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.
Performance Space New York continues its East Village Series' examination of the history, assessment of the present, and radical gaze into the future of the neighborhood in which it was founded and has boldly returned this season. Autonomous, anti-capitalist, gender self-determining collective BRUJAS-who build revolutionary political coalition through youth culture, and express community through skateboarding, art, and political organizing-will be in residence at Performance Space New York from May 25-June 9. With their project, Training Facility, they have enlisted industrial designer Jonathan Olivares to transform the organization's new theater into a skate park and intimate meet-up spot. On May 25, as part of Red Bull Music Festival, the collective will throw their third annual Anti-Prom in the space, kicking off their residency with the gender-queering party described by the New York Times as 'an effervescent celebration of people usually sidelined by traditional prom culture.' Or, as BRUJAS co-founder Arianna Gil herself has described it, 'the Met-Gala of the underground.'
Performance Space New York continues its East Village Series' examination of the history, assessment of the present, and radical gaze into the future of the neighborhood in which it was founded and has boldly returned this season. Autonomous, anti-capitalist, gender self-determining collective BRUJAS-who build revolutionary political coalition through youth culture, and express community through skateboarding, art, and political organizing-will be in residence at Performance Space New York from May 25-June 9.
Legendary Downtown New York artist Penny Arcade is now 50 years into a career in which she continues to turn a mirror back on society with highly original and entertaining investigations into the human condition that perhaps best described as cultural criticism you can dance to. She revives her international hit Bitch! Dyke! Faghag! Whore!: The Penny Arcade Sex and Censorship Show, May 11-19 at Performance Space New York, as part of the institution's East Village Series.
Amidst Performance Space New York's exhilarating first series of interdisciplinary works under the new leadership of Executive Artistic Director Jenny Schlenzka, the organization's 2018 gala will celebrate game-changing and iconic figures from the arts sector (April 14).
Performance Space New York kicks off its East Village Series, contemplating the past, present, and future of the organization and its neighborhood, with Welcome to Lenapehoking (February 17, 4pm, Free), a partnership with the The Lenape Center, and Avant-Garde-Arama, the extravaganza of experimentation that's also the organization's longest-running program (February 18, 6pm, Free). Performance Space New York's Executive Artistic Director Jenny Schlenzka steps into her new curatorial role with these events honoring the neighborhood's original caretakers and the organization's own trailblazing roots, as springboards into an exhilarating new chapter.
BroadwayWorld has just learned that Oklahoma! is making its way back to New York. St. Ann's Warehouse and Eva Price will present a limited run of the Bard SummerScape production of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Oklahoma!, directed by Daniel Fish.
What if, instead of drowning, Shakespeare's Ophelia had splashed through the brook water and found a parallel universe on the other side? In playwright Caridad Svich's lyrical deconstruction of Hamlet, Ophelia cuts a new path for herself through a neo-Elizabethan Appalachia. In this world, Hamlet is known as Rude Boy, Gertrude is a brothel madam, and Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are her androgynous helpers.
REDCAT, CalArts' downtown center for contemporary arts, presents the Los Angeles premiere of Poor People's TV Room, the newest work by Bessie Award-winning choreographer/artist Okwui Okpokwasili, Thursday February 8 to Sunday February 11, 2018.
TBD Productions (Stephanie Yankwitt and Hunter Arnold, Owners) announces the official launch of TBD Casting , led by Casting Director and Co-Producer Stephanie Yankwitt and Casting Director Margaret Dunn. With a combination of over 25 years of experience in the industry, the work of this female-driven casting office spans theatre, TV, film, commercials, and web series.
Performance Space New York (formerly Performance Space 122) presents the East Village Series, its first semi-annual themed series, and the first program curated by the institution's new Executive Artistic Director, Jenny Schlenzka. This presentation of works from some of today's most radical performers and multidisciplinary artists resituates the institution in newly revamped spaces, designed by Deborah Berke Partners, in 122 Community Center (150 First Avenue, at East 9th Street), where Performance Space 122 was founded, and where it operated until it moved out in 2011 for the building renovation. The series contemplates the past, present, and future of the organization and its neighborhood.