REDCAT to Present 10th Annual New Original Works Festival, 7/25-8/10

This July REDCAT launches its tenth annual New Original Works Festival, a three-week celebration of Los Angeles' vibrant community of artists making work for the stage. Featuring nine new original works by regional dance, theater, music and multimedia artists, this year's festival will be held July 25, 2013 through August 10, 2013 with three distinct programs over three consecutive weekends. Individual tickets are $18 with student discounts available; a Festival Pass is available for $36, and offers audiences a chance to experience the full breadth of vision that is NOW.

In the spirit of CalArts, REDCAT's parent institution, the New Original Works Festival serves as a catalyst for creativity and new ideas-while offering audiences an inspiring view of a generation of artists among us. Over its ten year history, the program has launched 76 works by an impressive roster of alumni who continue to be seen on stages throughout the U.S., including New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Austin, San Francisco and beyond-to Poland, France, India, Nepal and the UK. Click to view complete list of NOW alumni.

"Each summer we transform our theater into a laboratory for artists who are interrogating disciplines, re-imagining traditions and exploring hybrid forms," explains REDCAT associate director George Lugg. "The 10th New Original Works Festival marks a decade of artistic experimentation and new visions of work for the stage. And for three weekends, we share their results with festival audiences ready to encounter artists taking the next step."

The assortment of innovative multidisciplinary work being offered this summer will reward adventurous audiences with three daring and distinctive programs over the three consecutive weeks...

WEEK 1: JULY 25, 26 & 27
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8:30 pm

CHRISTINE MARIE & ENSEMBLE
4TRAINS (from Signaling Arcana)
Working behind screen and on-stage, Christine Marie and her ensemble of actors and artists construct live shadow theater reminiscent of silent-era cinema and enhanced by hand-built stereoscopic 3D technologies. Her current project of poetic, visual storytelling explores 19th-century American industrialization through the eyes of a young couple. Set to a score by Dan Cantrell, this wordless fable reveals a nation forging full-steam into an unknowable future, one in which notions of time and toil are rapidly changing, and rail lines fuel an expansive transformation of the collective imagination.

MECCA VAZIE ANDREWS
MOLLY MAPS ERRATIC
Part William S. Burroughs and part Whoopi Goldberg, Molly Delilah Roundtree (a.k.a. Mecca Vazie Andrews) attempts to orient others to this decidedly off-kilter world where subcultures collide. In spoken prose both funny and poignant, Andrews' alter-ego speaks from the clear haze of her anxious but perceptive mind, while her ensemble of dancers, the MOVEMENT movement, fight to contain their compassionately rebellious energy. Perceptions shift, music skips and cycles break as Molly Maps Erratic delivers a cathartic, high-energy anthem of liberation and release.

SAMANTHA GOODMAN
DEPTH OF SURFACE
Former Viver Brasil Dance Company member Samantha Goodman dives into the fluid boundary between the present moment and the remembered past in this immersive collaboration with jazz pianist Reggy Woods and cellist Isaac Takeuchi. Goodman's large-scale video projections submerge the stage with reflected images, generating an unstable environment for five dancers as they call forth remembered sensations in their bodies. Merging elements of contemporary Afro-Brazilian and postmodern dancing with live music improvisation, the performers interact at the intersection of rich visual and sonic landscapes.

WEEK 2: AUGUST 1, 2 & 3
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8:30 pm

JENNIE MARYTAI LIU
ACTRESS FURY
Jennie MaryTai Liu's latest work is a dramatic journey that explores the very nature of ambition, an interdisciplinary examination that parses out a conundrum of aspiration, vanity, discipline and fear. Developed in collaboration with visual artist Tanya Brodsky, and featuring sound design by Mark Nieto and Julia Bembenek, Actress Fury employs three female performers to portray one tormented actress as she conjures legendary figures, including Ajax, Nijinsky and Joan Crawford, in an invocation of the human desire to act upon the world, and to be recognized for those actions.

TYLER MATTHEW OYER
100 YEARS OF NOISE: BEYONCÉ IS READY TO RECEIVE YOU NOW
In 1913, Luigi Russolo penned his influential manifesto The Art of Noises and opened up new sonic realms for consideration. In January of 2013, Beyoncé shared reflections on her life and art with GQ magazine. Tyler Matthew Oyer places these two figures-a powerful pop diva at the top of her game and a man who sought the "great renewal of music"-in a dysfunctional dialogue across a century. With stark contrast, contradiction and absurdity,100 Years of Noise: Beyoncé is ready to receive you now illuminates the politics of aural pleasure, past and present.

WAEWDAO SIRISOOK & RONNARONG KHAMPHA
FAUWN LEB/IDENTITY
Fauwn Leb, the traditional fingernail dance of Northern Thailand, serves as a marketable symbol of the region's Lanna culture and its heritage, while being distorted by diverse economic and political interests. In this duet created by two contemporary practitioners, Waewdao Sirisook and Ronnarong Khampha perform with depth and humor, recounting early life experiences that drew them to Fauwn Leb-and the divergent global forces they now navigate-to reflect the dynamic vitality of contemporary Lanna society and the fundamental tensions within artistic and cultural representations.

WEEK 3: AUGUST 8, 9 & 10
Thursday, Friday, Saturday at 8:30 pm

DANIEL CORRAL
DISLIKE
Composer Daniel Corral's Dislike exposes the dark side of online anonymity and open-forum communication by constructing a libretto from commentary on YouTube's most "disliked" video. As the eight-piece accordion orchestra Free Reed Conspiracy envelops the listener in a lush and comforting sonic world, members of The People's Microphony Camerata speak and sing user-posted comments-a surreal text filled with anger, mischief, naivety, homophobia and desperation. Dislike is a 21st century operatic testament to the breadth of emotions swirling around the Internet.

MORGAN THORSON & MEG WOLFE
THE OTHER THING
Two singular dance artists, Los Angeles-based Meg Wolfe and Minneapolis-based Morgan Thorson, perform a living, and moving, document of the process of human connection. A series of choreographic encounters staged in multiple cities allowed Thorson and Wolfe to trace the interactions that unlocked mutual recognition. In intimately paired solos, each dancer performs in new-found proximity, authoring their shared history with varying degrees of authenticity and struggle. The result is a dance done to destroy the awkward state of not knowing each other-exuberant, deficient, tender and daring.

Made possible by the New England Foundation for the Arts' National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and additional funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

PAUL FRASER, GENEVIEVE GEARHART & DEENA SELENOW
TOXIKOS
Playful and potent, Toxikos is a tragically delightful pop-theater event from director Deena Selenow, composer Paul Fraser and choreographer Genevieve Gearhart. With an all-female cast of six vocalists, they take on the text of Sophocles' Philoctetes, one of the only Greek plays completely devoid of women, and set it to a sonic deconstruction of Britney Spear's smash hit "Toxic." Performed to a live score and accompanied by an audience armed with kazoos, Toxikos serves up its irreconcilable moral dilemmas with super-sexy dance moves and the taste of a poison paradise.

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