-born artist. Her current practice centers around ideas of reconfiguring the human body in space by employing illusionary and occasionally disembodying mediums of object-based performance, projection and live film techniques. Since coming to pursue an MFA at CalArts, Zhelezov has performed and/or directed in various parts of CalArts, as well as at the Museum of Jurassic Technology, the Central School for Speech and Drama in London and at Materials & Applications.

The Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts was established in 1998 to allow CalArts students to explore contemporary puppetry and performing objects. Housed in the School of Theater, this one-of-a-kind laboratory offers a framework for practical training, artistic innovation, aesthetic inquiry and interdisciplinary investigation. In keeping with the evolution of puppetry through the integration of different art forms, the center strives to combine puppet theater with the use of new technologies and emerging forms and practices that cut across traditional boundaries.

Since its founding, the Center for Puppetry and the Arts has hosted an array of distinguished visiting artists, including Roman Paska, Lee Breuer, Basil Twist, Jane Henson, Paul Zaloom, Larry Reed, Michael Sommers, Peter Schumann, Ken Jacobs and Dan Hurlin. The center has also presented numerous productions on campus and, more recently, at REDCAT in downtown Los Angeles, all featuring student performers, designers, managers and technicians.

CalArts is recognized internationally as a leading laboratory for the visual, performing, media and literary arts. Housing six schools--Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater--CalArts educates professional artists in an intensive learning environment founded on artmaking excellence, creative experimentation, cross-pollination among diverse artistic disciplines, and a broad context of social and cultural understanding. CalArts also operates the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT) in the Walt Disney Concert Hall complex in downtown Los Angeles.