Sleth to Present New Play HORSEFACTS.GOV at The Brick Theater

Performance artist and playwright Sleth has made his name performing at venues like 3 Dollar Bill, House of Yes, Flux Factory, and at the storied Bartschland Follies, and is bringing his newest play horsefacts.gov/ to the Brick Theatre for a limited engagement from July 3 through July 13. The recipient of the 2024 NYSCA Artist Grant, Sleth has taken this opportunity to not only create a new work but actively engage and interrogate the idea of grant funded and subsidized arts, while examining memory, the fear of forgetting, and the ease of lying. Taking artist and provocateur Jeff Koons' declaration of his work as a "Trojan horse", Sleth mines the subversive and the arch nature of conceptualizing wildly entertaining art that smuggles incisive critique.

Sleth's TED Talk by way of John Waters-style, reveling in camp and spectacle, will also explore horses in art and cultural history, from Maurizio Cattelan's horse sculptures to Picasso's horses, to Koons' controversial and buzzy sculptures. When it comes to theater and performance for Sleth, "There are no rules" as he once told Hyperallergic. In Sleth's fantastical satire, New York state governor Kathy Hochul commissions a lecture immortalizing horses for a future where they no longer exist. Sleth toggles between horses as actual history and material and the uncanny, unreliable nature of memory and mythology, all the while up against Hochul's prescribed demands as she breathes down his neck, creating a sharp and funny piece that asks questions about how we historicize both the world around us and our place in it.

Featuring collaborators Beatriz BB (Summerland with No Ring Circus, Resident Choreographer at House of Yes) as Kathy Hochul, directed by Matthew Dailey (Former Associate Director and Producer at the iconic nightclub-cabaret The Box in New York and London), and set design by Forest B Entsminger (The Salvagers at Yale Repertory Theatre, Marys Seacole at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale, The Dastardly Thornes V. The Town of Goldhaven at The Brick), horsefacts.gov/ allows one of House of Yes's resident performers to mash up and deconstruct our relationship to what we owe to state funded art, the artists who make them, and the artistic and political landscape that create our world.

Artist Bio:

An accomplished performer in New York's queer cabaret and experimental theater scene, Sleth has presented original work at Flux Factory, the Wassaic Project, Brick Theater, 3 Dollar Bill, Bartschland Follies (and several Suzanne Bartsch parties), Parkside Lounge, Brooklyn Museum and House of Yes, where he is a resident performer. His performances combine the aesthetic languages of camp, spectacle, TedTalks, and satire. In 2024, Sleth received a NYSCA Artist Grant to create and produce a new play, 'horsefacts.gov/'.

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