YOU ARE DEAD. YOU ARE HERE. opens Culturemart 2012 with an intimate look at the Iraq war (photo © Jared Mezzocchi)
HERE Arts Center
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
January 24 – February 11, $15
212-647-0202
www.here.org
The January parade of experimental theater festivals, which has already included Coil, Under the Radar, American Realness, and the Times Square International Theater Festival, continues with HERE’s annual Culturemart. Referring to itself as a “vital testing ground,” Culturemart will present a dozen works in progress from January 24 through February 11 in a variety of disciplines, beginning with Christine Evans, Joseph Megel, and Jared Mezzochi’s You Are Dead. You Are Here., an interactive multimedia examination of the relationship between an American soldier and an Iraqi blogger during the Iraq war. Among the other productions are Aaron Landsman’s participatory City Council Meeting, Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan’s A Marriage: 1, involving a couple who watches Fox News in a motel room for twenty-four consecutive hours (and is supplemented by an exhibition at HERE), Bora Yoon’s audiovisual one-woman show Weights and Balances, Betty Shamieh’s The Strangest, which imagines the story of the Arab killed in Albert Camus’s The Stranger, and Alexandra Beller/Dances’ other stories, which delves into narrative itself. Tickets to all events are only fifteen bucks, so it’s always worth checking out something different and unusual at one of the city’s best spots to see cutting-edge productions.