Annie Dorsen News

Performance Space New York continues The Stages Seriesa?"rethinking the dominant form and aesthetics that have informed the stage for centuriesa?"with Martine Gutierrez's Circle (November 20, 22-23).

Earlier today, the MacArthur Foundation announced its 2019 Fellows, awarding unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. The MacArthur Fellowship is a $625,000, no-strings-attached award to extraordinarily talented and creative individuals as an investment in their potential. 

A rocking, lively, faithful rendition of 'Passing Strange,' the unique musical by Stew and Heide Rodewald, created in collaboration with Annie Dorsen, features a flawless ensemble of performers in Firehouse's production, directed by Tawnya Pettiford-Wates.

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center presents its annual PRELUDE FESTIVAL on October 3, 4, and 5 at The Graduate Center, CUNY, The City University of New York, curated by David Bruin & Sanaz Ghajar in collaboration with Frank Hentschker, produced by Sami Pyne.

To ensure a separation of powers, the U.S. Federal Government is made up of three branches: legislative, executive, and judicial. When authority runs amok, the ultimate check is the American citizen. 

The Herb Alpert Foundation and California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) has awarded the 25th Annual Herb Alpert Award in the Arts to five exceptional mid-career artists at a celebration hosted by the Herb Alpert Foundation in New York City on Monday, May 13.

Performance Space New York partners with East Village-based queer funk dance party WET NOISE for a celebratory 12-Hour DANCE-A-THON (May 5, 12pm-12am), a fundraising event that couldn't be further from expectations of what a "fundraising event" entails. The DANCE-A-THON revels in filthy funk music, endless dancing, community building, and inclusivity across age, race, gender, sexuality, and class. DJs tag team in sets as a dynamic give-and-take, throughout the night; they include founding DJ Amber Martin along with Patrick Johnson, Ana Matronic (Scissor Sisters), Seth Kirby (Joshua Light Show), Thomas Campbell, and DatKat (O.E.A.).

Baryshnikov Arts Center presents Estado Vegetal (Vegetative State), an exuberant and polyphonic one-woman show written and directed by Manuela Infante,one of the most prolific voices in contemporary Chilean and Latin American theater (May 2-3). 

ANNOUNCING-University of Chicago's Committee on Theatre & Performance Studies (TAPS), in collaboration with Court Theatre, is proud to host a discussion with Martyna Majok, UChicago alum and playwright of the 2018 Pulitzer Prize Winning play, Cost of Living. Moderated by TAPS Visiting Assistant Professor of Practice, Annie Dorsen. This event includes a live reading of an excerpt from Majok's Cost of Living.

Performance Space New York continues its Posthuman Series with DEAD THOROUGHBRED, a collaboration that includes at least keyon gaskin and sidony o'neal, October 26-27. DEAD THOROUGHBRED feels ambivalent about the posthuman future. Rather than the post-human, DEAD THOROUGHBRED feels the ante-human (ante = before in Latin), i.e. the dead and other non-human living and non-living forms, in an effort to complicate the idea that living human consciousness is the central or sole indicator of subjective relation. DEAD THOROUGHBRED acknowledges the inherent exclusion and limitations of posthuman theory. DEAD THOROUGHBRED's presentation in the Posthuman Series f**ks with the generativity of death and hopelessness as a critical antithesis to DEAD THOROUGHBRED's interest in posthuman ideas of enhanced living, futurity, and occult possibility.

Performance Space New York kicks off its second themed season of performances and events-the Posthuman Series-with the world premiere of Annie Dorsen's The Slow Room (September 27-29). Dorsen has taken the idea of technological theater further than most artists.

Performance Space New York announces First Mondays: Readings of New Works in Progress, organized by author Sarah Schulman (Maggie Terry, 2018; Conflict is not Abuse: Overstating Harm, Community Responsibility and the Duty of Repair, 2016). On the first Monday of most months between October 2018 and May 2019, the series will present audiences with an opportunity to gather and hear in-progress works from writers leading the literary avant-garde. First Mondays exemplifies the artistic community-building power in Performance Space New York's appointment of five Associate Artists. Today, the organization announces Sarah Schulman, Emily Johnson, Gillian Walsh, Sarah Ortmeyer, and Angela Dimayuga as the Associate Artists who will actively contribute to programming and administrative decision making in the years to come-honoring Performance Space New York's roots as a space run by the very people experimenting within it.

Performance Space New York continues its second themed season of performances and events-the Posthuman Series-with the U.S. Premiere of choreographer and dancer Mette Ingvartsen's 21 pornographies(October 3-5). The solo performance expands on Ingvartsen's body of work exploring an all-pervasive sexuality, here using physical action and narrative description to take audiences through pornographic history in associative tour de force that is equally stimulating, disturbing, cheerful, and sensuous. Ingvartsen also brings The Permeable Stage - Reimagining the Social, a new installment of her ongoing series of performative conferences, to Performance Space New York (October 7),engaging artists, thinkers, filmmakers, and activists in a dialogue drawing on various Posthuman ideas.

The French Institute Alliance Française is pleased to announce the appointment of Courtney Geraghty as its new Artistic Director. Geraghty, who has both American and French citizenship, arrives at FIAF following an international career with positions in France, Japan, and Chile. Most recently she served as Cultural Attaché for the French Embassy in Santiago, Chile, curating and commissioning artistic events from a variety of disciplines, while also operating as the South American Performing Arts Liaison across the region. She will begin programming for FIAF in 2019.

Performance Space New York kicks off its second themed season of performances and events-the Posthuman Series-with the world premiere of Annie Dorsen's The Slow Room (September 27-29). Dorsen has taken the idea of technological theater further than most artists.

Performance Space New York announces the Posthuman Series, its second themed season of performances and events, beginning Fall 2018. Following the conclusion of its East Village Series, which looked inward to contemplate the past, present and future of Performance Space New York and its immediate neighborhood, Executive Artistic Director Jenny Schlenzka now gathers artists who've taken an active approach to addressing nothing smaller than the morphing state of "humanity." Inspired by thinkers like Donna Haraway ("A Cyborg Manifesto") and Rosi Braidotti (The Posthuman), the Posthuman Series continues the legacy of Performance Space New York to defy categorization and broaden the meaning of "performance," through works that simultaneously seek to question and expand the very definition of "human."

Performance Space New York closes out its by-turns pensive, provocative, and radically festive East Village Series with The Independence Day Ball, a Kiki ball from the organization's neighbors at Alliance for Positive Change (June 29).

Mark Stewart, better known as 'Stew,' is noted for being a member of the band, The Negro Problem. He is also the author of the book and lyrics for 'Passing Strange,' a semi-autobiographical musical, co-written with Heidi Rodewald in collaboration with Annie Dorsen. The script is presently rocking Karamu.

Performance Space New York's East Village Series, the first themed series under the leadership of Executive Artistic Director Jenny Schlenzka, has reexamined the audacious origins of the organization and the communities that formed around it. In 1986, choreographer Ishmael Houston-Jones, composer/guitarist Chris Cochrane, writer Dennis Cooper, and an ensemble of dancers performed the first full version of THEM, an unblinking interdisciplinary work of scored improvisational dance, spoken text, and guitar, at what was then Performance Space 122.

Karamu House, the oldest multicultural performing arts center in the country, closes it's 102nd consecutive season with the Tony Award-winning musical Passing Strange. Karamu House President and CEO, Tony F. Sias notes, 'this is a piece that is important and relevant, and speaks to and engages our millennial and 'genZ' generations.' With book and lyrics written by Tony Award-winning singer-songwriter Stew, and music composed by Stew and Heidi Rodewald, the production opened on May 10 and will run through June 3, 2018 in Karamu's Arena Theatre in Cleveland, Ohio.