PS 122 Presents TERRIBLE THINGS 12/4-12/20

Part Oklahoma soap opera, part physics experiment, the dynamic duo, Lisa D'Amour and Kate Pearl bring to NYC's PS 122 their newest collaboration, Terrible Things, which takes the audiences on a trip inside the many lives of the lead performer and director Katie Pearl (OBIE-award winner for her performance in Nita and Zita) through up close and personal memories from her past. Creating a surreal, painful, and yet funny narrative for this theatrical dance experience about terrible break ups and parallel lives you might be living right now.

With the help of 3 killer dancers- Emily Johnson, Morgan Thorson, and Karen Sherman, 2 male Jiu Jitsu wrestlers- who comically take on the 5-foot Katie Pearl in a wrestle which leaves the audience unsure if she is fighting herself or the men, and 1000 marshmallows, Terrible Things unpacks the surreal experience of remembering our past and defining our present. With the addition of Emily Johnson as the team's choreographer, audience members should expect nothing short of an in-your-body, out-of-body experience from Terrible Things, which uses quantum physics and the history of one woman's biggest desires and disappointments to explore the relationship of the individual to the universe around her.

Lisa D'Amour and Katie Pearl are OBIE-award winning collaborators with a 12-year history of creating work for theaters and non-traditional sites. They are known for combining theater with installations to create performances that are intimate, mysterious and often interactive. Most recently, they created Bird Eye Blue Print, a performance tour created for a vacant office space in Lower Manhattan (named best Site-Specific Theater Performance by Gothamist in 2007). Other major works include LandMARK (a 24 hour performance created for the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis), Slabber (an itinerant solo performance designed to be performed in apartments, basements, galleries, etc), LIMO (commissioned for the lobby of the Altria gallery by the Whitney Museum of Art), Anna Bella Eema (a play written by Lisa and directed by Katie at theaters in Austin, TX and New York City) and Nita & Zita (a performance created with Kathy Randels for which they received an OBIE Award in 2003). Lisa and Katie's work has received support from the MAP Fund, the New York State Council on the Arts, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation and the Puffin Foundation. Together, they received a 2009 Creative Capital grant for research and development of their large-scale performance installation How To Build a Forest which will premiere sometime in early 2011. Lisa was the 2008 winner of the Alpert Award in the Arts. Katie ha s been both a Roothbert Fellow and a Dramaleague Directing Fellow. Lisa is the Interim Director of Playwriting at Brown University. Katie teaches directing and Site-Specific Theater at the University of Texas at Austin.

Emily Johnson is a dance maker and writer based in Minneapolis. Her current work is supported by the Seventh Generation Fund, MAP Fund, Native InRoads Mentorship Program and a McKnight FoundationFellowship. She is a 2009 MANCC choreographer fellow. She works at an amazing independent bookstore, Birchbark Books and sends emails from a cluttered home office, usually with a dog on her feet. Her website is www.catalystdance.com

Terrible Things is presented by Performance Space 122. Founded by NYSCA, MAP Fund, and Irving Linn Charitable Trust, with Residency and Rehearsal support from Voice and Vision Summer Theater Lab, The Playwrights' Center's Core Writer Lab; rehearsal residencies at the Abrons Arts Center, and the University of Iowa; work-in-progress showings at the Fusebox Festival and Chashama.

Performance Space 122 is New York's ultimate destination for cutting-edge theatre, dance, music, live art and multi-media. PS122 is dedicated to supporting and presenting artists who explore innovative form and provocative content and who rigorously challenge the boundaries of contemporary performance; PS122 is committed to a steadfast search for pioneering artists from a diversity of cultures, nations and beliefs. www.ps122.org

Terrible Things premieres Friday, December 4th and runs through to Sunday, December 20th: Thursday through Saturday 8pm; Sundays at 6pm. Late shows: Saturday, December 12th/Friday, December 18th/Saturday, December 19th at 10pm, with an added Wednesday show, December 16th at 8pm.

Tickets: $20 and $15 (students/seniors).

Tickets and PS122 Passports are now on sale and available online at www.ps122.org, by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101, and at the Performance Space 122 Box Office. Note: The PS122 Passport is a bundle of 5 tickets for only $55 that can be used in ANY combination to the 2009-10 season performances. Performance Space 122 is located at 150 First Avenue @ E. 9th Street, New York, NY 10009

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