Abrons Arts Center to Present Tele-Violet's THE POWER OF EMOTION: THE APARTMENT

Abrons Arts Center will present the world premiere of The Power of Emotion: The Apartment (October 11-21), directed by Katherine Brook for her female-centered company, Tele-Violet.

Led by Brook and writer Shonni Enelow, and developed into a musical collaboration with composer Taylor Brook and the five-member TAK ensemble, The Power of Emotion is a trilogy of works that explores how we watch, hear, and perform emotion. In this project's third and final iteration, The Power of Emotion: The Apartment, a fight between two women leads to an apartment fire.

Moving quickly through past and present, Carol (Katiana Rangel) and Mimi (Lucia Roderique) recount the painstaking details and mundane moments of their fraught relationship. Together, they construct a shared reality that neither one of them quite recognizes. Throughout their telling, the TAK ensemble, led by vocalist Charlotte Mundy, share the playing space with the woman and propel their story forward, leading the audience towards a deadly event.

The Power of Emotion comes out of several years of conversations between Brook and Enelow about acting and emotion in historical and contemporary theater. As former actors who are interested in challenging contemporary theater's tendency to strip away emotion, both artists are interested in the ways emotion on the stage can be variously subversive and normative. Joining them in The Power of Emotion: The Apartment, are designer Josh Smith (sets and lights), Diego Montoya (costumes), and G.J. Dowding (production stage manager).

Performances of The Power of Emotion: The Apartment will take place October 11-21 (see above schedule) at Abrons Arts Center, located at 466 Grant Street in Manhattan. Critics are welcome as of Wednesday, October 11 for an official opening on Friday, October 13. Tickets, priced at $20, can be purchased by visiting abronsartscenter.org or by calling 212-352-3101. As part of a new family friendly initiative, Abrons Arts Center will offer an onsite art activity for children ages 4-12 during the October 21 at 4pm performance for a fee of $10 per child.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Katherine Brook (director) is a director of new experimental plays and performance and makes original work collaboratively under the company name Katherine Brook / Tele-Violet. Her work has been presented at various venues in New York City and beyond, including The Public Theater's Under the Radar Festival, The Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival, Incubator Arts Project, Prelude NYC, and more. Brook has also worked as a creative producer at The Foundry Theatre, The Builders Association, and New York City Players. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her BFA from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts, where she has since worked as a guest director.

Tele-Violet is a female-centered theatre and performance group led by director Katherine Brook that uses dramatic texts and real-world content to experiment with acting and dramatic form. Tele-Violet projects are idea-based, investigating cultural paradigms, and playing with perception, memory, and emotion through innovative staging and design. Past Tele-Violet work includes Tragedy in Spades: A Crime Documentary, in collaboration with playwright Liza Birkenmeier at University Settlement; Pink Melon Joy, a never-before-produced Gertrude Stein play at Brave New World Rep and Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival; Lady Han, an adaptation of a Noh drama at Incubator Arts Project; and American Realism, a new work about labor based on WPA recordings, at Invisible Dog and The San Diego Museum of Art, also in collaboration with Liza Birkenmeier. Katherine Brook / Tele-Violet has been featured at Prelude, Little Theater, Catch, The Working Theater, and Under the Radar.

Taylor Brook (composer) writes and produces music for concert, film, theater and dance. Described as "gripping" and "engrossing" by The New York Times, his compositions have won numerous awards and prizes. Brook studied composition with Brian Cherney, Luc Brewaeys, George Lewis, Fred Lerdahl, and Georg Haas. His music is often concerned with finely tuned microtonal sonorities, exploring perceptual aspects of sound with an individual sense of beauty and form.

Shonni Enelow (playwright) is a writer and critic and an assistant professor of English at Fordham University. She is the winner of the 2015-2016 George Jean Nathan Award for Dramatic Criticism for her book, Method Acting and Its Discontents: On American Psycho-drama (Northwestern University Press, 2015). She writes regularly about performance for Film Comment, Reverse Shot, and Theater, and is working on an artist's book about acting with David Levine.

Josh Smith (designer) designs sets and lights in NYC and abroad. Recent projects include; Bear Slayer (Ars Nova), Boy at the Edge of Everything (Lincoln Center), How To Get Into Buildings (New Georges), Clara Not Clara (Knockdown Center), The Power of Emotion (The Public Theater: UTR) ...Ichabod Crane (Park Avenue Armory), Feeling (New Ohio Theatre), Lady Han, Party in the USA (Incubator). www.josh-smith.com

Charlotte Mundy (The Singer) is a soprano with an adventurous streak, praised as "mesmerizing" by The New York Times. Her recent performances include David Lang's Little Match Girl Passion at the Metropolitan Museum, Howard Fishman's A Star Has Burnt My Eye in the BAM Next Wave Festival and The Back Door installation by Martin Creed at the Park Avenue Armory. She has worked with directors Rachel Chavkin, Paul Lazar, and Sarah Hughes. Mundy regularly "slays the thorniest material like it's nothing" (WQXR) with TAK ensemble, a mixed quintet dedicated to performing the most ambitious new music possible.

Katiana Rangel (Carol) has a long performance history in Brazil, and currently resides in New York, where she created the performances Suspended and Iraci or What's Underneath My Skin. She is currently working with Jim Fletcher on a project called Four Seasons, derived from Sarah Kane's Blasted. She has also worked with Tory Vazquez and New York City Players, Anna Kohler and Caleb Hammond, Les Ballets Nomades and on other Tele-Violet projects with Katherine Brook and Liza Birkenmeier.

Lucia Roderique (Mimi) Favorite past productions include The Power of Emotion (La Mama), Sheila's Day (Lincoln Center), Carmen La Cubana (Théâtre du Châtelet), The Unfortunates (Joe's Pub), The Greenwood Tree (Musical Theater Factory). Lucia is happy to be in the forest working with Tele-Violet again. She received her BFA in acting from Carnegie Mellon.

TAK (live music) is a quintet that delivers energetic and virtuosic performances of contemporary classical music. The ambitious ensemble "impresses with the organicity of their sound, their dynamism and virtuosity - and, well, just a dash of IDGAF as they slay the thorniest material like it's nothing" (Q2 Music). Dedicated to the commissioning of new works and direct collaboration with composers and other artists, TAK promotes ambitious programming at the highest level.

The Abrons Arts Center is the OBIE Award-winning performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. Abrons supports the creation and presentation of innovative, multi-disciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their practice with educational programs, mentorships, residencies and commissions; and serves as an intersection of engagement for local, national and international audiences and arts-workers.

Each year the Abrons offers over 250 performances, 12 gallery exhibitions and 30 residencies for performing and studio artists, and 100 different classes in dance, music, theater, and visual art. The Abrons also provides New York City public schools with teaching artists, introducing more than 3,000 students to the arts. For more information, go to www.abronsartscenter.org.

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