Justin Vivian Bond and More to Guest Star in La MaMa's SQUIRTS, 1/4-13

By: Dec. 23, 2012
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La MaMa ETC presents SQUIRTS: New Voices in Queer Performance, curated and hosted by Dan Fishback, January 4 - 13, 2013, at The Club at La MaMa ETC, 74 East 4th Street, NYC.

The production plays Fridays & Saturdays at 10pm, Sundays at 5:30pm. Tickets: $15 / $10 students/seniors at the box office,
or online at www.lamama.org or call 212-475-7710. For more show information, go to www.danfishback.com.

STARRING (ON EACH NIGHT): Khi Armand, Becky Eklund, Man Meat Collective, Buzz Slutzky, Chris Tyler and Santiago Venegas

GUEST STARRING (ON SELECT NIGHTS): Peggy Shaw (Fri, Jan 4), John Kelly (Sat, Jan 5), Deb Margolin (Sun, Jan 6), Marga Gomez (Fri, Jan 11), Mike Albo (Sat, Jan 12) and Justin VivIan Bond (Sun, Jan 13)

FEATURING (ON SELECT NIGHTS): Ariel Speedwagon (Fri, Jan 4), Justin Vahala (Sat, Jan 5), Yana Walton (Sun, Jan 6), Angelica Rivera (Fri, Jan 11), Shane Shane (Sat, Jan 12) and Kirya Traber (Sun, Jan 13)

Playwright and performance artist Dan Fishback rallies some of his favorite new voices from the NYC queer performance world. Ranging from comedy and cabaret to video and traditional queer performance art, these young artists take cues from their predecessors while reinventing the form through the singular weirdness of their individual visions.

Each night of SQUIRTS will also feature a guest legend - an established icon of the queer performance world. Guest stars Justin VivIan Bond, John Kelly, Peggy Shaw, Deb Margolin, Marga Gomez and Mike Albo helped create the world in which our SQUIRTS form their own voices.

While a rep company of six SQUIRTS - Chris Tyler, Buzz Slutzky, Santiago Venegas, Becky Eklund, Khi Armand, and the Man Meat Collective - will perform every night of the series, they'll also be joined by a diverse group of guest SQUIRTS -- a different one each night, from up-and-coming club performers like Shane Shane to spoken word artists like Kirya Traber.

Join two generations of queer performers as we celebrate the legacy of downtown theatrics and the precocious insanity of the millennial mind.

SQUIRTS was inspired by a dialogue between Fishback and La MaMa's Nicky Paraiso about the lineage of queer performance, and the unique power this artform has to transmit authentic, underground queer cultural memory. By showcasing younger performers in the context of their predecessors, Fishback and La MaMa hope to strengthen the world of queer performance, creating bonds between artists of all ages and resisting the generation gap caused by AIDS and gentrification. SQUIRTS is part of a growing movement to document and canonize queer historical lineage, taking its place among the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, the AIDS Memorial Park, and documentaries about ACT UP like "United in Anger" and "How to Survive a Plague" in a mission to establish an ongoing people's history of queer life and art.

DAN FISHBACK has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. Major works include The Material World (2012), thirtynothing (2011) and You Will Experience Silence (2009), all directed by Stephen Brackett at Dixon Place. Fishback has received grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He is a resident artist at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2013) and at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics at NYU (2012), and has enjoyed previous residencies at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2010-2012), Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Previous works include No Direction Homo (P.S. 122, 2006), Please Let Me Love You (Dixon Place, 2006), Waiting for Barbara (Galapagos Art Space, 2006), boi with an i (Collective: Unconscious, 2004), and Assholes Speak Louder Than Words (Sidewalk Cafe, 2004). Also a performing songwriter, Fishback began his music career in the East Village's anti-folk scene. His band, Cheese On Bread, has toured Europe and North America in support of their two full-length albums, "Maybe Maybe Maybe Baby" (2004) and "The Search for Colonel Mustard" (2007), the latter of which was re-issued in Japan in 2010 on Moor Works Records. As a solo artist, Fishback has released several recordings, including "Sweet Chastity" (2005, produced by César Alvarez of The Lisps), and his latest, "The Mammal Years" (2012). He was a member of the movement troupe Underthrust, which collaborated with songwriter Kimya Dawson on several performances and videos. Fishback frequently teaches workshops on performance composition and queer performance culture. He blogs at thematerialworld.tumblr.com; his regular website is www.danfishback.com.

Chris Tyler is an interdisciplinary performing artist intrigued by the intersections of pop culture, queer theory, and the technological complexities of contemporary identity. In layman's terms, that means he really likes Taylor Swift, porn, and Facebook. He has presented original work at P.S. 122, Dixon Place, the New Ohio, La Mama E.T.C., and the Leslie-Lohman Museum of Gay and Lesbian Art, and is currently at work on new projects at BAX and the Wild Project. http://notchristyler.com/

MAN MEAT COLLECTIVE is a performing collective that re-writes and performs musicals to be more queer, because they believe they weren't quite queer enough. The collective includes Katie Goldstein, Megan Hanley, Rachel Messer, Rachel McCullough, Hana Malia, Andie Gersh, and Zachary Wager Scholl. They have performed "Auntie Flame" as part of the Dixon Place HOT! Festival in 2012, and mostly otherwise have performed in Katie Goldstein's living room. Most of the members of the collective found each other through Jews for Racial and Economic Justice and began performing by and for their community of organizers, activists, and artists.

BUZZ SLUTZKY is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist and curator who primarily integrates drawing, poetry, and video art with themes of online identity, voyeurism, and gender performance. They are the former Curator of the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, and currently work as Studio Assistant to Zoe Leonard, as well as Program Assistant at Laurie M. Tisch Gallery at the JCC Manhattan. A graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, Buzz's work has been shown at the MIX NYC Queer Experimental Film Festival, The Dixon Place lounge, and Ed. Varie Gallery. Buzz's collaboration with LJ Roberts is currently on view at the Renwick Gallery at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. VIDEO SAMPLE: http://vimeo.com/11450585

BECKY EKLUND is a credentialed substance abuse counselor making comic performances about her affection for ambivalence. She developed her first solo piece, "De Luis," in Dan Fishback's class "Needing It" at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange in April 2012, and performed a full-length version at Dixon Place later that year. She may seem unenthused to be here, but that's just how her face is.

SANTIAGO VENEGAS is a performer, textile designer, and singer-songwriter from Bogota, Colombia. Featured New York performances include "Re:Galli Blonde" by Justin VivIan Bond at The Kitchen and "Puppy Love: A Stripper's Tail" by Erin Markey at P.S. 122. He has performed his original monologues and songs at various venues, including Pussy Faggot at Public Assembly; his debut cabaret show, "Uplifting Songs" was featured in the HOT Festival at Dixon Place in 2012. Venegas was a member of the 2012 cohort of the EMERGENYC program of the Hemispheric Institute of Politics and Performance at NYU. VIDEO SAMPLE: http://vimeo.com/39171512

KHI ARMAND: It's either about Mexican folk saints or the joys and historiography of inter-ethnic gay sex. No room for much else. On a quest to decolonize hir own mind from the matrix of dominant narratives, two-spirit necromancer and medicine person Khi Armand is a bi-coastal resource for dyke music-lovers everywhere and holds a Masters in Performance Studies from NYU. www.KhiArmand.com

Pictured: Santiago Venegas. Photo Credit: Buzz Slutzky.



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