Eye Zen to Celebrate the Life of Remy Charlip in RAINBOW LOGIC Premiere

On the cusp of its 10-year anniversary, Eye Zen Presents is proud to announce the world premiere of Rainbow Logic: Arm in Arm with Remy Charlip, celebrating the life and legacy of dancer, choreographer, children's book author and illustrator Remy Charlip (1929-2012).

Conceived and created by Eye Zen Founder and Artistic Director Seth Eisen, Rainbow Logic draws inspiration from first-person interviews with Charlip's friends, family and collaborators, fusing dance, live-drawing, toy and bunraku puppetry, video projection and original text and music.

Rainbow Logic runs November 4 - 20, Fridays to Saturdays at 8 p.m., and Sundays at 7 p.m., at CounterPulse, which co-commissioned the new work. The Contemporary Jewish Museum co-presents the premiere. Tickets are $20 to $35, and will become available on September 5 for purchase at counterpulse.org.

Rainbow Logic is the fourth in a series of works by Eye Zen chronicling LGBTQ history. Blackbird (2010) explored the lives of seven 20th-century queer performers.Buffet Flats (2011) was a pop-up speakeasy and dinner theater series honoring the history of the Pansy Craze and Buffet Flats phenomena of the 1920s and 30s. Homo File (2014) shed light on the English professor, tattoo artist and queer rebel Samuel Steward. And Rainbow Logic pays tribute to Remy Charlip, best remembered for his contributions to the fields of dance and children's literature. He was a founding member of Merce Cunningham Dance Company, and later of the Obie-winning Paper Bag Players, a children's theater group. He designed costumes and choreographed scores for numerous dances, including most famously a collection of "Air Mail Dances," each one a series of figure drawings in various poses which he offered as inspiration to friends and colleagues around the world. Charlip also wrote and illustrated 38 books for children, for which the Library of Congress named him a "National Treasure."

Eisen came to know Charlip first as his student and friend, and later became one of his caregivers after the late artist suffered a stroke in 2005. "Of all the projects I've worked on to date, this is certainly the most personal," said Eisen. "It's the first time I've collapsed the distance between myself and my subject."

Over the last decade Eisen has immersed himself in Charlip's archive, a massive collection of original drawings, paintings, writing and other effects, comparing notes with more than 25 of Charlip's friends, family and lovers. "Rainbow Logic is part of a larger project to preserve and disseminate the stories and traditions of our queer ancestors," continued Eisen. "And Remy's example serves as a touchstone for all the work I do. I am inspired by the way he transcended disciplinary boundaries. 'Theater into books, and books into theater' was something of an unofficial motto for Remy, where all forms of art are conceived as a kind of 'internal dance.'"

For Eisen, the project is also personal because of his identification with Charlip's Jewish background. "We both carried the complications of being an outsider -- Jewish, queer artists -- but Remy showed how art can be used to rewrite the storyline of one's life, and embrace the marks of difference and struggle."

Performing the role of Charlip are Colin Creveling, as the artist as a young man, and Paul Loper as the older. Emily Butterfly joins them as a third actor, in various roles, and as lead puppeteer. In his work with Paper Bag Players, Charlip often used puppets, and at the back of some of his books he offered instruction for how to turn the stories into shadow puppet plays. A team of four artists beginning with detailed sketches by Eisen, refined by Diego Gomez, with fabrication by Terrance Gravenand Rich Hutchison, is responsible for the puppets in Rainbow Logic, one a representation of Charlip made from his own craftsman's tools.

Graven also serves as set designer. Additional members of the design team include choreographer James Graham, composer Miguel Frasconi, lighting designer Jim Cave, video designer Ian Winters and costume designer Keriann Egeland.

For more information about Rainbow Logic and Eye Zen Presents, visit eyezen.org.

Rainbow Logic was co-commissioned by CounterPulse, and has received generous support from The Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Center for Cultural Innovation, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, the Jim Henson Foundation, San Francisco Arts Commission, the Arch and Bruce Brown Foundation, and the CA$H Grant program of Theatre Bay Area. Eye Zen Presents received creation residency support from Harrison House Music, Arts & Ecology and the Dresher Ensemble. This work was also developed while in residence at the Lucas Artists Residency Program, Montalvo Arts Center.

Founded by Seth Eisen in 2007, Eye Zen Presents is a San Francisco-based transdisciplinary ensemble theater company creating new work to unearth and elevate histories of LGBTQ ancestors. The organization promotes social change by preserving and disseminating LGBTQ stories and traditions in danger of obsolescence. Eye Zen's productions engender an experimental aesthetic that blends performance and the visual arts: puppetry and live-drawing is fused with contemporary dance, drag, live music, physical theater and video. All of its shows have earned critical acclaim and sold-out runs: Blackbird: Honoring a Century of Pansy Divas (2007), Buffet Flats: Queering Slow Food (2011-12), and Homo File: Chronicling the Life of Samuel Steward (2012). Rainbow Logic: Arm in Arm with Remy Charlip, is slated to premiere this November. Its next work, OUT of Site, created in partnership with ShapingSF, is a site-specific, mobile performance project delving into the history of San Francisco to unearth and celebrate unsung LGBTQ sites, people and histories. For more information visit eyezen.org.

Pictured: Colin Creveling and Paul Loper. Photo by Robbie Sweeny.