Tag Archives: Kristin Marting

CULTUREMART 2015

Sara and Reid Farrington go behind the scenes of the making of a classic in CASABLANCABOX (photo by Sara and Reid Farrington)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 4-14, $15
212-352-3101
www.here.org

HERE’s annual winter performance festival, now in its fourteenth year, highlights cutting-edge works-in-progress from a wide-ranging group of artists who are either current or former participants in the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP), which commissions hybrid presentations in order “to not only grow innovative artistic work, but also [to] give artists the awareness and skills — in areas such as audience relations, budgeting, grantwriting, and touring — they need to continue to grow their careers.” This year features a dozen multidisciplinary workshop performances, beginning March 4-5 with sound designer Christina Campanella and composer Jim Dawson’s Lighthouse 40° N, 73° W, a continuous geographic audio installation in which the audience listens in on headphones to a twenty-five-minute loop, and Sara and Reid Farrington’s CasablancaBox, in which the husband-and-wife duo combine live actors and film clips that go behind the scenes of the making of the 1942 movie; Farrington has previously reimagined such films as The Passion of Joan of Arc, Rope, and multiple versions of A Christmas Carol in his unique, mesmerizing style. On March 6-7 at 7:00, Paul Pinto’s Thomas Paine in Violence explores the American patriot during the last days of his life and the start of his afterlife, with music performed by vocalist Joan La Barbara and the ensemble Ne(x)tworks. On March 7-8 at 8:30, Sean Donovan and Sebastián Calderón Bentin turn to Alain Renais’s Last Year at Marienbad and Luis Buñuel’s The Exterminating Angel for Abbadon, in which a social gathering delves into the nature of class structure; Abbadon is on a shared bill with Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface’s Stairway to Stardom, a piece of dance theater that takes its inspiration from the public access amateur talent television show of the same name.

Hai-Ting Chinn’s SCIENCE FAIR takes viewers on a multimedia operatic journey (photo by Benjamin Heller)

On March 9-10, you can see a double feature of Hai-Ting Chinn’s multimedia opera, Science Fair, with music by Matthew Schickele and live piano by Erika Switzer, and The Emperor and the Queen’s Parisian Weekend, with music by Kamala Sankaram and a libretto by Pete McCabe, directed by HERE cofounder Tim Maner. March 10-11 pairs Matt Marks and Paul Peers’s Mata Hari, an opera-theater piece about the last days of the renowned WWI spy, with Nick Brooke’s Psychic Driving, which immerses the audience in surveillance and CIA brainwashing. From March 12 to 14, Jessica Scott’s Ship of Fools uses music, puppets, and movement to examine particular women throughout history while looking at who is in control of the future; it’s on a shared bill with Robin Frohardt’s Fitzcardboardaldo, a cinematic cardboard tribute to Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, along with The Corrugation of Dreams, an homage to Les Blank’s Burden of Dreams, about the making of the Herzog film. CULTUREMART concludes March 13-14 with HERE artistic director Kristin Marting and Robert Lyons’s Idiot, an exploration of Dostoevsky protagonist Prince Myshkin using text, video, and dance. The festival also includes a trio of post-performance talks, “Continue the Conversation,” with “Soundscapes” on March 6 after the 7:00 Lighthouse show, “Variants of Video Integration” on March 8 following the 8:30 show, and “Playing with Operatic Form” on March 10 after the 8:30 show. Tickets for all productions are $15 except for Lighthouse 40° N, 73° W, for which admission is $5; a $60 OFF-OFFten Club membership allows you to see all shows for $5 each and also comes with four tickets to be used anytime during the season in addition to four glasses of wine from the café.

TRADE PRACTICES

Site-specific HERE production on Governors Island puts the audience in the middle of the action (photo by Carl Skutsch)

Pershing Hall, Governors Island
September 10, 13, 14, 20, 21, $18
www.here.org

A little bit of Wall Street has ferried over to Governors Island for HERE’s new site-specific participatory production, Trade Practices. Conceived by David Evans Morris, who also designed the sets, and created by Morris with HERE artistic director Kristin Marting, who serves as director, the show takes place in several rooms in historic Pershing Hall, Governors Island’s administrative headquarters. It’s a treat just to go inside the usually off-limits building, which boasts terrific Federal Art Project murals in the lobby depicting Teddy Roosevelt going up San Juan Hill, Robert E. Lee surrendering to Ulysses S. Grant at Appomattox, Zachary Taylor falling on his horse at the end of the War of 1812, and scenes from other battles that hint at what’s about to come. Upon entering the building, each participant is given a colored ticket that assigns them to a story line, as Trade Practices follows Tender Inc., a successful family-owned paper company perhaps gearing up to go public in the early 2000s. The different episodes go behind the scenes with four sets of characters organized under Management (written by Robert Lyons), Communication (KJ Sanchez), Owners (Chris Wells), and Workers (Qui Nguyen) as the audience follows lots of infighting and backstabbing, from sexy public relations head Patricia Silver (Jenniffer Diaz), Odyssey-loving employee leader Franklin (Daniel Kublick), competing managerial fast-trackers Brenda McCall (Megan Hill) and Circe Boudreaux (Mariana Newhard), and the extremely ambitious and musical Polly Tender (Mary Rasmussen). The firm, loosely inspired by the actual, prestigious history and products of Crane & Co. (the contentiousness and market wranglings are all fiction), with more than a few hints of Dunder Mifflin, is at a crossroads, trying to evaluate its strengths and weaknesses, including those of its current CEO, the stiff-shirted Jim Tender (Peter McCabe). After the first scene, everyone gathers on the trading floor, a room with a digital stock ticker and numerous televisions tuned to a cable business channel, where Smith (Mike Iveson Jr.) and Jones (Daphne Gaines) share some intimate tips about the company (in skits written by Elisa Davis), and then everyone invests in the characters and story line they’d like to follow, using play money and certificates; trading floor meetings after each episode allow audience members to buy and sell stock to change story lines for succeeding vignettes.

The door opens to boom or bust in participatory show on Governors Island (photo by Carl Skutsch)

Trade Practices is often too goofy and amateurish, but if you stick with the shaky premise and the purposeful overacting and invest yourself in it, you’ll certainly get your money’s worth, especially if others in the audience choose to get involved as well and don’t just hoard stock or hide in the background. As goal-oriented intern Darlene Tender (Brooke Ishibashi) warns early on, you will not be able to see everything during the two-hour indoctrination, so completionists, beware. In general, some scenes work much better than others, so your overall enjoyment is likely to be affected by the paths you choose, just as in life and business; we were partial to Patricia’s hot and fiery temperament and Franklin’s penchant for the unexpected, while musical theater enthusiasts would probably prefer Polly’s tale. It’s all rather low rent, which is part of its charm but also a drawback. The show doesn’t really shed much light on economics or business, but it’s still fun if you let yourself go and get immersed in the action. Trade Practices continues September 10 at 3:15, September 13 at 12:15, and September 14 and 20-21 at 12:15 and 3:45; tickets are eighteen dollars (cash only at the door; you can’t use real money to purchase stock), and the ferry is either free or two dollars depending on when you go.

CULTUREMART 2013

Bora Yoon collaborates with Adam Larsen and R. Luke DuBois in surreal WEIGHTS AND BALANCES (photo by James Chung)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
Through February 10, $10 in advance, $15 within twenty-four hours of show
212-647-0202
www.here.org

The HERE Artist Residency Program, known as HARP, is now in the second week of its annual Culturemart festival, consisting of unique, experimental works, often in double features, from emerging presenters in such disciplines as dance, theater, music, visual arts, and puppetry as well as a melding of several of them. On February 4-5, Mei-Yin Ng’s Lost Property Unit explores loneliness and solitude in the digital age, referencing television and movies through dance, live and prerecorded music, and robot sculptures, while in Hai-Ting Chinn’s Science Fair the mezzo-soprano combines opera with science in a multimedia performance. On February 6-7, Robin Frohardt’s The Pigeoning uses music and puppets to look at the end of the world, while Joseph Silovsky’s Send for the Million Men is a solo piece that reexamines the Sacco and Vanzettti case with puppets and handmade projectors. Also on February 6-7, Bora Yoon’s Weights and Balances is a surreal opera featuring an interactive performance design by R. Luke DuBois. On February 8-9, Stein / Holum Projects’ The Wholehearted is a work in progress about a woman boxer looking back at her glory days. On February 9 at 2:00, there will be a free performance of David T. Little’s opera-theater piece Artaud in the Black Lodge, which links Antonin Artaud, William S. Burroughs, and David Lynch through a libretto by Anne Waldman. The festival, which also celebrates HERE’s twentieth anniversary, concludes February 9-10 with HERE artistic director Kristin Marting and David Morris’s Trade Practices, a live, interactive market in which audience members become participants in the event.