HERE to Present Two Hybrid Theatrical Works by Nick Brooke and Lauren Petty & Shaun Irons

HERE will present two hybrid theatrical works as part of HERE & Back, a presenting series produced by HERE and helmed by established artists with deep connections to the organization. Running April 4-7, 2024, Nick Brooke’s Ten Transcendental Etudes melds sampling, sound design, and physical theater and looks at how songs dominate how we talk about each other. Shifting weather patterns, eroding environments, mutating undersea habitats and organic decay flicker in and out in All Over Everywhere, an interdisciplinary requiem for our imperiled planet by Lauren Petty & Shaun Irons that runs April 12-21, 2024. Performances take place in HERE’s Mainstage Theatre.

Both Nick Brooke and Lauren Petty & Shaun Irons were awarded multi-year HARP residencies in the past. Brooke debuted Border Towns in 2010 as part of his residency and, in 2014, Petty & Irons premiered Keep Your Electric Eye On Me at the conclusion of their residency.  

Nick Brooke’s Ten Transcendental Etudes is a 10-movement theater piece that begins with a phonemic breakdown of a single Elvis phrase (“I can’t help falling”), then blooms into dense fugues of text, song fragments, and visceral movement, using familiar pop and recorded sources while recursively sampling itself, creating a work that is “operatic in scope, unfolding in layers that constantly reveal new meanings.” (Culturebot). Over the course of the evening, and the 10 progressive etudes, the performers learn new languages and a fractured snapshot emerges of how we create new ways of communicating, made up of songs.

In a decathlon arena, six performers belt, twirl, seesaw, and croon through a mashed lexicon of love songs. Over ten etudes, they learn to speak in tongues, in a meditation on language and learning to fall. The performance is in the round. Circular projection hoops above and behind the audience translate and phonemically parse each etude. A seesaw, chairs, prop mikes, and elaborate sound design and lighting fill out the minimal stage. The ultimate effect is something between arena rock, a decathlon, and a 19th-c. amateur circus. Like Brooke’s previous work, the Etudes weave sampled collages with physical theater: productions start as a collage of many recordings, which the ensemble learns to imitate, creating a gestural vocabulary in lock-step with the samples. The work complicates musical culture in what has been called “the most exciting and innovative music theater I’ve seen in years” (Meredith Monk).

Ten Transcendental Etudes features performances by Michael Chinworth, Ariadne Greif, Synead Nichols, Yasmin Pascall, Paul Pinto, and Dax Valdes. The creative team includes lighting designer Michael Giannitti, set & projection designer Sue Rees, sound designer Devin Greenwood, music director Kerry Ryer-Parke, and costume designer Richard MacPike.

Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty are pleased to present the in-person premiere of All Over Everywhere, which was originally seen as a live-broadcast over Twitch during the pandemic.

Renowned composer Philip Glass said of this initial presentation “I didn’t just like it…I loved it!”

Shifting weather patterns, eroding environments, mutating undersea habitats and organic decay flicker in and out All Over Everywhere, an interdisciplinary requiem for our imperiled planet. Conjuring a live cine-performance through the interplay of otherworldly video, reactive sound, intoned words, movement, sculptural elements, technology, and spectral disturbances, All Over Everywhere is a hymn to the natural world and a response to ongoing anxieties, instabilities and losses.

Unfolding over seven phases, the work draws on poetic and apocalyptic texts by Edgar Allan Poe, Czesław Miłosz, Jeff VanderMeer and Rachel Carson. All Over Everywhere is an elegy for what has already been lost, as well as a benediction for what remains; a ritual of mourning that leads to catharsis, a change in perspective, and a deeper, more intuitive understanding of the fragility of our existence on this planet.

All Over Everywhere features performances by Dee Beasneal, Elizabeth Carena, and Saori Tsukada. Joining Petty and Irons on the creative team are composer Christopher Cerrone, Amy Mascena (props, costumes), Sol Cabrini and Isaac Silber (sound engineers), Liam Crowley (lighting consultant), and Maurina Lioce(producing/ management).

General admission tickets to Ten Transcendental Etudes start at $35. Performances take place April 4 at 8:30pm, April 5 at 8:30pm & 10pm, April 6 at 4pm & 8:30pm, and April 7 at 4pm. The anticipated running time is 60 minutes with no intermission.

General admission tickets to All Over Everywhere start at $30. Performances take place April 12, 13, 18-20 at 8:30pm and April 14 & 21 at 4pm. The anticipated running time is 70 minutes with no intermission.

Tickets can be purchased by visiting www.here.org or by calling 212-647-0202. Students and seniors can access free tickets on a rush basis, subject to availability for each performance, and must be redeemed at the box office. For Group Sales, contact boxoffice@here.org. Standard ticketing fees apply.

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