Spalding Gray News

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.

With a new play destined for the New York International Fringe Festival (FringeNYC), filmmaker David Tolchinsky is living the mantra of the program he helped create at Northwestern University.

59E59 Theaters is thrilled to present the NYC premiere of KURT VONNEGUT'S MOTHER NIGHT, adapted and directed by Brian Katz. Produced by The Custom Made Theatre Company with Executive Producers William & Ruth Isenberg and Leah Abrams, and Producer Jay Yamada, KURT VONNEGUT'S MOTHER NIGHT begins performances on Friday, October 5 for a limited engagement through Sunday, November 3.

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.

Irene Bedard, the Anchorage-born actor of Native descent who gave voice to Pocahontas in the Disney animated films, among other groundbreaking roles, will play the Stage Manager in Perseverance Theatre's 40th season opener, Our Town. The iconic American drama by Thornton Wilder, featuring an all-Alaskan cast directed by Art Rotch, will play Oct. 5-Nov. 3 at the theatre in Juneau, and Nov. 9-25 at the Alaska Center for the Performing Arts in Anchorage.

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."

'Arizona Justice,' written and performed by Katherine Brann Fredricks, is a Michael Moore/Spalding Gray style documentary expose of corruption in Arizona, involving Senator Barry Goldwater, land fraud, water rights, the mob, money laundering and murder between the 1960's and the early 2000's. Theater for the New City's Dream Up Festival will present the play's world premiere August 26 to September 5.   Adam Chisnall directs.

Our team put our heads together to figure out who we'd want to appear in the production! Check out some of our picks below - and join in the coversation on Facebook and Twitter to share your thoughts!

 Hunter College President Jennifer J. Raab announced today the inaugural production of the Hunter Theater Project, the New York premiere of Anton Chekhov's UNCLE VANYA at the Frederick Loewe Theater at Hunter College (E. 68th Street and Lexington Avenue), directed by Richard Nelson. Translated byRichard Nelson, Richard Pevear, and Larissa Volokhonsky. This production is the first time renowned Russian literature translators Pevear and Volokhonsky will have a work premiere in New York City, following the show's world premiere at The Old Globe in San Diego, California. Previews for UNCLE VANYA begin Friday, September 7. The production runs through Sunday, October 14, with an official press opening on Sunday, September 16. Tickets are on sale now.

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).

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.

The American Theatre Wing and The Village Voice announce that Tony Award-nominated and three-time Obie-winning actress Kathleen Chalfant will receive a special Obie Award for Lifetime Achievement at the 63rd Annual Obie Awards.

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.

Playwright/actor Joe Gulla's 'FAGGY AT 50' will play The Theatre on San Pedro Square in San Jose, California this May 17th and 18th.

Dear Evan Hansen's Laura Dreyfuss and Tony-nominated actresses Kathleen Chalfant and Geneva Carr join National New Play Network (NNPN) for a 20th Anniversary benefit reading of a new play Jane Burgoyne by Robert Moulthrop, directed by Moritz von Stuelpnagel, at Westside Theatre on April 30th at 7:00 pm. Hosted by Richard Winkler and Jane and JB Harrison, the reading will support NNPN as it continues to revolutionize the new play landscape through its nationally recognized programs and services for artists and organizations. Tickets for the reading can be purchased at TodayTix. 

In celebration of Immigrant Heritage Week, the Immigrant Arts Coalition and Dramatists Guild of America, in collaboration with the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene (NYTF) will present Staging Our Stories, an interactive panel discussion with playwrights, composers, and lyricists on heritage and diversity in theatre. An official partner with the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs, this free event will take place on Friday, April 20th, 1pm in the Dramatists Guild of America's Mary Rodgers Room.

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).