Three 30 minute performances. Cues given on cue. High meets low meets high meets low.
Meaning in the process of processionals. By professionals, in confessionals.
Office Hours written, directed and performed by Bethany Ides and co
I Am An Opera written and performed by Joseph Keckler
Pink Melon Joy by Gertrude Stein, directed by Katherine Brook
Tuesday, May 27, 2014
7:30PM Performance
7PM Doors
Tickets $15
Maroney Theater
St. Francis College
180 Remsen St., 7th FL
Brooklyn, NY 11201
Subways 2 3 4 5 A C F G R
PROGRAM
Office Hours
Written and directed by Bethany Ides. Performed by Lindsay Benedict, Bethany Ides, Thomas Love, Eliza Perlmutter, Sophie Reiff, Cat Tyc, Gabi Villasenor, and Morgan Vo. Camerawork by Joy Lai and Ursula Sommer.
…Behind locked doors, what might be hiding might be a mouse, might have a message, might be that your phone is ringing and someone is answering who had been missing (we thought) … or that where we could play in private, that we’re on a dream date, experiencing real communism while everyone else is asleep …
I Am An Opera
Written and performed by Joseph Keckler.
Joseph Keckler will present a suite of short pieces from, and relating to, his recent performance piece “I Am An Opera” (commissioned by Dixon Place in 2013), a collection of laments and buffo showpieces that tell everyday stories from the artist’s life.
Pink Melon Joy
Written by Gertrude Stein. Directed by Katherine Brook, assisted by GJ Dowding. Performed by Shonni Enelow, Lucy Kaminsky, Sipiwe Moyo, Nicolas Norena, and Alex Spieth. Designed by Chris Giarmo (sound), Diego Montoya (costumes). Dreamaturged by Shonni Enelow.
Forever radical, forever modern, Gertrude Stein’s landscapes of women are at their most complex in her early play “Pink Melon Joy” where good housekeeping is a battlefield and pregnancy is contagious. Moving briskly between wartime testimony, fractured poetry, and oozy baby talk, a group of women are drawn deeper and deeper into the uncanny valley of their femininity. Brook’s production charts the fanatical pursuit of sweetness amid horror and violence. A third-wave-feminist nightmare, it’s set on revealing the Hello Kitty in all of us.
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Bethany Ides sets uncertain parameters wherein actors and actions intermingle wildly. Her 2013 performance, installation, video and song cycle, I Feel It in My Dreams, was presented at Mandragoras Art Space in LIC. Operating in/with VISITATION, a collaborative platform for de-institutionalizing strategies, Ides co-led a seminar in experimental punctuation at Governor’s Island and co-curated Initial Contractions, an exercise in spectral vision featuring 25 artists, composers, poets, performers, architects, activists, archivists and cooks in conjunction with Knockdown Center and the Reanimation Library. This October, she’ll mount her month-long opera, Transient’s Theme, also at Knockdown Center, but not before establishing a provisional-conditional community in Shandanken, NY called Almost-Although. Ides is ½ of Darkling, I Listen, an occasional witchy pop group and the author of several poetic projects. She currently teaches at Pratt, SVA and Bard.
Joseph Keckler (josephkeckler.com) is a singer, musician, writer, and interdisciplinary artist. His most recent performance piece, I am an Opera, was commissioned by Dixon Place. Other live performances have taken place at The New Museum of Contemporary Art, Issue Project Room, BAM Fischer Center, Joe’s Pub, and many other venues. Keckler was recently featured on WNYC Soundcheck and BBC America’s The Nerdist and has received residencies from Yaddo and MacDowell, as well as a Franklin Furnace Grant and a Fellowship in Interdisciplinary Work from New York Foundation for the Arts. Current projects include a new EP and collection of stories. Composer Aleksandra Vrebalov has been commissioned by ASCAP to write a song cycle for Keckler, which will premiere next year. The Village Voice recently named him “Best Downtown Performance Artist, 2013.”
Katherine Brook (katherinebrook.com) most recently directed She Is King (Laryssa Husiak, Incubator’s Other Forces 2014), and Pink Melon Joy (Provincetown Tennessee Williams Theatre Festival and Prelude ’13). Katherine Brook / Tele-Violet presented a Noh play, Lady Han, a Noh play, at Incubator Arts Project in 2013, and American Realism in 2011-12 at The Invisible Dog, the San Diego Museum of Art and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Brook is a member of the New Georges JAM and is the Producing Manager of New York City Players. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University (2011) and her BFA from NYU’s Experimental Theatre Wing (2005), where she recently returned as a guest director for Acting: The First Six Lessons (Fall 2013).