Tag Archives: Mariana Newhard

CULTUREMART 2017

Purva Bedi and Mariana Newhard perform a duet in ASSEMBLED IDENTITY (photo by Benjamin Heller)

Mariana Newhard and Purva Bedi perform a duet in ASSEMBLED IDENTITY at HERE (photo by Benjamin Heller)

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 15-25, $15
212-647-0202
here.org

HERE’s annual multidisciplinary festival, CultureMart, starts tonight, featuring workshop performances that often defy easy categorization. Things kick off March 15-16 with Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s Assembled Identity, a multimedia duet between Bedi and Newhard that explores just what makes us human, on a shared bill with Trey Lyford’s kinetic solo show The Accountant, about how we can lose our humanity at the office. On March 18-19, Gisela Cardenas + Milica Paranosic and InTandem Lab’s Hybrid Suite No. 2: The Carmen Variations tells the story of fictional archaeologist Elizabeth Sherman, paired with Leah Coloff’s autobiographical song cycle ThisTree. The double bill for March 21-22 consists of Rob Roth’s cinematic hybrid Soundstage, linking the screen goddess with the adoring gay male fan, and Chris Green’s American Weather, an interactive piece performed by Quince Marcum, Katie Melby, and Yasmin Reshamwala. On March 25-26, Zoey Martinson and Smoke & Mirrors Collaborative lead audiences into The Black History Museum . . . According to the United States of America, examining the criminal justice system, while a birthday party turns into much more in Jeremy Bloom and Brian Rady’s Ding Dong It’s the Ocean. CultureMart concludes March 26 with a reading of HERE playwright in residence and downtown legend Taylor Mac’s The Bourgeois Oligarch, the third section of his four-part Dionysia Festival, this one involving a ballet and a philanthropist. With tickets only $15, CultureMart is always a great way to check out new and up-and-coming talent presenting works in progress at one of our favorite spaces.

CULTUREMART 2016

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEBMLED IDENTITY is part of the 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard’s ASSEMBLED IDENTITY is part of 2016 edition of HERE’s CULTUREMART performance festival

HERE
145 Sixth Ave. at Dominick St.
March 2-12, $15
212-647-0202
here.org

We nearly forgot about HERE’s annual CULTUREMART performance festival, which usually is held in January/February, but fortunately we were reminded of this forward-thinking series just in time as March began. A project of the HERE Artist Residency Program, or HARP, the multidisciplinary festival features eleven workshop productions from March 2 to 12, with all tickets only $15. Things get under way March 2-3 with one of New York’s most innovative teams, Reid Farrington and Sara Farrington, who repurpose footage of old films to create something new with live actors. This year they are presenting CasablancaBox, in which they go behind the scenes of the making of Casablanca. In Things Fall Apart (March 5-6), Kate Brehm uses folding chairs to examine her place in the world; it’s on a double bill with Rob Roth’s audiovisual Soundstage. RADY&BLOOM Collective Playmaking explores the ocean in O (March 5-6), which is being shown with Adam J. Thompson / the Deconstructive Theatre Project’s live-cinema Venice Double Feature, which examines social media and voyeurism. Purva Bedi, Kristin Marting, and Mariana Newhard delve into the science behind identity in Assembled Identity, part of a March 8-9 double bill with Lanie Fefferman’s math-centric chamber opera, Elements. Also on March 8-9, Paul Pinto goes inside the mind of the political activist and philosopher in Thomas Paine in Violence; also on the bill is Leah Coloff’s ThisTree, stories and songs about family and legacy. CULTUREMART concludes March 11-12 with Amanda Szeglowski/cakeface’s Stairway to Stardom, a dance-theater work dealing withtalent and fame, teamed with Chris M. Green’s American Weather, which looks at our very questionable future.

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.