BONEY MANILLI Comes to REDCAT in October

From Oct. 5 to 7, 2023, Roy and Edna Disney CalArts Theater (REDCAT), CalArts’ center for contemporary arts in downtown Los Angeles, and UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) present Boney Manilli, the newest work of world-renowned interdisciplinary artist Edgar Arceneaux (Art MFA 01). 

Written and directed by Arceneaux, Boney Manilli is a dark musical comedy in the shape of a pop music video, a puppet show, and a burial ceremony. Actor Alex Barlas plays “Edgar,” a visual artist overwhelmed by feelings of inadequacy, frustration, and self-loathing, who is unable to complete his play on the infamous pop music duo, Milli Vanilli. His freeloading brother, Bro Bro, decides to adapt Disney’s Song of the South into his own play about Black liberation, while their mother, Momma, a failed pop singer, is slowly fading away with dementia. Their lives spin from pathetic to bizarre, becoming strangely intertwined as each one’s search for truth collides with the other’s.

"My exploration of my mom’s dementia led me to discover its roots in various indigenous spiritual traditions, where elders who inhabit both this world and the next, are treated as shamans,” said Arceneaux.

Developed during the pandemic, Boney Manilli reflects how Arceneaux dealt with the loss of his mother in 2020. He also explored this theme in his multi-media painting and sculpture series, Skinning the Mirror, which opened at Vielmetter Los Angeles in 2022. 

Each night, the play will open with a Disco- and a 90s-themed karaoke party in the REDCAT lounge. On Friday, Oct. 7, the program will also include a post-performance talk with Arceneaux and members of the cast and creative team. 

Boney Manilli is supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts, Vielmetter Los Angeles, and Galerie Nathalie Obadia, Paris 

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance received the prestigious Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts’ Artist Project grant for Arceneaux’s Boney Manilli.