MUSEUM: Lecture Comes to The Exponential Festival at The Brick

James and Jerome make hyper-literary live-music storytelling spectacles for the theater. With MUSEUM: Lecture, co-created with media designer Shawn Duan and co-directed by Tony-nominee Rachel Chavkin and Annie Tippe, they turn their attention to visual art, calligraphy, and illuminated manuscripts to create a love letter to the museum experience- one that is at once an art lecture, a personal essay, a piece of theater, and a live electronic music composition, all meditated through with the audience. MUSEUM: Lecture is James and Jerome's answer to Susan Sontag's call for an "erotics of art."

MUSEUM: Lecture will play at The Brick (579 Metropolitan Ave at Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn) January 5-7, 2018. Tickets ($20) may be purchased online at www.bricktheater.com or by calling 866-811-4111.

JEROME ELLIS is a composer, improviser, and theater artist. As a composer he was awarded a 2015 Fulbright Fellowship to research traditional samba performance and write new music in Salvador, Brazil. Recent projects include High Winds with Sylvan Oswald in NYC and LA, and Piano Tales at Lincoln Center Education with James Harrison Monaco. He is also an apprentice piano technician with Floating Piano Factory, as well as a translator from Portuguese. jeromeellis.com

James Harrison MONACO is a storyteller, writer, and musician. He and composer Jerome Ellis make up the music-storytelling duo James and Jerome (jamesandjerome.org). His storytelling works are frequently directed by Rachel Chavkin, Andrew Scoville, and Annie Tippe. Recent James and Jerome projects include: Piano Tales (Lincoln Center Education, La MaMa, Joe's Pub at The Public), Aaron/Marie (Under The Rader Festival's INCOMING!, PRELUDE, ANT Fest), and They Ran and Ran and Ran (HERE Arts). Solo storytelling projects include Tales for Telling (Ars Nova's ANT Fest; Fresh Ground Pepper Playground) and Reception (HERE Arts, soloNOVA at The New Ohio). He co-wrote, performed in, and co-composed the music for Andrew Scoville and Dave Tennant's Love Machine (Incubator Arts). As a dramaturg, he's worked with Howard Fishman, Dave Malloy, and Salty Brine. He also works as a fiction writer, drummer, and translator from Spanish and Italian.

Rachel Chavkin is a director, writer and dramaturg, as well as the artistic director of Brooklyn-based company the TEAM. She was nominated for a Tony for her direction of Dave Malloy's Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812 (Ars Nova, A.R.T., Broadway), is a three-time Obie Award winner, and is a recipient of the 2017 Smithsonian Award for Ingenuity along with Dave Malloy.

Annie Tippe: Directing includes Ghost Quartet; Bess Wohl's Continuity (The Goodman Theatre); When The Tanks Break (Drama League); Washeteria (Soho Rep); Aaron/Marie (w. Rachel Chavkin, Incoming! @ UTR); + Cowboy Bob (Yale Institute for Music Theatre; Ars Nova). Associate Director: Present Laughter (dir. Moritz von Stuelpnagel), the TEAM'S touring productions of Mission Drift and RoosevElvis (dir. Rachel Chavkin), and Gabriel Kahane's The Ambassador (dir. John Tiffany). Ars Nova's 2016 Director-in-Residence, Drama League Fall Directing Fellow, WTF Directing Corps, New Georges Audrey Resident. www.annietippe.com.

Shawn Duan is a NYC based projection and video designer for theatre, opera and concerts. Theatre work in New York include designs on Broadway, Off-Broadway, at The Public, and New York City Opera. His extensive regional work include multiple shows at Berkeley Rep, Flat Rock Playhouse, The Guthrie, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, The Pittsburgh Public, Seattle Rep, South Coast Rep, Trinity Rep, and Virginia Stage Company. Concert design work include several shows in Las Vegas as well as a number of US/International tours. Non-theatre work include technical consulting for corporate events and media installations.

The Brick is located at 579 Metropolitan Avenue (between Union Avenue and Lorimer Street) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the L & G subway lines (L: Lorimer stop; G: Metropolitan stop). For more detailed directions & further information, visit www.bricktheater.com. The Brick and its non-profit company, The Brick Theater, Inc. were founded in September of 2002 by Robert Honeywell and Michael Gardner. Formerly an auto-body shop, a storage space and a yoga center, this brick- walled garage was completely refurbished into a state-of-the-art theater complex, with a large sprung floor and professional lighting and sound package.

Winner of THE 2009 CAFFE CINO FELLOWSHIP AWARD, The Brick is Williamsburg, Brooklyn's destination for subversive theatrical experiences. Home to the critically acclaimed premieres of Bouffon Glass Menajoree (NY IT Award Winner- Outstanding Play), Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War (NY IT Award Winner-Outstanding Play), Greed: A Musical Love $tory (NY IT Award Nominee-Outstanding Musical), Red Cloud Rising, Theatre of the Arcade and Suspicious Package (NY IT Award Nominee-Outstanding Play), The Brick has hosted some of downtown theater's most innovative artists, including Young Jean Lee, The Debate Society, Little Lord, Nellie Tinder, Title:Point, Target Margin Theater, New Georges, Jason Grote, Annie Baker, The Mad Ones and Thomas Bradshaw.