As part of the ninth edition of the COIL festival, Performance Space 122 and 3-Legged Dog present TYSON vs. ALI from Reid Farrington. Harrowing and unpredictable, TYSON vs. ALI realizes the greatest heavyweight-boxing match that never happened, placing two giants of boxing, Mike Tyson and Muhammad Ali, into the ring in a way no one thought possible.
Using a volatile combination of dance, theater and new-media stagecraft, artist and director Reid Farrington examines the emotional life and physical experiences of aspiring boxers through the larger-than-life personas of Iron Mike and The Greatest. TYSON vs. ALI explores how differently these two epic fighters reigned as champions and how their histories and personalities affected their community and the world at large.
Performances of TYSON vs. ALI will take place January 3-19 (see schedule above) at 3LD Art & Technology Center. Critics are welcome as of Saturday, January 4 for an official opening of Wednesday, January 8. The running time is 60 minutes with no intermission. 3LD Art & Technology Center is located at 80 Greenwich Street in Manhattan. Tickets, which are $20 ($15 students & seniors), are available online at
www.ps122.org/coil and by phone at
212-352-3101.
With choreography by Laura K. Nicoll and text by Frank Boudreaux, TYSON vs. ALI places Farrington's signature combination of live-action and lifted-video footage into a real boxing ring for a 9 round fight. Using precise video editing and projection techniques, Farrington lifts each boxer out of their respective careers and private histories and engages them with one another. As the two jab, block and weave in video projection, live stunt performers silhouette their every move, landing real blows, creating a viscerally convincing version of the impossible: Ali and Tyson boxing and interacting as contemporaries.
TYSON vs. ALI is part of
3-Legged Dog's 3LD/3D+ program. The live production will be filmed in 2D and 3D for submission to international film festivals and eventual worldwide distribution by NHK Cosmomedia America.
Farrington is a new media artist, theater director and stage designer. His most recent work
Reid Farrington's A Christmas Carol, which mixed live performers with video projected characters from 35 different film version of the Dickens' classic tale, premiered at the Abrons Art Center in 2011 and was remounted in 2012. His directorial debut, THE PASSION PROJECT was based on the film The Passion of Joan of Arc and premiered at the PS/K2 festival in Copenhagen, Denmark in 2007. Gin & "It", his second work, was based on
Alfred Hitchcock's Rope and premiered at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2010. He is currently developing a performance installation for the Metropolitan Museum of Art based on "The Young Archer," a much-contested Michelangelo sculpture.
From 2001-2008, Farrington was a technical artist for The
Wooster Group where he designed video and created hardware and software systems for the integration of video and sound for six of the company's productions: To You, the Birdie!, Brace Up!, Poor Theater, House/Lights, WHO'S YOUR DADA?! and Hamlet. He has toured his work and five of The
Wooster Group's productions to Copenhagen, Moscow, Paris, Berlin, Istanbul, Amsterdam, Melbourne, Brussels, Athens, Vancouver, and Columbus, OH. Farrington has held creative residencies at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Eyebeam Art and Technology Center, the 3LD Art & Technology Center and Abrons Art Center. Please visit
reidfarrington.com, for more information.
Produced with earned revenue by
3-Legged Dog Productions with the support of The
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation New York Theater Program. Commissioned by PS122 with support from a 50th Anniversary Grant from the Jerome Foundation and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor
Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Production design support provided by the
Edith Lutyens and
Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund, a program of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York).
3-Legged Dog exists to produce new, original works in theater, performance, media and hybrid forms. Working out of a strong literary tradition, our mission is to explore the new narrative possibilities created by digital technology, and to provide an environment for our artists to create new tools and modes of expression so that they can excel across a range of disciplines.
3LD Art & Technology Center creates and supports challenging large-scale art within a financially sustainable environment. Its goals are to create viable growth oriented business models for experimental art production, revitalize the experimental tradition in New York by improving the working conditions and quality of production, and foster a community of artists who work cooperatively and aggressively to address their own barriers. In order to achieve these goals, 3LD creates, re-distributes and re-imagines resources that drive core cost reduction while increasing capacity and revenue.
www.3ldnyc.org.
