Geoff Sobelle Returns to BAM with Large-Scale Work HOME Tonight

Geoff Sobelle's large-scale performance work HOME explores the relationship between house and home, running tonight, December 6, through December 10, 2017, at BAM's Harvey Theater.

"I began to ask people what they meant by 'home.' It was a hard thing for people to put into words. For the most part, people would define it as a 'feeling.' You know it when you're there and you know when you're not there, but it's not exactly an address. So how, in theater - a medium defined by three-dimensional space - can you render a thing like 'home'?" Sobelle said.

Theater artist Geoff Sobelle returns to BAM with the New York premiere of HOME, a large-scale performance work that explores the relationship between "house" and "home." On stage, a house appears from nothing, constructed quickly as though in time-lapse. Residents move in, move out, get evicted, burn it down, loot it, rent it, remodel it, get married and divorced in it, grow up in it, die in it, haunt it. All the while, they live among traces of residents present, past, and future. Themes of gentrification and migration are rendered in the choreography of ordinary people moving through a structure, propelled by a variety of social, political, and aesthetic forces.

Created in collaboration with performers Sophie Bortolussi, Jennifer Kidwell, Justin Rose, Ching Valdez and Josh Crouch, HOME combines dance, illusion, live music, home-spun engineering, and inventive audience interaction to compose a work that asks, where is home? And if it isn't a place, what is home?

Geoff Sobelle is an actor, director, and maker of absurdist performance works. His work under the name Rainpan43 include: all wear bowlers (Innovative Theatre Award, Drama Desk nomination), Amnesia Curiosa, machines machines machines machines machines machines machines (OBIE award--design), and Elephant Room. His independent work includes Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl (Edinburgh Fringe First Award) and The Object Lesson (Bessie Award, Edinburgh Fringe First Award, Carol Tambor Award, Total Theatre Award, New York Times Critics Pick). He was a company member of Philadelphia's Pig Iron Theatre Company from 2001-12. His projects have been supported by the MAP Fund, the Independence Foundation, the Philadelphia Theatre Initiative, the Wyncote Foundation, US Arts International, the Princeton Atelier and the New England Foundation for the Arts. He is a 2006 Pew Fellow and is a 2009 Creative Capital grantee. Sobelle is a graduate of Stanford University and trained in physical theater at E?cole Jacques Lecoq in Paris. Sobelle was last at BAM with The Object Lesson (NWF 2014).

Commissioned by BAM, Arizona State University - Gammage, New Zealand Festival, and Edinburgh International Festival. Developed and Produced by Jecca Barry. Co-produced by Beth Morrison Projects.

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IF YOU GO:

HOME
By Geoff Sobelle

Scenic design by Steven Dufala
Directed by Lee Sunday Evans
Original music by Elvis Perkins
Lighting design by Christopher Kuhl
Sound design by Brandon Wolcott
Costume design by Karen Young
Illusion design by Steve Cuiffo
Props design by Victoria Ross
Dramaturgy by Stefanie Sobelle
Choreography by David Neumann

BAM Harvey (651 Fulton St.)
Dec 6-10 at 7:30pm
Tickets start at $30

Master Class: On Generating Material
Co-presented by BAM and Mark Morris Dance Center
With Geoff Sobelle
Dec 12 at 7pm, Mark Morris Dance Center (3 Lafayette Ave)
$25
For experienced theater makers
Visit BAM.org/master-classes for more information and to register

Photo Credit: Maria Baranova