Faye Driscoll to Make BAM Debut with THANK YOU FOR COMING: PLAY

Faye Driscoll will make her BAM debut with the electrifying dance-play Thank You For Coming: Play, running Nov 16-19, 7:30 p.m. at BAM Fisher (Fishman Space, 321 Ashland Pl). Tickets: $25.

Driscoll is 2016 Harkness Foundation Artist in Residence at the BAM Fisher.

Choreographer and director Faye Driscoll's work consists of rigorously crafted group experiences that come off as improvised, chaotic, and spontaneous. Driscoll-the 2016 Harkness Foundation Artist in Residence at the BAM Fisher-will make her Next Wave debut with a BAM commission, the second piece in a projected trilogy that proposes performance as shared political act, where performer and audience co-create reality. The first, Thank You For Coming: Attendance, was called "engrossing and ebullient" (Hyperallergic). The new work focuses on the way we consume and fabricate stories in order to make our lives cohere; the ritual of storytelling is at the forefront of this physically and vocally driven dance-play performed by Sean Donovan, Alicia Ohs, Paul Singh, Laurel Snyder, and Brandon Washington.

Driscoll choreographed, directed, and wrote the text (in collaboration with the performers); Amanda K. Davidson contributed additional text. The original music is created by Sean Donovan and Sound Designer Bobby McElver of the Wooster Group with additional compositions by Driscoll. The lyrics are by Driscoll, with additional lyrics by Donovan who also wrote the vocal arrangements. In Play, Driscoll creates a wild and shifting mythical life story that reveals and revels in the incoherence and alienation that we so earnestly labor to form into meaningful fictions.

Faye Driscoll is a Bessie Award-winning choreographer and director who has been hailed as a "startlingly original talent" by The New York Times. Her work has been commissioned by Danspace Project, LMCC, ICA/Boston, The Kitchen, Walker Arts Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Wexner Center for the Arts, and American Dance Festival, and has been presented internationally at The Melbourne Festival, Théâtre de Vanves, Festival d'Automne a Paris, Croatian National Theatre in Zagreb, Belfast International Festival and the Made in USA Festival at the Onassis Cultural Center in Athens, Greece. She has been awarded the 2016 Doris Duke Artist Award, The MAP Fund Grant, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Creative Capital award, and a Foundation for Contemporary Art Individual Artist Award. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Museum of Art and Design, Mass Live Arts, The Performing Garage Presents, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Park Avenue Armory, and was a choreographic fellow at MANCC.

EXTRA:

Master Class: Faye Driscoll
Co-presented by BAM and Mark Morris Dance Group
Nov 18 at 2pm, Mark Morris Dance Center (3 Lafayette Ave)
Price: $30
For performers of all levels
Visit BAM.org/master-classes for more information and to register

BAM Howard Gilman Opera House, BAM Rose Cinemas, and BAMcafé are located in the Peter Jay Sharp building at 30 Lafayette Avenue (between St Felix Street and Ashland Place) in the Fort Greene neighborhood of Brooklyn. BAM Harvey Theater is located two blocks from the main building at 651 Fulton Street (between Ashland and Rockwell Places). Both locations house Greenlight Bookstore at BAM kiosks. BAM Fisher, located at 321 Ashland Place, is the newest addition to the BAM campus and houses the Judith and Alan Fishman Space and Rita K. Hillman Studio. BAM Rose Cinemas is Brooklyn's only movie house dedicated to first-run independent and foreign film and repertory programming. BAMcafé, operated by Great Performances, offers a dinner menu prior to BAM Howard Gilman Opera House evening performances. BAMcafé also features an eclectic mix of live music for BAMcafé Live on Friday and Saturday nights with a bar menu available starting at 6pm.

For ticket information, call BAM Ticket Services at 718.636.4100, or visit BAM.org.

Photo Credit: Maria Baranova