HA-M-LET Comes to Hauser & Wirth

On Friday, Nov. 8, CalArts' Center for New Performance (CNP) partners with Hauser & Wirth to present the U.S. debut of HA-M-LET from critically-acclaimed Brazilian performance and media artist Peter Mark. The special one-night only performance take place at Hauser & Wirth in the Downtown Los Angeles Arts District. CNP is the professional producing arm of California Institute of the Arts (CalArts).

Peter Mark's theatrical remix is a multilingual, multimedia solo performance housed within a projection cube. Shakespeare's themes of madness, deceit, and familial conflict take digital form as Mark's tumbling thoughts and projected animations reach a vivid state of saturation, swirling around the artist as he grapples with the images he has unleashed, and their flickering ghosts.

"Shakespeare's text can meet whatever you throw at it - and that includes GIFs, memes, and the most contemporary images," said Mark. "Just as Hamlet didn't know how to cope with what was required of him by the ghost - the image - of his father, I wanted to explore that same connection between body and image; how the past, present, and future can all be layered; and how images can beckon us to act beyond ourselves."

Sourcing material from the original play, internet pop culture, home videos, 2D and 3D animation (including three original animated films), live footage, music, costumes, and choreography, HA-M-LET transforms projected image into landscape, body, narrative, and biography, shifting at a rate that pays homage to Hamlet's own velocity of thought.

The artist has cast and filmed his Brazilian parents in the roles of King, Queen, and Ghost, rendering the conflict of the play's narrative as both textual and real - simultaneously liberated and confined by the layers of media. In the video, Mark's parents speak in English, while Mark speaks Portuguese, further exploring the idea of what it means to be translated, mediated and grappled with.

Conceived to be performed in non-traditional performance spaces, the piece uses the cube and props as an anchor, while the projections and live performance can morph and scale to the environment around it, shifting between intimate and epic tone. The performance's set, costumes, and assembled bricolage remain as installation pieces in the aftermath, telling yet another story about the relationship between image and reality.

HA-M-LET was first performed publicly in Warsaw last year, as part of the CalArts Center for New Performance residency with STUDIO teatrgaleria, one of Poland's premiere experimental theaters. The project has been in development since 2017 - alongside a similar, yet-to-be-debuted remix of Romeo and Juliet. HA-M-LET was developed in association with Automata Arts.

HA-M-LET will be performed twice, beginning in Hauser & Wirth's courtyard.

Link for reservations: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/in-performance-ha-m-let-from-calarts-center-for-new-performance-tickets-77552964003?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

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