HERE launches its 2013-2014 producing season with the premiere of BOTCH, a Resident Artist production by Joe Diebes, developed through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). An inventive convergence of sound and performance, BOTCH plays 10 performances November 12 - 23 at HERE, located at 145 Sixth Avenue, just below Spring Street.
A broken word opera, BOTCH goes in search of the voice and its mutations in contemporary digital culture. An ensemble of vocalists cut, paste, reverse and scramble language into a complex audioscape of intricate patterns, uncanny mimicry, and pulverized speech. More a processing system than a traditional score, BOTCH unfolds differently each night through the creative misfiring of voices at their outer limits.
The audience is seated in an immersive gallery-like environment, up close to the performers whose fragmented speech sounds, hand signals and chalkboard diagrams offer more of an enigmatic puzzle than a conventional storyline. However, even in its abstraction, BOTCH directly engages a contemporary human condition, in which a multitasking state of sending and receiving messages trumps all else.
The score, by Joe Diebes, follows a digital logic, consisting of if/then statements and operations common to software programs such as cut/paste, sampling and filters. However, there are no computers here - the performers run the code with their voices, parsing and processing speech sounds in surprising and virtuosic ways. The libretto, which scrolls on a teleprompter throughout the performance plays back 'Automatic Process Reports,' stream-of-consciousness text written collectively by the ensemble over the project's three year development, documenting a rigorous collision of psyche and machine. As they encounter text that changes each night, the performers process this information through split-second decisions and responses, resulting in a dramatic vocal complex of raw phonemes and speech melodies. BOTCH is performed by Christina Campanella, Michael Chinworth, John Rose, Saori Tsukada and composer, director and designer Joe Diebes, who mixes sound live on stage throughout the show. Lighting Design is by
Steve Brady.
For over ten years Joe Diebes has been exploring how humans and computers co-exist, often by fusing sound, image, and the voice into a unique form of contemporary opera. After studying music at Yale and privately with La Monte Young, he became the composer for hybrid arts group GAle GAtes et al (1997-2003) described by The New York Times as "an adventurous troupe with one foot in the world of post-modern art and the other in downtown performance." Since then, his own work has been shown equally in performing arts and visual / sound art venues. His opera environment, Strange Birds, received its UK premiere in 2005 at Tramway (Glasgow) and his sound-theatre collaboration with Phil Soltanoff, I/O, was presented at Fusebox (Austin 2007) and Theatre Garonne (Toulouse 2008). He has also exhibited internationally his sound installations, video and works on paper in galleries, museums and public spaces including Paul Rodgers/9W (New York), The '06 Olympics (Torino, Italy), PrixArs Electronica (Linz, Austria), Yuanfen Gallery (Beijing) and the Liverpool Biennial.
Since 1993, the OBIE-winning HERE,
Kristin Marting, Artistic Director and
Kim Whitener, Producing Director, has been one of New York's premier arts organizations and 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 and
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 and Yoav Gal's Mosheh, among many others.
The HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) has been HERE's core program since 1998. HARP commissions, develops and premieres new hybrid performances. Productions developed at HERE challenge existing boundaries between disciplines -- theater, dance, music, opera, puppetry, media, visual arts, installation, spoken word and more. 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 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."
Additionally, HERE is home to the Dream Music Puppetry Program (Artistic Director,
Basil Twist; Producing Director, Barbara Busackino), and the visiting artist programs startHERE: Innovative Theatre for Young People, aimed at young audiences, and hemispHEREs, which brings innovative national and international visiting artists to HERE for a residency and presentation.
BOTCH plays November 12 - 23 as follows: Tuesday through Saturday at 7:00pm. No performanceThursday, November 21. Additional performance Friday, November 22 at 10:30pm. Tickets are $20. Tickets can be purchased at
www.here.org or by calling (212) 352-3101 or at the HERE Box Office (5PM until curtain on show days). For more, visit
www.here.org.
BOTCH launches HERE's season, followed by The Pigeoning, a HERE Resident Artist and Dream Music Puppetry Production by Robin Frohardt (December 3-22) and Keep Your Electric Eye On Me, a multimedia dance performance by Shaun Irons & Lauren Petty (April 30-May 10, 2014). Trade Practices, a site-specific Artistic Director Production by
Kristin Marting &
David Evans Morris, originally slated for Fall 2013, is aimed at production in 2014.
The 2013-2014 season includes PROTOTYPE: Opera/Theatre/Now, the second annual festival co-produced by
Beth Morrison Projects and HERE (January 8-19, 2014); HERE's annual CULTUREMART Festival (January 27-February 9, 2014); and a Dream Music Puppetry Program Presentation in Spring 2014, to be announced.
Pictured: Joe Diebes, Christina Campanella in BOTCH. Photo Credit: Steven Schreiber.
