Anna Kohler's MYTHO? LURE OF WILDERNESS Debuts Tonight at Abrons Arts Center
Theater artist Anna Kohler, longtime associate member of The Wooster Group, will bring her new interdisciplinary performance work, MYTHO? Lure of Wildness, to Abrons Arts Center for its world premiere tonight, December 9, through December 22.
Directed by Caleb Hammond created with a team of artists from New York and Boston (where Kohler teaches, at MIT), MYTHO? explores the relationship between muse and creator, subject and object, model and artist-and what is at the center of the creative mind. The work combines live performance, video, aromas and intimate, three-dimensional sound in order to create moments of the euphoric experience of Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR) in the audience while transporting them through Kohler's memories.
Performances of MYTHO? Lure of Wildness will take place at the Abrons Arts Center Experimental Theater (466 Grand Street, New York, NY 10002), December 9 & 10, 14-17 and 20-22 at 8pm; and December 11 & 18 at 2pm. Tickets, $25, can be purchased at www.abronsartscenter.org and 212.352.3101. Critics are welcome as of December 14 at 8pm for an official opening on December 16 at 8pm. The production contains nudity and sexual references.
MYTHO? is an unabashedly passionate celebration of Kohler's experience of both creating and consuming art. In the performance, she recalls her own artistic awakening as a young model in France, and the audience, immersed in a sensory experience of enhanced stimuli and vivid images, experiences that world of heightened vulnerability and sensuality through the model's lens. Kohler evokes the artists who originally ignited her own sense of self as an artist, and draws their work into the production's disciplined visual aesthetic.
MYTHO? investigates Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response (ASMR), a reaction that some people have to certain kinds of sensorial stimulus. Low sounds create an intimate, pleasurable physical experience. ASMR is increasingly popular online, where it is experienced by just one person at a time; MYTHO? attempts to evoke the response in an entire live theater audience. Sophisticated audio technology enables the audience to hear actors on stage seemingly in very close proximity to their own ears; a soft-spoken, pleasant voice and other sounds provoke feelings of relaxation and exaltation, causing each audience member to share a unique sense of intimacy.
In addition to Kohler, MYTHO? features renowned performance artist Hapi Phace, drag queen and stand-up comic of Pyramid Club fame. The ensemble cast is rounded out by Alenka Kraigher (Richard Foreman, John Jesurun), Katiana Rangel and Adam Strandberg. The video design is by Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty, alumnae of the HERE resident artist program, known for their own multidisciplinary performance pieces as well as their award-winning documentary Standing By: Gatz Backstage, featuring Elevator Repair Service.
Anna Kohler has worked on stage with some of America's most respected playwrights, actors and directors. She was a longtime collaborator and associate member of leading American experimental theater company The Wooster Group. In 2003, when she reprised her role as Natalya in the Group's revival of Brace Up!, The New Yorker praised her performance as the "emotional center" of the show. As an author/director, she has conceived and directed plays that have been performed in Austria, Germany, Brazil and the United States. In recent years, her focus on teaching has become an integral part of her artistic life. Currently, she is a senior lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Caleb Hammond is a teacher and creator of theater and visual art. He has taught theater and art at Eugene Lang College (The New School), Hartford Art School and Carnegie Mellon and has been a special guest lecturer at Colgate University and the Toyoma Glass Institute in Japan. Hammond's directing work includes 1000 Wolves, at Incubator Arts Project; Walks Through Walls, at Highways Performance Space, Los Angeles; How Delightful to Know Mr Lear, in the New Haven Festival of Arts and Ideas; SICK, at the UndergroundZero Festival NYC; and FIRE (sex and death), at Divaldo Kampa, Prague. Hammond also works as an actor and has been a featured performer in multiple works by Jay Scheib, including the OBIE Award-winning Untitled Mars, at PS122; Bellona, Destroyer of Cities; at the Kitchen and This Place is a Desert, at Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater. His other acting credits include Hal Hartley's films Ned Rifle and Meanwhile and John Jesurun's web series Shadowland.
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