The National Queer Arts Festival Presents BLACKBIRD, 6/24-7/10

The National Queer Arts Festival, Mama Calizo's Voice Factory & Eye Zen Art Present BLACKBIRD: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas, June 24 through July 10. BLACKBIRD is written and performed by Seth Eisen, with direction by Brian Freeman.

Through puppetry and a hybrid of live performance, BLACKBIRD: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas introduces an entourage of maverick performers who gave a new voice to the queer underground. From Prohibition to the Borsht-Belt, from a Zen Hospice to a contemporary Bulgarian pop singer, Blackbird pushes the boundary of how we view gender variance and anti-discrimination through history.

Seth Eisen's work is a hybrid of contemporary performance: Butoh, puppetry, physical theater, clowning, drag, and performance art. As a visual artist he works with the forms of installation, video, book arts, fetish object and costume. His layered aesthetic communicates across multiple genres and artistic frameworks, blurring boundaries and expanding dialogues between various disciplines.

Seth has been performing, exhibiting, curating and collaborating with various artists in the Bay Area since 1994. In 1998 he developed the company Eye Zen Art producing performances and installations featured at The Oakland Museum of California, Theater Artaud, Zeum, Yerba Buena Center, SOMARTS, Theater of Yugen, and CounterPulse. He has performed as a member of several Butoh companies including Harupin-Ha, and Ink Boat from 1994-1999.

Since 2000 he has been performing and creating visuals with Keith Hennessy and the acclaimed contemporary circus company, Circo Zero in the US and Europe. Seth was a collaborator/performer in Circo Zero's Sol niger which won two Izzies and the recent revival of How to Die/ American Tweaker, in which he appeared as the Ghost of Sylvester.

BLACKBIRD will be performed June 24, 25, 26, 27 and July 1, 2, 3, 8, 9 and 10 at 8pm. All performances will take place at Mama Calizo's Voice Factory located at 1519 Mission Street.

Tickets are $20 - $25 sliding-scale and available at the door or at Brown Paper Tickets http://www.brownpapertickets.com/

For more information visit http://eyezen.org/