prelude.13 program guide

THE MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PRESENTS

www.preludenyc.org | oct. 2-4, 2013 | Free!

THE MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTER PRELUDE.13

2 3

THE TENTH ANNUAL PRELUDE FESTIVALWednesday, October 2 – Friday, October 4, 2013

The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center at The Graduate Center, CUNY is pleased to celebrate the tenth anniversary of PRELUDE, a festival dedicated to artists at the forefront of contemporary New York City theater and performance. As it has for the past decade, PRELUDE.13 features an array of artists working in theatrical, interdisciplinary and mediatized performance, giving audiences and artists a survey of the current New York moment via in-process presentations, open rehearsals, and discussions -- all completely for free.

PRELUDE.13 STAFFCurators: Caleb Hammons, with Frank Hentschker Producer: Rachel SilvermanDirector of Administration: Rebecca SheahanWebsite Design: Kimon KeramidasDesign Coordinator: Sarah StitesGraphic Design Assistant: Kaitlin MeyersParty Producer: Sarah Rose LeonardProduction Coordinator: Lindsay TurteltaubAlt. Space Production Coordinator: Sarah Bishop-StoneStage Managers: Greg Redlawsk and Mary SpadoniTechnical Directors: Matt Romein and Peter Mills-WeissSound Technician: Michael CostagliolaCompany Manager: Shelley CarterProduction Assistants: Brad Burgess and Lisa SzolovitsPress Relations: Blake Zidell & Associates

PRELUDE CURATORS COUNCILSarah Benson, Claire Bishop, Andy Horwitz, Rob Marcato, Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, Geoffrey Jackson Scott, and Helen Shaw

PRELUDE.13 ADVISORSNoel Allain, Bertie Ferdman, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Jeffrey M. Jones, Gavin Kroeber, Gideon Lester, Samara Naeymi, Brendan Regimbal, and Tom Sellar

PRELUDE.13 CRITICAL PARTNER

www.preludenyc.org

WELCOME FROM THE CURATORIAL TEAM

Hello and welcome to PRELUDE.13, the tenth annual PRELUDE Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center.

A “prelude,” according to Webster, is “an introductory performance, action, or event preceding and preparing for the principal or a more important matter.” It is intrinsic, then, that the direction in which to plan and experience a prelude is with sights set forward. Each October for the past ten years, PRELUDE has introduced New York artists and audiences to the season ahead. This season, as a slight departure, we approached the occasion of PRELUDE.13 as a critical juncture; a moment to consider what came before, chart the evolutions that brought us into the now, and to launch inquiries into where we can go from here. The next ten years are our “more important matter.”

What started a decade ago as a way to facilitate exchange between current scholarly and artistic practices rooted in New York City no longer binds these proceedings by the roles we play and the spaces in which we play them. The PRELUDE of today is a collective laboratory of local artistic process, celebrating and inquiring into the unique creative forces that live and thrive in this city. PRELUDE.13, subtitled FORWARD, is a place to discover and engage in what voices, ideas, and debates are colliding to shape the near and distant future of contemporary theatre and performance in NYC. In celebration of the Festival’s first decade, PRELUDE.13 also recognizes and reflects on the community of artists, audience, scholars, and other participants who have contributed to a decade of discourse.

Events are scheduled to alternate between the Graduate Center’s Martin E. Segal Theatre and the Elebash Recital Hall, but be attentive to unexpected encounters in unusual sites. If the zeitgeist does in fact point us to the core of the present disposition, a new elocution will emerge in the next decade surrounding social, site-based, and participatory practices in the theatrical realm. As a (willing) participant in this year’s events, you may find yourself in hallways with strangers, processed for access to an alien spacecraft, exploring the geography of your own psyche, asked to sleep during the performance, or even (finally!) in Brooklyn (for the closing night party — transportation provided).

Whether you have arrived at PRELUDE as an artist, spectator, scholar, or any combination thereof, over the next three days you are part of a communitas. Onstage, online, on-screen, on the page, on the streets, or with a drink in hand at our closing night Tenth Anniversary Celebration, we implore you to observe, engage, commune, and critique with us. Our aim this week is for collision – with both the work and the people around us. Our duty thereafter is to carry this spirit, our experiments, and our inquiries FORWARD.

Thank you for participating in this milestone PRELUDE year!

- The PRELUDE Team, Caleb Hammons & Frank Hentschker

Martin E. Segal Theatre CenterThe Graduate Center, CUNY365 Fifth AvenueNew York, NY 10016


4 5

KEYNOTE ESSAY

The Ten Year Prelude: a Forward-looking backward glanceby Jeffrey M. Jones

Ten PRELUDES. Ten snapshots of a coming season. Ten glimpses into the near future of the only kind of theatre that seeks the future. Now I’ve been asked to examine the entrails and say what it all means—where we have been and where we are going, in 2,000 words or less. Reader, I may not be up to it.

Because, after all, how much really changes over the course of a decade?1

When PRELUDE began, for example, the sitting president was the son of a former president and the grandson of a US Senator and Wall Street banker, while the mayor of New York was the 85th richest person in the world. This year, by contrast, the sitting president is the son of Kenyan exchange student and grandson of an unsuccessful furniture salesman, while Michael Bloomberg, having fiddled with the rules to stay in office, is now the 13th richest person in the world. You could as easily say that everything changes as that nothing ever does.

Which is equally true of PRELUDE. It is easy enough to find change: consider that when the Nature Theater of Oklahoma2 first surfaced in PRELUDE.05, its extant body of work consisted of a 20-minute dance piece at an obscure downtown performance series held in a former Kosher winery with a very leaky roof. Or that Young Jean Lee, also in PRELUDE.05, had only presented her first full-length play the year before, over two sweltering weeks at the Incubator summer series (and Incubator itself wouldn’t take over the St. Mark’s space for another five years). Or that, in 2005, Anne Washburn was the only playwright to have been produced by 13P3 . Even PRELUDE itself was different in those early days; there were no lines, seats were readily available, and a good part of the audience looked like retirees on a budget, who after a lifetime of theatergoing had learned to sit equably through anything. 4

But it is just as true that the ten years of PRELUDE demonstrate constancy and continuity. Consider that the nine ensembles5 in PRELUDE.05 were at least five years old, and some much older — Elevator Repair Service (1991), The Builders Association (1994), Division 13 Productions (1995), Big Art Group (1999), New York City Players (1996), Radiohole (1998), Big Dance Theater (1999), NTUSA (2000). Ten years on, all but one remain, still at the forefront, touring even bigger venues, acclaimed6 in family newspapers. Not that this should be

1 It pains me to say that in writing this piece, I realized that the shorthand I’ve always used to represent a decade —two years with the same last number, e.g., 1950-1960—is actually 11 years. I now know the first decade of PRELUDE is 2004 – 2013, but it still looks funny and includes an initial season so different from the rest that it’s like an inning of baseball that suddenly turned into nine holes of golf… I’m really only talking 9 years here, and not even that because I haven’t seen 2013, so we’re down to 8 (2005-12), and counting.

2 Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper had been making work under their own names since the mid 1990s, but adopted the name in 2005 at the insistence of Actors’ Equity, based on some Equity rule only they understand. You can’t make this stuff up.

3 (2003-2012, death by implosion)

4 If you don’t know the word “sitzfleisch,” it’s now yours at no extra charge.

5 Any exact definition of “ensemble” gets pretty slippery. Absent the rare collective, the Platonic ensemble consists of a company of performers gathered around one or two principal creators. This was as true of the Performance Group as it was of Byrd Hoffman and the Ridiculous. At the other extreme stands the lone-polymath theatremaker who may nonetheless gather a company about him, or her. The Ontological-Hysteric comes to mind, as does SITI. But where does the hydra-headed NTUSA fit, or the traveling sisterhood of Half Straddle? Is Richard Maxwell a playwright, a director, a producer? It all depends.

6 Or not.

surprising, for ensembles are the closest thing we have to institutions7, and like all institutions tend toward self-perpetuation (as long as human self-perpetuation is held in check. Nothing threatens an ensemble like the pram in the hall).

What was surprising about PRELUDE.05 — genuinely surprising, and almost inconceivable even ten years earlier — was the presence of nine experimental American playwrights, representing almost half the programming. Throughout the 20th century, experimental American playwrights came — if they came at all — as single spies: O’Neill (don’t laugh), Wilder (ditto), Kennedy, Baraka, Fornés, Shepard, Albee (sometimes), Foreman, Jenkin, Shawn, Wellman, Jesurun, Mee… (surely I’m forgetting someone). Then, around the turn of the millennium, they show up at battalion strength:

Scott Adkins, Jess Barbagallo, Adam Bock, Thomas Bradshaw, William Burke, Sheila Callaghan, Robert Quillen Camp, Barbara Cassidy, Alex Collier, Corina Copp, Erin Courtney, Lisa D’Amour, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Will Eno, Rob Erickson, Sara Farrington, Stephanie Fleischmann, Ben Gassman, Madeleine George, Melissa James Gibson, Elana Greenfield, David Greenspan, Rinne Groff, Jason Grote, W. David Hancock, Rob Handel, Trish Harnetiaux, Ann Marie Healy, Lucas Hnath, John Jahnke, Julia Jarcho, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Karinne Keithley, Sibyl Kempson, Madelyn Kent, Matt Korahais, Kristen Kosmas, Carson Kreitzer, Aaron Landsman, Young Jean Lee, Casey Llewellyn, Kirk Lynn, Charlotte Meehan, Kevin Oakes, Andrew Ondrejcak, Sylvan Oswald, Suzan-Lori Parks, Amber Reed, Kate E. Ryan, Tina Satter, Heidi Schreck, Jenny Schwartz, Normandy Raven Sherwood, Mark Sitko, Peggy Stafford, Ariel Stess, Kelly Stuart, Lucy Thurber, Alice Tuan, Ken Urban, Anne Washburn, Gary Winter…8

Something fundamental had changed in the practice of experimental theatre9, and PRELUDE captured it.

To understand how playwrights have transformed the field, consider first how ensembles have historically made work. While there are certainly actor-driven companies and those devoted mainly to script interpretation, the default method has been assemblage, bricolage, collage: building pieces out of smaller, discrete pieces of … stuff10. Text was but one element and rarely expected to carry the burden of structure, while the prevalence of cheap and reliable audio/video recording devices allowed a layering strategy which sidestepped once and for all the pesky challenges of the traditional play form. Out the window went plot, situation, character, psychology, dramatic arc, narrative through-line, pity and terror and that damned third act.

7 That the repertory company, their closest equivalent in funded non-profit theatre, has been virtually extinct for decades tells you pretty much all you need to know about the respective differences. There is also the matter of clerical staff. Once your clerical staff gets big enough, you have to put the temps on stage.

8 Most of these playwrights have not (yet) appeared in PRELUDE. Other than that, this list is entirely objective, comprehensive, inclusive, diverse and non-fattening.

9 This is actually all I am trying to say.

10 I’m not sure if this is what is meant by “devised theatre” because I don’t know what “devised theatre” means.


6 7

Playwrights have never had that luxury. No matter how weird and woolly a play may be, it is first and always a language structure written to be spoken, and for a play to “work,”11 people must be willing to sit and listen to it. Which, without getting too technical on you, ain’t beanbag. All but the dreariest plays “work” in the limited sense that you can and will follow12 them.

The conventional play form13 is durable precisely because it is the result of so many years of trial and error, the sum total of the dramatic constructs that will reliably hold an audience for an hour or two, independent of content. Many of the earlier experimental playwrights tried as hard as possible to get away from the play form: one thinks of Mee’s collage experiments, Shawn’s monologs, Foreman’s pointillist dreamscapes, Jesurun’s manic talking heads and Wellman’s nonsense plays. The new generation, by contrast, generally take the play form as their starting point, then mess with it.

Some, in fact, have written what might pass for realistic plays save for the one telling detail which calls the whole representational framework into question. Erin Courtney’s demon baby tosses a malign garden gnome into a group of young professionals in contemporary London; Madeleine George’s The Zero hour finds World War II Nazis on the 7 train; Julia May Jonas’14 evelyn steps straight out of celebrity rehab into The bacchae. Others—as with Will Eno’s Thom Paine (based on nothing) or Kristen Kosmas’ There, There--work in the opposite direction, setting an ordinary three-dimensional (i.e., “rounded,” moyen-sensuel) character against an erased, blurred or otherwise featureless landscape. Playwrights as different as Lisa D’Amour (detroit) and Thomas Bradshaw (take your pick) start with realistic premises, step on the gas, and let increasingly out-of-control passions drive the whole thing off a cliff. In crime or emergency, Sibyl Kempson shifts between dramatic realities with each successive scene, while her Secret death of Puppets15 presents the “story” on audiotape, as a kind of radio drama, as the author runs around the stage, shifting the empty chairs that represent the “characters.”Still others play even more complicated games with structure: the linguistic traceries and arabesques of Jenny Schwartz’s god’s ear; the loop-the-loop and threaded mazes of Jason Grote’s 1001; Erin Courtney’s a Map of Virtue, based on the ring composition theories of Mary Douglas. Madelyn Kent’s Peninsula and Kempson’s ich kürbisgeist are more or less normal plays written in fractured English. Rob Erickson’s off the hozzle is autobiographic monolog fed through a loop machine while Andrew Ondrecjak’s Feast channel-surfs through a linguistic Jabberwocky. Richard Maxwell’s People without history and Young Jean Lee’s The appeal trash the most basic conventions of the history play (including but not limited to, historical accuracy). Jackie Sibblies Drury (we are Proud to Present a Presentation about the herero of namibia, Formerly known as Southwest africa, From the german Sudwestafrika, between the Years 1884-191516) and Lucas Hnath (a Public reading of an unproduced Screenplay about the death of walt disney), each in their own way, have even written recursive history plays, in which “actual” characters comment on the very play which they’re performing.

It seems safe to say the American theatre has never experienced a decade of such feverish invention.

11 Plays we are told, must work. Suffering the curse of Adam; they are not allowed to play.

12 Even more to the point, you will also be able to anticipate them, which is the key to maintaining audience attention. Once you know the play form, you can drop into any play at any point and almost immediately orient yourself in terms of time and action. Even if you don’t know exactly how it will end, you can make a very good guess as to when and how much more there is to come.

13 Play (n): a story in dialog about characters going about their business, whom you’re meant to care about.

14 a/k/a/ Nellie Tinder

15 For the sake of example, I am limiting myself to playwrights who have been part of PRELUDE, and trying not to repeat myself. But the fact is most of these writers have pursued several of these strategies in different plays: thus Washburn has also written several history plays and another piece which also shifts dramatic narrative with each scene; Lee’s also written a church service and a cabaret act; etc. etc.

16 In terms of long, weird titles, this rivals the German bestseller, Four and a half Years of Struggle against lies, Stupidity and cowardice.

Is it too early to gauge the impact of the resurgent playwright? Probably; yet I find it striking that many of the newer groups (Hoi Polloi, Half Straddle, The TEAM, 600 HIGHWAYMEN) have also moved toward a more text-centric approach, while other companies (ERS: gatz; Daniel Fish: …a Supposedly Fun Thing…) are literally staging books and some go even further, into a kind of documentary theatre (ERS’s arguendo, OK Theatre’s massive life and Times17. But the long-term impact of playwriting may be the final bridging of the gap between the experimental and the institutional theatres. Plays, after all, are portable; they are designed to be repeatable. And if it is also striking how little impact 40 years of the American avant-garde has had on seasonal subscription theatres, it may be significant that plays as quietly radical as The designated Mourner and Mr. burns have been produced within the last few months at The Public Theatre and Playwrights Horizons.

I’ve left out a lot, of course—completely skipped over solo performers like Andrew Schneider and Cynthia Hopkins and Carl Hancock Rux and Joe Silovsky (but how could one classify them?), along with the choreographers, dancers, composers, musicians, media artists, even (yikes!) critics. Many PRELUDES featured mini-festivals of work from other countries I never even saw, extensive panel discussions I had to miss, and media showcases I didn’t hang around for. I hear the parties were pretty good, too. For that matter, how is it even possible to speak of PRELUDE without mentioning the indefatigable Frank Hentschker, who seems throughout to be in two places at once?

But I’m out of space. Over my word count. As to what the next decade of PRELUDE may bring?

Well, first of all, that’s totally …

Jeffrey M. Jones is a playwright and essayist whose works include 10 Scenes of halloween, nightcoil, der inka Von Peru, Tomorrowland, a series of crazy Plays, J.P. Morgan Saves the nation (a musical with a score by the late Jonathan Larson), a Man’s best Friend (produced by the Undermain Theatre in New York and Dallas), and, most recently, a letter From omdurman presented in 2012 at the Flea. His essays have appeared in The american Theatre reader, Performing arts Jounal, and as introductions to the anthologies Plays by Young Jean Lee and new downtown now. He appears occasionally with critics David Cote and Helen Shaw on a traveling panel known as The Program. He has been manager of The Wooster Group, Richard Foreman and John Jesurun; taught playwriting at the Yale School of Drama and a series of Pataphysics workshops at the Flea Theater; and is currently co-curator of the OBIE-winning Little Theatre series at Dixon Place. He blogs intermittently at http://jeffreymjones.blogspot.com.

17 This piece is the closest thing to a “hit show” in contemporary experimental theatre, though gatz and we’re gonna die come close. As on Broadway, with a “hit show,” mass appeal counts more than critical acclaim. One of the most interesting trends in contemporary experimental theatre is radically lowering the barrier to entry. LeCompte, Foreman and Wilson were all to some degree deliberately difficult, aggressively odd, unashamedly arty. The newer stuff is typically obvious on the surface, and often downright goofy. This may be the wave of the future…


8 9

PRELUDE.13: FORWARD features an amalgam of artists who have shaped the past decade and who occupy a promising place in the decade to come. How are these artists thinking about and responding to the present moment with an eye towards the next ten years? How is the current state of the union affecting their aesthetic pursuits and innovations? By collectively examining their current practices, can we uncover new paradigms?

To help address these questions strategically, we have organized the artists and events into three categorical platforms:

THE EVOLUTIONARY FIxTURES

Who: Artists whose practices have contributed to and shaped the discourse and history of the past decade.

What: Moving forward into a second, and in some cases third, decade of artistic practice, how are these artists advancing their aesthetic pursuits and proclivities while also considering sustainability and legacy?

How: • By grappling with the opportunities afforded (or lost) through experimenting with alternative ways of creating, capturing and disseminating live work (andrew Schneider, big art group, Jay Scheib & co., daniel Fish, Jim Findlay).

• By using ones aesthetic proclivities to address tough questions about creative sustainability and the economics of the artists’ life (cynthia hopkins, nature Theater of oklahoma).

• By seeking inspiration beyond one’s comfort zone in an attempt to close the gap between “us” and “them” (Pearldamour).

• By revisiting the past through a contemporary lens in pursuit of a greater understanding of who we are now and how far we have (or have not) come (Taylor Mac, big dance Theater, Mallory catlett / restless nYc).

Andrew ondrejcak; photo by l. walker

PLATFORMS

THE DEVIANT CHARGES

Who: Artists who are forging the narrative of the next generation of practice.

What: Still within or just emerging from a first decade of artistic practice, how are these artists concurrently in conversation with their lineages while simultaneously provoking new ideas and awareness?

How: • By confronting the possibilities and challenges of scale and scope in contemporary practice (600 highwaYMen, aniMalS, andrew ondrejcak, The assembly, woodshed collective).

• By reclaiming and revamping age-old traditions of song and story (kristine haruna lee & built for collapse, katherine brook / Tele-Violet, Jerome ellis & James harrison Monaco).

• By dismantling our understanding of provocation, identity, camp, and commentary (chris Tyler, rebecca Patek).

THE WILLING PARTICIPANTS

Who: You, the compounded spectator/participant, and the artists who engage you in amalgamations of liveness, participation, place, and the civic nature of performance.

What: When such practices have been around for decades, what remains to be realized by transgressing these boundaries? How can we contemporaneously re-imagine the notions and politics of spectator and participant, event and community?

How: • By addressing economics, civic responsibility, and urban planning as a “collective creative design problem” (The brooklyn commune, uSdac, aaron landsman).

• By advancing inquiries and playing into the debates of authenticity within a performative experience (elastic city, institute for Psychogeographic adventure).

• By creating a live action role-playing rock musical (need we say more?) (césar alvarez & Sarah benson).


10 11

FESTIVAL SCHEDULE AT A GLANCE

SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 22

2-6PM The Brooklyn Commune Project (The Invisible Dog Art Center)

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2

4-9:30PM The Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure

4-5:30PM César Alvarez & Sarah Benson [Segal Theatre]

6-7PM Taylor Mac (Segal Theatre)

7:15-8:15PM DISCUSSION: Performing New York City (Segal Theatre)

8:45-9:30PM Daniel Fish (Segal Theatre)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3

INSTALLATION Kippy Winston (Elebash Lobby)

INSTALLATION Nature Theater of Oklahoma (Elebash Lobby)

3:30-8PM Jim Findlay (C-Level 202; Sign up in Segal Lobby)

4-9:30PM The Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure 4-4:45PM Kristine Haruna Lee & Built for Collapse (Segal Theatre)

4-5PM DISCUSSION: The Willing Participant (Elebash Recital Hall)

5-7PM Aaron Landsman (Elebash Lobby) 5-7PM United States Department of Arts and Culture (Elebash Lobby) 5:15-6PM Woodshed Collective (Segal Theatre) 5:30-6:15PM Big Art Group (Elebash Recital Hall)

6:45-7:30PM Andrew Ondrejcak (Elebash Recital Hall)

7-9PM Elastic City featuring Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith (On-site Walk; Sign up in Segal Lobby)

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3 (continued)

7:30-8:15PM Big Dance Theater (Segal Theatre)

8-8:45PM ANIMALS (Elebash Recital Hall) 8:45-9:30PM The Assembly (Segal Theatre)

9:15PM Andrew Schneider (Elebash Recital Hall)

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4

INSTALLATION Kippy Winston (Elebash Lobby)

INSTALLATION Nature Theater of Oklahoma (Elebash Lobby)

3:30-8PM Jim Findlay (C-Level 202; SIgn up in Segal Lobby)

4-9:30PM The Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure

4-4:45PM Mallory Catlett / Restless NYC (Segal Theatre)

4:15-5PM DISCUSSION: RE: (no subject) (Elebash Recital Hall) 5-5:45PM PearlDamour (Segal Theatre)

5:30-6:15PM Katherine Brook / Tele-Violet (Elebash Recital Hall)

6:15-7PM 600 HIGHWAYMEN (Segal Theatre)

7-7:45PM Cynthia Hopkins (Elebash Recital Hall)

7:45-8:30PM Jerome Ellis & James Harrison Monaco (Segal Theatre)

8:30-9:30PM Jay Scheib & Co. (Elebash Recital Hall)

8:45-9:30PM The Queer and Now: Rebecca Patek, Chris Tyler (Segal Theatre)

10PM-1AM Closing Night Party Celebrating 10 Years of PRELUDE (Littlefield) Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, Erin Markey, Neal Medlyn

THE EVOLUTIONARY FIXTURES

THE DEVIANT CHARGES

THE WILLING PARTICIPANTS


12 13

DISCUSSIONS

PERFORMING NEW YORK CITY: how TheaTer and PerForMance can SurViVe The nexT decadeWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 27:15-8:15PM | SEGAL THEATRE

Brecht predicted, “Because things are the way they are, things will not stay the way they are.” In consideration of a decade of PRELUDE, we bring together former and present PRELUDE curators for a lively discussion (led by artist David Levine) about the way things could become. These curators, who also live double and even triple lives as scholars, artists, producers, and administrators, will harness the insights they have gathered over the past decade to debate their visions of contemporary New York theatre and performance in the decade to come.

Presented in collaboration with Cultural Capital: The Future of New York’s Creative Economy, a public program of the cunY graduate center, Fall 2013.

Moderator: David Levine

Participants: Sarah Benson, Claire Bishop, Caleb Hammons, Frank Hentschker, Andy Horwitz, Rob Marcato, Morgan von Prelle Pecelli, Geoffrey Jackson Scott, and Helen Shaw.

THE WILLING PARTICIPANTTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 34–5PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

Marked by a resurgent artistic interest in social, civic, and community engagement, questions of authorship, accountability, and responsibility are front and center in the discourse of current performance practices. Social and cultural producer Gavin Kroeber leads a conversation with a group of artists who create participatory performance works with social valences, exploring the slippage between theater and the performative act of activism, asking what we gain and lose when art assumes or imitates various forms of civic practice.

Moderator: Gavin Kroeber

Participants: Adam Horowitz, Melanie Joseph, Aaron Landsman, Todd Shalom, and Niegel Smith

RE: (NO SUBJECT)FRIDAY, OCTOBER 44:15–5PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

The play is not necessarily the thing in this PRELUDE-commissioned experiment/project, aimed at capturing the here-and-now awareness and reason of the contemporary playwright. Starting a couple months ago, these five playwrights began exchanging emails on an extended chain with no structure and no rules; simply an open, frank conversation RE: (no subject). The threads that have emerged are as wildly varied as the styles and perspectives of each of the five. PRELUDE curator Caleb Hammons brings these playwrights together to share a portion of their ongoing exchange and to answer this question: “What is ‘forward’?”

Moderator: Caleb Hammons

Participants: Annie Baker, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Sibyl Kempson, Max Posner, and Anne Washburn

See page pages 52-55 for Discussion Moderator and Participant biographies.

THE BROOKLYN COMMUNE PROJECT SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 222-6PM | THE INVISIBLE DOG ART CENTER

Public Research Session / PRELUDE Pre-Festival Kickoff

The Brooklyn Commune Project is a grassroots initiative organized by Culturebot.org and The Invisible Dog Art Center to educate, activate and unify performing artists of all disciplines to work together towards a more equitable, just and sustainable arts ecology in America. The project’s goal is to create an artist-driven vision of a healthy arts ecosystem in America and to bring artists, institutions, administrators and funders together for mutually respectful, open, non-hierarchical discourse around difficult topics such as resource allocation, capital, value, labor, aesthetics, and quality of life.

In collaboration with PRELUDE.13, this pre-festival kickoff event will include a “long table”-format open discussion featuring artists and thinkers leading a dialog about the intersection of aesthetics and economics in the performing arts. We invite all artists and audiences to join us for drinks and conversation to launch PRELUDE.13.

Collaborating Artists: Gelsey Bell, Abigail Browde, Annie Dorsen, Shonni Enelow, Andy Horwitz, Carla Peterson, Risa Shoup, Michael Silverstone, Clyde Valentine, and more

Upcoming for The Brooklyn Commune: Brooklyn Commune Global Congress, November 22-24, 2013 at The Invisible Dog.

www.brooklyncommune.org

I.p.A.; photo by Jenny Kawa


14 15

EVENTS:WEDNESDAY

césar Alvarez & Sarah Benson; photo by nora Merecicky

THE INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE exPeriMenT #2 1/2 (Prelude)WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2ONGOING

The founders of the Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure (IPA) will infiltrate the PRELUDE Festival, coaxing audience members out of public spaces and into individual psychogeographic journeys through the Graduate Center and the events of the festival itself. During the IPA’s custom intake process, participants will work with the IPA to create a personalized festival-going agenda. On the final evening of PRELUDE, IPA participants will come together to map their experiences and mingle with other festival goers. Join the adventure.

Having created psychogeographic adventures for a Brooklyn neighborhood (DUMBO) and a historic art institution (The Brooklyn Museum), the IPA is now taking on the nature of the “festival”, guiding PRELUDE-goers through the physical and psychological architecture of the festival itself. The founders of the IPA are here to help you craft your PRELUDE-going experience into an adventure.

This is an interactive even occurring throughout the festival.

Collaborating Artists: Andrew Goldberg, Liza Wade Green, Radoslaw Konopka, and Emily Rea

About IPA: The Institute for Psychogeographic Adventure (IPA) is a team of interdisciplinary artists who explore the intersection of place and individual psychology. The IPA was founded in 2012 by Andrew Goldberg, Radoslaw Konopka, Liza Wade Green, and Emily Rea while studying at Brooklyn College’s Performance and Interactive Media Arts M.F.A. program. The IPA’s inaugural project, Experiment #17 (DUMBO), was presented in May 2013 in over thirty sites across the Brooklyn neighborhood of DUMBO. In September, 2013 the IPA recontextualized the traditional museum tour with Experiment #23b (BROOKLYN MUSEUM) as part of the BEAT Festival.

www.ipaexperiments.com

photo by lukasz drapala


16 17

TAYLOR MAC

24-decade concerT SerieS oF The hiSTorY oF PoPular MuSic: The 1850s (an oPen rehearSal)WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 26-7 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

The Bard of Demoncracy (Walt Whitman) takes over the Lincoln Center Atrium in the guise of bedazzled creature Taylor Mac on Oct 3rd. In the meantime, Taylor joins the PRELUDE Festival for an open rehearsal of this event. Expect selections from leaves of grass performed to original compositions and popular music from the 1850s.

Artist Statement: Taylor Mac (whose gender is Performer and who uses the gender pronoun, Judy) sees Judy’s job as a theatre artist as that of a community organizer. Judy brings people together and gives them some kind of shared experience. Taylor’s goal with each performance is to access the range of an audiences humanity by reminding them of the things they’ve dismissed, forgotten or buried. in collaboration with the audience, Judy does Judy’s best to acknowledge the past and the present and then use the information learned from that acknowledgment to help dream the culture forward.

About Taylor Mac: Taylor Mac is a theatre artists (meaning Judy is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, director, and producer). Judy has won many awards including an Obie for Judy’s play The lily’s revenge. Taylor has performed Judy’s work all over the world from basement bars to opera houses.

Upcoming for Taylor Mac: David Rubenstein Atrium at Lincoln Center, Oct 3rd at 7:30: Taylor Mac’s 24-decade Concert Series of the History of Popular Music: The 1850s–This piece will premiere as part of Target Free Thursdays; The Public Theater, Oct 18th to Nov 24th: The good Person of Szechwan (acting in the role of Shen The); Abrons Arts Center, Dec 14th to the 31st: The last Two People on earth, an apocolyptic Vaudeville (created and performed by Taylor Mac and Mandy Patinkin and directed/co-created by Susan Stroman); The Magic Theater, Feb 2014: “”hir“”, a new play by Taylor Mac

www.taylormac.net

photo by tim Hailand

CESAR ALVAREZ & SARAH BENSON

The uniVerSe iS a SMall haTWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 24-5:30 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

The Universe is a Small Hat is a participatory electronic music theater work, which tells the story of a techno-utopian space colony leaving Earth in order to form a new, more rational civilization. It is designed as an entirely interactive experience that merges narrative with the participatory feeling of a game. Audience members are all enlisted as colonists and responsible for their own paths within the story. The universe is a Small hat is an exploration of the roles we play, the choices we make, and the space we occupy in society and the universe.

Developed with support from The Ground Floor at Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Berkeley, CA.

Collaborating Artists: Creator/Composer: César Alvarez; Director: Sarah Benson; Game Designer: Ivan Safrin; Game Designer: Syed Salahuddin; Dramaturg/AI Supervisor: Nora Casey; The Founder: Sophie Nimmannit; Performers: Clifton Duncan, Andrew Hoepfner, Eric Farber, Ben Simon, Erynn Sosinski, Lizzie Stark, Ben Stuber, Storm Thomas, and Lorenzo Wolff

About César Alvarez: César Alvarez is a Drama Desk-nominated composer, lyricist, performer and writer. His Civil War sci-fi musical FuTuriTY world premiered at American Repertory Theater in 2012 and was a co-commission of Walker Art Center. César’s band, The Lisps, has released 4 albums and played hundreds of shows around the country since 2005. César is co-founder and resident composer of LA-based dance theater company Contra-Tiempo. He has presented work at Lincoln Center, MASS MoCA, The Stone, Roulette, Dixon Place, The Tank, Joe’s Pub, HERE, La MaMa, Ars Nova, Walker Art Center, and The Public Theater, among others. César was a member of The Civilians R&D Group for 2012-13, is a visiting artist in the Sarah Lawrence College Theater Program and a Visiting Lecturer on Dramatics at Harvard University for Fall of 2013. Recent Composition Credits: FuTuriTY directed by Sarah Benson (A.R.T, Walker Art Center, Mass MoCA); Brecht’s good Person of Szechwan directed by Lear deBessonet (Foundry Theatre at LaMaMa, Public Theater); Mac Wellman’s 3 2’s; or aFar directed by Meghan Finn (Dixon Place), Full Still hungry for contra-Tiempo (Ford Amphitheater, Dance Motion USA). He is a graduate of Interlochen Arts Academy, BM from Oberlin Conservatory and MFA from Bard College.

www.musicisfreenow.org

photo by nora Merecicky


18 19

PERFORMANC-

THURSDAY

photo by Zbigniew Bzymek

EVENTS:THURSDAY

the Assembly; photo by Shelly rodriguez

DANIEL FISH

eTernalWEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 28:45-9:30 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

A merging of theater, cinema, and environmental installation, eternal is Fish’s most conceptually ambitious production to date. In August, Fish assembled a film crew to shoot actors Thomas Jay Ryan and Christina Rouner performing the final scene of the 2004 film, eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind in a continuous loop for two hours. The unedited two channel video of their performance will be projected at The Incubator Arts Project on a pair of screens that face each other from across the space. The audience sits between the lovers/screens.

“what if some day or night a demon were to steal after you into your loneliest loneliness and say to you: ‘This life as you now live it and have lived it, you will have to live once more and innumerable times more.’”- Nietzsche

Artist Statement: when we shot Eternal, i imposed one restraint on the actors, the crew and myself: we must keep going, no matter what happens. i’m interested in the the boredom, the humor, and the extreme emotions that might come from playing or watching the same scene over and over.

Collaborating Artists: Christina Rouner, Thomas Jay Ryan, Blanca Añon, Thomas Dunn, Michael Koshkin, Andrew Lazarow, Mark Van Hare, Terese Wadden

About Daniel Fish: Daniel Fish is a director of theater, opera and film. Internationally known for his bold re-visioning of dramatic classics (Shakespeare, Moliere, Rodgers and Hammerstein) or else finding theater where none was intended (the writing of David Foster Wallace, the films of Nicholas Ray), his work is at once conceptually rigorous and theatrically lavish.

Fish’s work has been seen at Opera Philadelphia/Curtis Opera, The Chocolate Factory, Arts Emerson, Düsseldorfer Schauspielhaus, Staatstheater Braunschweig, American Repertory Theater, Fisher Center at Bard College,Yale Rep, McCarter Theater, Signature Theater, The Shakespeare Theater Company, The Zipper, The Royal Shakespeare Company. Residencies and commissions include Baryshnikov Arts Center, LMCC/Governor’s Island, The Chocolate Factory, and Incubator Arts Project.

Upcoming for Daniel Fish: death, a collaboration with Andrew Dinwiddie, premieres at The Bushwick Starr in March 2014.

Upcoming for Eternal: Premiere at Incubator Arts Project, October 10-20, 2013

www.danielfish.net

photo by Michael Koshkin


20 21

THE INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE exPeriMenT #2 1/2 (Prelude)THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3ONGOING








KIPPY WINSTON

inSTallaTion: The radiShTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 3 4-9:30 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL LOBBY

uS weekly meets The onion in The radish, a cheeky gossip rag devoted to downtown theatre. Conceived of by theatrical media mogul Kippy Winston, The radish covers the highs and lows, the joyful, the questionable, the juicy and the smoothies. La crème de gossip irreverént. Online and in print for special occasions.

Artist Statement: My young friend very earnestly told me that Young Jean lee was having a baby. i couldn’t believe my ears. he insisted. The Radish was born.

or

why do we make theatre? who cares? isn’t it fun to trade scraps of gossip about our community? The Radish is the answer, even if published by a questionable source.

or

The downtown theatre community, for lack of a better term, is so small and insular and full of intrigue. wouldn’t it be fun to poke fun? This kippy certainly takes herself far too seriously… let the antics begin!

Collaborating Artists: Kippy Winston: Publisher, Editor-in-Chief; Shap Mulligan: Web Design, Creative Director

About Kippy Winston: “Bonjour mes amis.” Kippy Winston’s web log began in 2008, but her peripatetic life started long ago. A citizen of the world, Kippy is a tastemaker and ardent supporter of the performing arts. Linguist and lover of culture, Kippy’s writings on art take on an art form all their own. Journalism meets hedonism in Kippy’s word play(s). [wink!] “Hey world. Here I am. Kippy Winston and loving life.”

Upcoming for The Radish: Look for The radish at peak theatre seasons such as PRELUDE, the winter festivals (like Under the Radar/Coil/Other Forces) and of course Obie-award season. Updated electronically periodically, printed sporadically.

kippywinston.wordpress.com

photo courtesy of the artist


22 23

NATURE THEATER OF OKLAHOMA

inSTallaTion: ok radioTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 3 4-9:30 PM | ELEBASH LOBBY

Nature Theater of Oklahoma has launched their own OK Radio podcast: long-form conversations in the spirit of the radio conversations of John Cage and Morton Feldman. Listen in as they talk with artists, curators, and instigators from around the world. Nothing is off limits.

Artist Statement: ok radio was a project we began in 2012 as a way to ground ourselves and our work locally, as we were touring. we were always in town for a week and then on to the next place, and we just felt so disconnected — both from our home in nY and from the local art scene wherever we were playing, so ok radio became a place where we could connect, and i think it’s become a connecting place for many others, as well.

About Nature Theater of Oklahoma: Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an award-winning New York art and performance group under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. Since Poetics: a ballet brut, our first dance piece created as an ensemble, Nature Theater of Oklahoma has been devoted to making the work we don’t know how to make, putting ourselves in impossible situations, and working from out of our own ignorance and unease. We strive to create an unsettling live situation that demands total presence from everyone in the room. We use the readymade material around us, found space, overheard speech, and observed gesture, and through extreme formal manipulation, and superhuman effort, we affect in our work a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live.

Upcoming for OK Radio: OK Radio is available for free, year round, 24-7 at www.okradio.org and also on iTunes. There are over 70 conversations currently available with artists and curators from around the world, including William Forsythe, Jonathan Meese, Anna Teresa deKeersmaeker, Kate Valk, and Reggie Watts. More episodes are on their way, so stay tuned.

www.okradio.org

photos courtesy of nature theater of oklahoma

JIM FINDLAY

dreaM oF The red chaMber / a PerForMance Solo For Two SleePerSTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 33:30-8 PM | C-LEVEL 202

dream of the red chamber, a performance for a sleeping audience, is a deeply ambient journey through Cao Xueqin’s 18th century Chinese novel dream of the red chamber. This version – created exclusively for PRELUDE – invites two audience members to relax and experience an intimate version of the red chamber in thirty-minute cycles. You’ll catch tantalizing glimpses of the epic love story between a stone and a flower, framed by a dizzying series of metaphysical dreams.

This event is intended for an audience of two people at a time, scheduled in thirty minute increments. Participants must sign up in advance. Sign-ups will be available in the Segal Lobby throughout the festival.

Artist Statement: i’m interested in terrains that are ubiquitous but overlooked. The things right under our noses. or maybe our eyelids. i’m interested in what can happen when we get free from the idea that art is dependent on the transaction of the audience ‘paying’ attention. what if you don’t pay? what if i don’t ask? how little can we both do and still have something worthwhile happen?

Collaborating Artists: Solos performed by Christina Campanella, Kaneza Schaal, and Rebecca Warner; Assistant Director/Stage Manager Maurina Lioce

Project Collaborators: Enver Chakartash, James Dawson, Jim Dawson, Aleta Findlay, Scott Halvorsen Gillette, Josh Higgason, Jeff Jackson, Sissi Liu, Jamie McElhinney, Kate Moran, Liz Sargent, Kaneza Schaal, Rebecca Warner, and Okwui Okpokwasili, with songs composed by Elysian Fields. Producer: Joel Bassin

About Jim Findlay: Jim Findlay works across specialties as a creator, director, designer, and performer with a constellation of theater, performance and music groups. His work has been seen in a multitude of venues including BAM, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, A.R.T., Arena Stage and in over 40 international cities. He was a founding member and primary collaborator in both the experimentally groundbreaking Collapsable Giraffe and the internationally successful music/media performance company Accinosco/Cynthia Hopkins, as well as being a resident artist at The Wooster Group from 1994-2003. Findlay recently directed and designed David Lang’s whisper opera at Lincoln Center. His piece botanica, which was part of PRELUDE.10, was performed at 3LD Art + Techonology in 2011. The Walker Art Center recently acquired for their permanent collection Jim Findlay and Ralph Lemon’s installation work Meditation, which will be exhibited at the Walker in 2014 and was previously exhibited at the Krannert Center (IL), Yuerba Buena Art Center (SF) and the Kitchen in NYC. This festival marks his third appearance in PRELUDE.

Upcoming for Dream of the Red Chamber: PS122 May 2014

www.dreamoftheredchamber.com

photo by l. walker


24 25

KRISTINE HARUNA LEE &BUILT FOR COLLAPSE

drunkFiSh oceanranTTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 34-4:45 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

A J-pop extravaganza in the style of Rakugo with one, Fishy Fisherman, who loves bourbon whiskey. What is Rakugo? Quite literally, it means “fallen words:” the art of storytelling where one must be seated on a cushion in seiza (that way of Japanese sitting that hurts most Westerners.) The fisherman who casts his net into a sad ocean of radio- listening, radioactive fish, and is soon joined by draggy fishy ocean creatures who are all attempting to retell a horrific experience that has been lost in the tsunami- like waves of time.

A co-production by Built for Collapse and Kristine Haruna Lee.

Collaborating Artists: Written and Performed by Kristine Haruna Lee; Directed by Sanaz Ghajarrahimi; Composed by Kathryn Hathaway; Choreography by Ben Hobbs; Lighting by Dan Stearns; With Andrew Butler, Lauren Swan-Potras, Stevo Arnoczy & Vincent Santvoord

About Kristine Haruna Lee: Kristine Haruna Lee is a playwright, director, and performer living in Brooklyn, NY. She has performed nationally and internationally with artists such as Taylor Mac, NAATCO, The Talking Band, Andrea Geyer, and Antony and the Johnsons. Her work has been presented at Joe’s Pub (drunkfish oceanrant), Ars Nova (She’s Sleep), Bushwick Starr (Plum de Force, Troika), and Dixon Place (These robes, Those robes and She’s Sleep) and has been developed with The Propeller Series, Target Margin’s Lab Series, Asian American Writer’s Workshop, 2nd Generation, and New Dramatists. She has received a Dixon Place Artist Residency and is a recipient of the New Dramatists Van Lier fellowship. She holds a BFA from NYU Tisch, and is an M.F.A playwriting candidate at Brooklyn College.

About Built for Collapse: Built for Collapse is an award-winning New York City-based company committed to building multidisciplinary work that challenges theatrical form. Work is developed through an ever-evolving process that involves original writing, music and choreography inspired by found texts, political events, film and visual art references, and pop culture. An “ambitiously subversive young troupe” (Time out nY), their work has been presented at New Ohio Theatre’s Ice Factory Festival, HERE, 3LD Art & Technology Center, Ars Nova, JACK, Dixon Place, Galapagos Art Space, the Brooklyn Lyceum, Grace Exhibition Space, Riverside Park, Access Theater and elsewhere; and internationally in Prague, Krakow, Rome and Berlin. It has been described as “sexy yet heartbreaking” (Prague Post) and “an amazing theatrical experience” (nYTheatre.com). They have received grants from the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and The Drama League. They have been awarded residencies at 3-Legged Dog Art & Technology Center, Goldex Poldex Gallery in Poland, LaGuardia Performing Arts Lab, The Tank and the Hangar Theatre. They are currently in residence at The Drama League as part of their New Directors/New Works program. Artistic Directors: Sanaz Ghajarrahimi, Ben Hobbs & Vincent Santvoord.

Upcoming for Drunkfish Oceanrant: Premiering at La MaMa Club Spring 2014

www.kristineharunalee.com


AARON LANDSMAN

PerFecT ciTYTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 35-7 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL LOBBY

Perfect city is research and art project created in collaboration with experts in urban planning, and with individuals on the margins of cityscapes. Through conversations with both of these groups, followed by interviews with a cross section of residents where they live, work and com-mute, the project will try and offer a framework for an impossibly perfect place to live. Perfect city takes on two inquiries: how our cities seem to be changing to reflect seemingly progressive values, yet are coming to exclude all but the wealthiest inhabitants; and how our responses to the same questions can vary, depending on who is asking. Artist Statement: aaron landsman makes performances and other events about urban intimacy and absence, landscape and the body, public life and the structures of government. Some projects are staged in places where people perform their lives, like homes, offices and meeting rooms. others use established performance venues. working this way helps the setting become a character, helps implicate the audience into the action, and exploits the theatricality of places we go every day. About Aaron Landsman: Aaron Landsman makes performances, teaches, and appears in other people’s shows. His projects are often presented in the kinds of everyday locations where people perform their lives: apartments, offices, meeting rooms and sidewalks. His current project, city council Meeting, was presented this year in Houston, Tempe, and New York, with additional engagements scheduled for San Francisco and Liverpool. His prior work has been commissioned, produced or presented by The Foundry Theatre, PS 122, and other venues in New York, Texas, Cleveland, Minneapolis, and Tempe, and internationally in Belarus, Sweden, Norway, and the UK. As an actor, Aaron has appeared in the work of many artists, including Richard Maxwell, Julia Jarcho and Elevator Repair Service, performing Off-Broadway, regionally, and internationally, most recently on London’s West End; he will appear in Deke Weaver’s wolf in September 2013 in central Illinois. Aaron is the current resident artist at ASU Gammage, and will be a guest artist at Stanford University and Columbia College this winter. His work is currently funded by the New England Foundation For The Arts, MAP, NPN, Jerome and Puffin. Upcoming for Aaron Landsman: open house, KulturaNova, Serbia, November 2013; city council Meeting workshop, Keene College, New Hampshire, November 2013; appointment, ASU Gammage, April 2014; city council Meeting, Zspace, San Francisco, August 2014 www.thinaar.com


26 27

UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ARTS AND CULTURE

uSdacTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 35-7 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL LOBBY

We the people do hereby create the United States Department of Arts and Culture. Citizen Artists and Cultural Agents wanted!

The U.S. Department of Arts and Culture is a new citizen-powered initiative to catalyze art and culture in the public interest and cultivate the public interest in art and culture.

Culture precedes politics. Active creative participation is a gateway to ongoing civic engagement. Arts and culture are essential to building empathy and social imagination. The capacity to collaborate is a key element of any resilient community. Cultural change can swell up from the grassroots level. Arts and culture are our most powerful and under-tapped resources for social change.

Collaborating Artists: Adam Horowitz, Cordelia Istel

www.usdac.us

WOODSHED COLLECTIVE

The oFFice ProJecTTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 35:15-6 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

The office Project is an immersive theatrical experience that invites the audience to join the temporary workforce of Prairie Dog Mutual Life Insurance Company. Centered on the dreams, ambitions, and identities of the show’s employees, permanent and otherwise, as their employers take the company public, The office Project explores the business of valuing human life. Installed in actual office space, audiences compete in power games, attend board meetings, fire people and get fired. Sourced from surveys, anecdotes, scripted materials, and those literal maps of human destiny — life insurance actuarial tables — The office Project examines the choices we make and the lives that result from them.

Artist Statement: living in new York, it is impossible not to notice the central role work plays in how people evaluate their own lives. by casting the audience as temps at a life insurance company, we hope to examine the same question from the opposite perspective: what happens when your business is valuing the lives of others? here we are showing several short scenes, as well as some of the interactive content we have developed for orienting and training the audience.

Collaborating Artists: Written contributions from Alexander Borinsky, Caridad Svich, Cory Hinkle, Jen Silverman, Jenny Connell Davis, Jon Caren, Jonathan Fitts, Kristen Palmer, Kyra Miller, Lucas Kavner, Mat Smart, Matthew Lee Erlbach, Nathan Dame, Nick Pappas, Paul Cohen, Rachel Jenrezweski, Rachel Shukert, Seth Bockley, Tara Schuster, and Jason Platt

About Woodshed Collective: Woodshed Collective creates installation theater and immersive performance. Since 2006, the company has evolved into conceiving and presenting large-scale theatrical events including: Twelve Ophelias by Caridad Svich (performed in McCarren Park Pool), The confidence Man adapted from the Melville by Paul Cohen (performed on a decommissioned steamship in the Hudson River), and The Tenant adapted from the novel and film by Steven Levenson, Tommy Smith, Dylan Dawson, Sarah Burgess, Paul Cohen, and Bekah Brunstetter (performed in a five story 19th century Parish House on the Upper West Side). Bound by the belief in the combined power of language, story, and architecture to bind groups of people and break down the barriers of everyday life, we maintain a commitment to making our work available to all audiences.

Upcoming for The Office Project: Workshops on Sunday and Monday, September 22nd and 23rd and December 5th-7th. These workshops are the culmination of a Swing Space residency in office space in lower Manhattan through LMCC. The piece is planned to premiere in the winter of 2014/2015.

www.woodshedcollective.com

photo by Blaire Mezibov


28 29

CADEN MANSON / BIG ART GROUP

The PeoPle - l.e.S.THURSDAY, OCTOBER 35:30-6:15 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

The People – l.e.S. is the 6th installment of a serial project created by Big Art Group. It takes place as an hour-long live performance simulcast in a 5-channel-wide, monument-sized video on the outside of a public building to an audience viewing from the street. Incorporating Big Art Group’s virtuosic mix of live action/video, the narrative is constructed from interviews conducted with community members of the Lower East Side, who voice their thoughts about democracy, war, terrorism and justice as it relates to their personal histories. It retells a version of the Greek tragedy cycle The oresteia to investigate the contemporary nature of democracy and justice and the relationship of the networked public to mediated information.

Artist Statement: The People serial project originated as a 2007 commission from inteatro Polverigi in ancona, italy and the desire of the company to create a project that interacted deeply with the community as well as drawing its dramaturgy from local participants. it takes its narrative from the greek tragic cycle The Oresteia, in which the citizens of athens come together to arbitrate a solution to a series of murders precipitated by a bloody code of justice that demands revenge for every blood crime. The project has been co-produced and presented with inteatro Polverigi (italy), Theater der welt (germany), Szene Salzburg (austria), Yerba buena center for the arts (San Francisco), and Tba Festival (Portland, oregon).

About Big Art Group: Big Art Group was founded in New York in 1999 by Caden Manson and Jemma Nelson. The company uses language and media to push formal boundaries of theatre, digital media and visual arts creating live performances, installations, participatory events and online works using original text and immersive technology. In its short history, the company has risen to international prominence through its real-Time Film trilogy (Shelf life, Flicker, house of no More), and its collaborative, site-specific, and ensemble work (The Sleep, cinema Fury, The People, S.o.S.). It has toured extensively in Europe and North America (Festival d’Automne à Paris, Hebbel am Ufer, Wiener Festwochen, Szene Salzburg, REDCAT, Usine C and many others) as well as regularly presenting work in New York (Abrons Arts Center, The Kitchen, PS 122, Dance Theater Workshop).

Upcoming for The People: The People – l.e.S. will be presented with Abrons Arts Center at the end of April 2014.

www.bigartgroup.com

photo by Joseph webb

ANDREW ONDREJCEK

eliJah greenTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 36:45-7:30 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

Andrew Ondrejcak continues work on an adaptation of influential Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s a dream Play. The play presents the scenario of a divine visitation into the contemporary tedium of the everyday human. Despite unremarkable existences, the characters’ stories layer and culminate in a portrait of the interconnectivity of all humans, with each individual both the center of the world and part of something they cannot comprehend.

Artist Statement: ondrejcak observes the human body to an absurd level, exploiting all of the allegorical possibilities in human functioning – from communication and reproduction to the body’s physical weakening and eventual decay. his works are comic-tragedies in which the physical world is overtaken by it’s metaphysical potential. ondrejcak often creates a meticulously designed world, a plastic world of heightened theatricality, only to gradually tear it apart to find the humanity buried within. These visual images combine with fragmentary language into a series of poetic, playful and complex examinations in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned.

Collaborating Artists: Written, directed and designed by Andrew Ondrejcak; Performed by Cara Francis, Yuki Kawahisa, Jason Winfield, Carmen Pelaez, Mikeah Jennings, Carlos Soto, and William Burke; Choreography by Rebecca Warner About Andrew Ondrejcak: Andrew Ondrejcak is a Mississippi-born writer, director, and designer. Recent works include You us we all (2013) with composer Shara Worden, co-produced by deSingel Arts Center (Antwerp) and Kampnagel (Hamburg); kings of Macedonia, PRELUDE.12 Festival; and FeaST, St. Marks Incubator Arts Center (2012) and a reperformance of the works of Marina Abramovic in The artist is Present, MoMA (2011). As a designer, Ondrejcak creates installations for fashion shows and photo shoots, working with Vogue, Bazaar, W, and Vogue China, among others. Since 2003, he has been a freelance lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art, where he focuses on painting and sculpture and specializes in programs for visitors with disabilities. Ondrejcak studied architecture and design at the Savannah College of Art and Design and playwriting at Brooklyn College. He is currently developing a new work with composer Bryce Dessner for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (2014).

Upcoming for Andrew Ondrejcak: elijah green was developed at the LMCC Artist Studios on Governors Island as part of the River To River Festival 2013. It will be further developed at a residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center, late 2013.

www.andrewondrejcak.com

photo by georgia neirheim


30 31

ELASTIC CITY FEATURING TODD SHALOM & NIEGEL SMITH

SelFieSTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 37-9PM

In fashion, there’s armor. Through devices, we locate, shield, and shoot. If we toss this stuff, how will we re-find ourselves and each other? Well, let’s start from scratch. And sniff.

Join Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith for a mostly-indoor participatory walk. A rite that roots and wrests the canvas of self. Yeah, we’re going there. And we’ll be getting naked. And we know that’s cliché. And that our “we” is different than yours. Oh lord. Come with. Undress. Together. And check yourself.

This is an interactive event for an audience of twelve. Participants must sign up in advance and remain present for the full duration of the piece. To ensure a spot on this walk, please sign up on the Elastic City website: http://www.elastic-city.org/walks/selfies. Sign-up will also be available in the Segal Lobby on Wednesday and Thursday.

This event is open to audience members 18 years and older.

Artist Statement: elastic city intends to make its audience active participants in an ongoing poetic exchange with the places we live in and visit. artists are commissioned by elastic city to create their own walks. These walks are participatory and may rely on sensory-based techniques, the creation of new folk rituals and/or other artist-derived exercises to explore one’s self, the group and a given space.

Note from the Artists: asking walk participants to completely disrobe is extremely vulnerable for everyone, us included. Though we are aware that this choice might deter some from attending, our intention is to revel in that vulnerability in order to better investigate our relationships to our bodies and each other. we hope you’ll join us!

Collaborating Artists: Todd Shalom, Niegel Smith & Ryan Tracy

About Todd Shalom and Niegel Smith: Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith create participatory performances that work with text, sound and image to re-contextualize the body in space using vocabulary of the everyday. Their collaborations have been presented by Abrons Art Center, American Realness, Elastic City, The New Museum, The Public Theater and P.S.122. In their other lives, Niegel directs theatre (www.niegelsmith.com) and Todd directs Elastic City (www.elastic-city.org).

www.elastic-city.org

photo courtesy of the artists

BIG DANCE THEATER

alan SMiThee direcTed ThiS PlaYTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 37:30-8:15 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

With their next dance/theatre work, alan Smithee directed This Play, Big Dance Theater liberates film scripts from their narrative moorings to reveal a stunning series of pure film tropes, which meld pathos and politics from iconic films of the American70’s and Cold War Russia. On a stage littered with fur coats, lawn chairs, and telephones, decades merge; renegades draw guns on their adversaries; astronauts self- congratulate, revolutionaries pontificate; tragic lovers bid farewell under the threat of nuclear war; and American suburbanites grapple with abortion, debt and divorce. Using a flurry of mind-bending dance and theatre fragments, Big Dance masterfully creates an irrational – and highly entertaining – Dada landscape where 1918 Moscow mingles with 1970s America in ways which evoke our own 21st century moment.

Note: Alan Smithee is the pseudonym used by members of the Directors Guild when a director, dissatisfied with the final product, leaves a film for lack of creative control, effectively erasing his participation in the project.

Collaborating Artists: Co-Director/Choreographer: Annie-B Parson; Co-Director/Performer: Paul Lazar; Performers: Cynthia Hopkins, Tymberly Canale, Chris Giarmo, Aaron Mattocks, Elizabeth DeMent; Set Designer: Joanne Howard; Video Designer: Jeff Larson; Light Designer: Joe Levasseur; Sound Designer: Tei Blow; Costume Designer: Oana Botez; Production Manager: Brendan Regimbal; Producer: Aaron Rosenblum.

About Big Dance Theater: Founded in 1991, Big Dance Theater, led by Co-Artistic Directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar, has created over 15 dance/theatre works using sources ranging from Euripides, Flaubert, and Twain, to the illicit tapes of Richard Nixon to Okinawan pop. Big Dance Theater received “Bessie” Awards in 2002 and 2010; the company was awarded an OBIE in 2000, and the first Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival Award for Dance in 2007. Big Dance is an inaugural member of the Hatchery Project, a residency consortium. Most recent commissions have been from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, Les Subsistances (Lyon, France), Chaillot National Theater (Paris, France), The Anticodes Festival, and The Walker Art Center. Big Dance Theater has been presented nationally by: Brooklyn Academy of Music, New York Live Arts, Dance Theater Workshop, The Kitchen, Classic Stage Company, Japan Society, Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival, The Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago), Walker Art Center, Arts and Ideas Festival, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, On the Boards, UCLA Live, and The Spoleto Festival. Internationally, the company has performed at many festivals and theatres in France, Italy, Belgium, The Netherlands, Brazil and Germany. Big Dance is creating Man in a case (Chekhov) with Mikhail Baryshnikov for Hartford Stage (2013), as well as a film version of another Telepathic Thing with Jonathan Demme.

Upcoming for Alan Smithee Directed This Play: Premiere March 2014, Les Subsistances, Lyon, France

bigdancetheater.org

photo by dorothy Hung


32 33

ANIMALS

The baroneSS iS The FuTureTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 38-8:45 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

The baroness is The Future is based on the life and works of poet, found object sculptor and Dadaist Baroness Elsa von Freytag-Loringhoven. Exploring moments of intersection of her autobiography and poems, the piece explodes her fiery, forceful writings into incantation and dance.

Artist Statement: utilizing various modes of visual art and performance, aniMalS move through dance, puppetry, script and video in order to create moments that question the durability of the world around us and the nature of humans through irreverence, instinct, ability and play.

Collaborating Artists: ANIMALS Artistic Directors: Nikki Calonge, Mike De Angelis, Mike Mikos; Stage Manager: Jamie McGonagill; Set Design: Joel Melton; Costume Design: Wendy Yang Bailey; Lighting Design: Joe Cantalupo; Performers: nicHi douglas, Brighid Greene, Lucy Kaminsky, Madison Krekel, and Eva Peskin.

About ANIMALS: Formed in 2011, ANIMALS performed their first show, P.Y.T. (poor yellow trash) as part of Puppet Blok at Dixon Place in January of 2012. Developed as part of Short Form 2012, ANIMALS’ first full-length show, backstage at horror drag, showed at Incubator Arts Project and JACK Arts in January of 2013. In 2013 ANIMALS were included in Paper Magazine‘s “Beautiful People” issue and received the first ever Tom Murrin Performance Award, for which they are developing their next project, The baroness is the Future.

Upcoming for The Baroness is the Future: Premier: January 23-26 at Dixon Place

www.bearelephantibex.com

photo by Michael de Angelis

THE ASSEMBLY

ThaT Poor dreaMTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 38-8:45 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

Inspired by great expectations, Charles Dickens’s classic novel about coming of age in a profoundly class-conscious society, That Poor dream draws on the company’s own complex relationship to class identity and economic disparity in American society to exploring how class defines and divides us, and how our shared humanity might bring us closer together.

Set entirely on a MetroNorth train traveling from New York City to Fairfield, Connecticut (the hometown of playwright Stephen Aubrey), The Assembly’s new play attempts to unite many worlds — those divided by class, geography, time, and privilege — into a moving mosaic of what it means, and what it once meant, to have great expectations thrust upon you.

Artist Statement: The assembly Theater Project is a collective of multi-disciplinary performance artists committed to realizing a visceral and intelligent theatre for a new generation. assembly members unite varied interests in service of unabashedly theatrical and rigorously researched ensemble-driven performances that address and reflect the complexities of our changing world. developing text, movement and environment side-by-side within the rehearsal room, the company embraces collaboration as the core of the creative process. above all, we are dedicated to rooting our artists, audiences, and colleagues in a profound sense of community.

About The Assembly: Holding firm to the belief that history repeats itself, The Assembly frequently looks to the past to make sense of the present moment. The Assembly’s first project, we can’t reach You, hartford, was created in the aftermath of September 11th and explored one of America’s forgotten tragedies: the Ringling Bros. Barnum & Bailey circus fire of 1944 in Hartford, CT. we can’t reach You, hartford premiered at the 2006 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it was nominated for the coveted Fringe First award. Later projects have explored Civil War photography (daguerreotype; Abingdon Theater, 2007), the entrepreneurial spirit of Charles Lindbergh (what i Took in My hand; The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 2008), the Gold Rush of 1849 and the dot-com boom of the 1990s (clementine and the cyber ducks; The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, 2009), climate change (The dark heart of Meteorology; The Philly Fringe Festival, UNDER St. Marks, 2009), the concept of inaction (Chekhov’s Three Sisters; The red room, The cherry Pit) and the radical politics of the Weather Underground (hoMe/Sick; The collapsable hole, 2011; The Living Theater, 2012; new York Times and backstage Critics’ Pick). Our current production, That Poor dream, had a workshop performance at the 2013 Ice Factory Festival at The New Ohio.

Collaborating Artists: Featuring: Stephen Aubrey*, Edward Bauer*, Ben Beckley*, T. Ray Campbell*, Emily Perkins-Margolin*, Moti Margolin*, Ayesha Ngaujah*, Terrell Wheeler*; Directed by Jess Chayes*; Text by Stephen Aubrey and The Assembly; Scenic Design: Nick Benacerraf*; Sound Design: Asa Wember; Video Design: Ray Sun Ruey-Horng; Lighting Design: Shelly Rodriguez; Associate Director: Lisa Szolovits; Stage Manager: Marisa Blankier; Producer: Justine de Penning; Company Producer: Ariela Rotenberg; Consulting Producer: Dorit Avganim *Co-creators

Upcoming for That Poor Dream: Premiere in Winter/Spring 2014.

www.assemblytheater.org

photo by Jess chayes


34 35

ANDREW SCHNEIDER

YouarenoThereTHURSDAY, OCTOBER 39:15 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

cross-section work-in-progress programmed and performed by Andrew Schneider

This is what it feels like to be alive — right now.

Artist Statement: My performance and design work critically investigates our everyday emotional, physical, and psychological dependence on technology. i attempt to cut to the core of what it feels like to try to be a human being in a contemporary media culture.

About Andrew Schneider: Andrew Schneider is a performer and interactive-electronics artist based in Brooklyn, New York. Schneider creates and performs his own solo performance works, is a Wooster Group company member (video/performer), and builds interactive electronic art works and installations.

Andrew’s original performance work includes Tidal (2013), as part of a Laurie Anderson-curated track for the 2013 River2River festival; wow+Flutter (2010) at The Chocolate Factory; five Avant-Garde-Arama! works (2005-2013) at PS122; Pleasure (2009) at Issue Project Room; and resident artist (2006) at LEMURplex.

Andrew creates wearable, interactive electronic art works such as the Solar bikini, (a bikini that charges your iPod), and wireless programmable sound effect gloves. His interactive work has been featured in such publications as art Forum and wired, among others and at the Center Pompidou in Paris. Andrew created the visuals for and performed with the band Fischerspooner’s ENTERTAINMENT 2009 world tour and is currently a member of the dance-pop band AVAN LAVA.

Schneider has served as an Adjunct Professor at NYU and teaches courses on Technology and Performance both at the Interactive Telecommunications Program, Bowdoin College, and Carleton College. Andrew holds a BFA in Theatre Arts from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU.

andrewjs.com

photo by Andrew Schneider

Mallory catlett /restless nyc; photo by Zbigniew Bzymek

EVENTS:FRIDAY


36 37

THE INSTITUTE FOR PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE exPeriMenT #2 1/2 (Prelude)FRIDAY, OCTOBER 4ONGOING








KIPPY WINSTON

inSTallaTion: The radiShFRIDAY, OCTOBER 4 4-9:30 PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL LOBBY

uS weekly meets The onion in The radish, a cheeky gossip rag devoted to downtown theatre. Conceived of by theatrical media mogul Kippy Winston, The radish covers the highs and lows, the joyful, the questionable, the juicy and the smoothies. La crème de gossip irreverént. Online and in print for special occasions.

Artist Statement: My young friend very earnestly told me that Young Jean lee was having a baby. i couldn’t believe my ears. he insisted. The Radish was born.

or

why do we make theatre? who cares? isn’t it fun to trade scraps of gossip about our community? The Radish is the answer, even if published by a questionable source.

or

The downtown theatre community, for lack of a better term, is so small and insular and full of intrigue. wouldn’t it be fun to poke fun? This kippy certainly takes herself far too seriously… let the antics begin!

Collaborating Artists: Kippy Winston: Publisher, Editor-in-Chief; Shap Mulligan: Web Design, Creative Director

About Kippy Winston: “Bonjour mes amis.” Kippy Winston’s web log began in 2008, but her peripatetic life started long ago. A citizen of the world, Kippy is a tastemaker and ardent supporter of the performing arts. Linguist and lover of culture, Kippy’s writings on art take on an art form all their own. Journalism meets hedonism in Kippy’s word play(s). [wink!] “Hey world. Here I am. Kippy Winston and loving life.”

Upcoming for The Radish: Look for The radish at peak theatre seasons such as PRELUDE, the winter festivals (like Under the Radar/Coil/Other Forces) and of course Obie-award season. Updated electronically periodically, printed sporadically.

kippywinston.wordpress.com



38 39

NATURE THEATER OF OKLAHOMA

inSTallaTion: ok radioFRIDAY, OCTOBER 4 4-9:30 PM | ELEBASH LOBBY

Nature Theater of Oklahoma has launched their own OK Radio podcast: long-form conversations in the spirit of the radio conversations of John Cage and Morton Feldman. Listen in as they talk with artists, curators, and instigators from around the world. Nothing is off limits.

Artist Statement: ok radio was a project we began in 2012 as a way to ground ourselves and our work locally, as we were touring. we were always in town for a week and then on to the next place, and we just felt so disconnected — both from our home in nY and from the local art scene wherever we were playing, so ok radio became a place where we could connect, and i think it’s become a connecting place for many others, as well.

About Nature Theater of Oklahoma: Nature Theater of Oklahoma is an award-winning New York art and performance group under the direction of Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper. Since Poetics: a ballet brut, our first dance piece created as an ensemble, Nature Theater of Oklahoma has been devoted to making the work we don’t know how to make, putting ourselves in impossible situations, and working from out of our own ignorance and unease. We strive to create an unsettling live situation that demands total presence from everyone in the room. We use the readymade material around us, found space, overheard speech, and observed gesture, and through extreme formal manipulation, and superhuman effort, we affect in our work a shift in the perception of everyday reality that extends beyond the site of performance and into the world in which we live.

Upcoming for OK Radio: OK Radio is available for free, year round, 24-7 at www.okradio.org and also on iTunes. There are over 70 conversations currently available with artists and curators from around the world, including William Forsythe, Jonathan Meese, Anna Teresa deKeersmaeker, Kate Valk, and Reggie Watts. More episodes are on their way, so stay tuned.

www.okradio.org

photos courtesy of nature theater of oklahoma

JIM FINDLAY

dreaM oF The red chaMber / a PerForMance Solo For Two SleePerSFRIDAY, OCTOBER 43:30-8 PM | C-LEVEL 202

dream of the red chamber, a performance for a sleeping audience, is a deeply ambient journey through Cao Xueqin’s 18th century Chinese novel dream of the red chamber. This version – created exclusively for PRELUDE – invites two audience members to relax and experience an intimate version of the red chamber in thirty-minute cycles. You’ll catch tantalizing glimpses of the epic love story between a stone and a flower, framed by a dizzying series of metaphysical dreams.

This event is intended for an audience of two people at a time, scheduled in thirty minute increments. Participants must sign up in advance. Sign-ups will be available in the Segal Lobby throughout the festival.

Artist Statement: i’m interested in terrains that are ubiquitous but overlooked. The things right under our noses. or maybe our eyelids. i’m interested in what can happen when we get free from the idea that art is dependent on the transaction of the audience ‘paying’ attention. what if you don’t pay? what if i don’t ask? how little can we both do and still have something worthwhile happen?

Collaborating Artists: Solos performed by Christina Campanella, Kaneza Schaal, and Rebecca Warner; Assistant Director/Stage Manager Maurina Lioce

Project Collaborators: Enver Chakartash, James Dawson, Jim Dawson, Aleta Findlay, Scott Halvorsen Gillette, Josh Higgason, Jeff Jackson, Sissi Liu, Jamie McElhinney, Kate Moran, Liz Sargent, Kaneza Schaal, Rebecca Warner, and Okwui Okpokwasili, with songs composed by Elysian Fields. Producer: Joel Bassin

About Jim Findlay: Jim Findlay works across specialties as a creator, director, designer, and performer with a constellation of theater, performance and music groups. His work has been seen in a multitude of venues including BAM, Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, A.R.T., Arena Stage and in over 40 international cities. He was a founding member and primary collaborator in both the experimentally groundbreaking Collapsable Giraffe and the internationally successful music/media performance company Accinosco/Cynthia Hopkins, as well as being a resident artist at The Wooster Group from 1994-2003. Findlay recently directed and designed David Lang’s whisper opera at Lincoln Center. His piece botanica, which was part of PRELUDE.10, was performed at 3LD Art + Techonology in 2011. The Walker Art Center recently acquired for their permanent collection Jim Findlay and Ralph Lemon’s installation work Meditation, which will be exhibited at the Walker in 2014 and was previously exhibited at the Krannert Center (IL), Yuerba Buena Art Center (SF) and the Kitchen in NYC. This festival marks his third appearance in PRELUDE.

Upcoming for Dream of the Red Chamber: PS122 May 2014

www.dreamoftheredchamber.com

photo by l. walker


40 41

MALLORY CATLETT / RESTLESS NYC

ThiS waS The endFRIDAY, OCTOBER 44-4:45 | SEGAL THEATRE

A performance in which four actors in their sixties attempt each night to arrive at the end of uncle Vanya – in a last ditch effort to alter the outcome. In Chekhov’s play, Vanya asks – “What if I live to be 60?” This was The end performs an answer. It uses the play to question how memory functions in the formation of the future. What do we do with our past? What can we make of it?

Artist Statement: restless nYc is an on and off-site theatrical enterprise designed to excavate classical texts as a source of contemporary performance. To engage the past in a dialogue about its life in the present. an urgent imperative for the language is sought through contemporary circumstance and modes of performance that disrupt the texts and push the productions beyond interpretation.

Artists Involved: Conceived and directed by Mallory Catlett; Designers: G Lucas Crane (sound), Ryan Holsopple (technology design), Peter Ksander (set), Johanna Meyer (choreography) and Keith Skretch (video); Performers: Black-Eyed Susan, Jim Himelsbach, Lizan Mitchell & Paul Zimet

About Mallory Catlett: Mallory Catlett is a director and dramaturg of performance across disciplines. Her most recent production in NYC was city council Meeting, a national project co-created with Aaron Landsman and Jim Findlay. This was The end is the third production of Restless NYC, which she started in 2004. The first two were site-specific productions of as You like it and richard the Second, which received development residencies at Chashama and LMCC respectively. For This was The end, Catlett received a 2011 NYSCA Individual Artist Commission and residencies at Mabou Mines Suite (2009-11), Yaddo (2011) and The Performing Garage (2013). It premieres in February 2014 at the Chocolate Factory. The 4th production, little crimes is an opera adaptation of two Chekhov short stories and is in development in Vancouver, BC with support from Canada Council for the Arts, Hamber Foundation, ArtsFact and the Shadbolt Center to premiere in 2015.

Upcoming for This Was The End: Premiere at the Chocolate Factory in February 2014

www.mallorycatlett.net


PEARLDAMOUR

MilTonFRIDAY, OCTOBER 45-5:45 PM | SEGAL THEATRE

Three actors, speaking and singing, search for a shared inner life found in towns named Milton across the U.S. Rich and textured, complicated with challenges, hopes, fears and dreams, Milton’s inner life shifts, accumulates, and floats by much like the clouds in the sky. With the actors performing among and around the audience, Milton might feel like you are visiting the opera, or sitting in a planetarium, or hanging out at a family barbecue, under a big sky.

Artist Statement: we have been making experimental performance in big cities for the past 16 years. with Milton, we wanted a change. over 2 years, we are traveling to 5 cities named Milton across the u.S., talking to people about their towns and asking questions like: “if you could change one thing about the world, what would it be?” The Miltons stretch across the united States, forming an earth-bound constellation. The constellations we see at night are imaginary entities, constructed by humans to give meaning and order to the vastness of the night sky– they provide us with direction and make immensity graspable. we’re creating our constellation to revise any general ideas we have about small town life. we look to our constellation for guidance and wisdom as we attempt to orient ourselves and our audiences within the vast idea of “being american.”

Collaborating Artists: Director/Co-Creator: Katie Pearl; Writer/Co-Creator: Lisa D’Amour; Composer: Brendan Connelly; Video Design: Jim Findlay

About PearlDamour: Katie Pearl and Lisa D’Amour have a 15-year history of creating performance for theatres and non-traditional sites as PearlDamour. With works ranging from intimate (15 people in a Manhattan basement) to large-scale (a 24-hour performance at the Stone Arch Bridge in Minneapolis for over 1,000), the duo is known for mysterious and often interactive productions that combine theatre with installation and is attentive to the performer-audience relationship. PearlDamour has been presented at venues such as Here Arts Center, PS122, The Kitchen and The Whitney Museum of Art (New York), Walker Arts Center and Intermedia Arts (Minneapolis), FuseBox Festival (Austin), Contemporary Arts Center and Artspot Productions (New Orleans), Duke University (Raleigh-Durham) and Brown University (Providence). In 2003, they received an OBIE for Nita & Zita, created with Kathy Randels of ArtSpot Productions. In 2011, PearlDamour received the Lee Reynolds Award from the League of Professional Theater Women, given annually to a woman or women whose work in the medium of theatre has helped to illuminate the possibilities for social, cultural, or political change.

Upcoming for Milton: Sep 28/29th at JACK in Brooklyn: workshop sharing and weekend of events surrounding Milton, including a ‘sky walk’ across the Brooklyn bridge, panel discussions, and a tasting of foods from 5 cities named Milton across the country. April 2014 – Work In Progress Showing, ACT Acting Conservatory, San Francisco.

www.pearldamour.com



42 43

KATHERINE BROOK / TELE-VIOLET

Pink Melon JoYFRIDAY, OCTOBER 45:30-6:15 | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

Forever radical, forever modern, Gertrude Stein’s landscapes of women are at their most complex in this early play, Pink Melon Joy, in which good housekeeping is a battlefield and pregnancy is contagious. Moving briskly between war-time 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 of Pink Melon Joy 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…

Artist Statement: i am interested in experiments in acting — acting emotions, acting feminine, over-acting, reenacting, acting-out — to excite and disorient audiences expectations of expression. i am interested in big feelings, bold design, and the intermixing of unexpected themes and sources, as a means to create a new kind of theatricality for the contemporary stage.

Collaborating Artists: Performers: Lucy Kaminsky, Sipiwe Moyo, Alex Spieth, Shonni Enelow, Nicolas Norena; Sound Designer: Chris Giarmo; Costume Designer: Diego Montoya; AD/SM: G.J. Dowding

About Tele-Violet: Named after Tennessee Williams’s infamous diva Violet Venable, Tele-Violet is a theatre company led by director Katherine Brook that uses dramatic texts as well as real-world content to experiment with acting and dramatic form.

About Katherine Brook: Katherine Brook most recently directed She is king at the Des Moines Social Club and Dixon Place in New York, starring performance artist Laryssa Husiak as Billie Jean King. With her company Tele-Violet, Brook presented a new interpretation of a Noh play called lady han at Incubator Arts Project this year, and American Realism, part the Transcripts project last year (The Invisible Dog, the San Diego Museum of Art and Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions). Brook is also the Producing Manager for New York City Players, and is a member of the New Georges JAM. She received her MFA from Carnegie Mellon University.

www.katherinebrook.com

photo by chris giarmo

600 HIGHWAYMEN

eMPloYee oF The YearFRIDAY, OCTOBER 46:15-7PM | SEGAL THEATRE

600 HIGHWAYMEN present a sneak-peak into their newest construction, employee of the Year, a truthful play resulting from a fictional story. Artist Statement: 600 highwaYMen construct renegade theatre productions for business and pleasure.

Collaborating Artists: Created by Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone About 600 HIGHWAYMEN: 600 HIGHWAYMEN is a Brooklyn-based theatre company under the artistic direction of Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone. Since 2009, the company has been developing and performing a body of original productions that blend dance, theatre, visual art and community meeting into igniting performance events that re-awaken the live theatrical experience for an audience. Productions are developed through creative methods ranging from conventional to peculiar, and change form with each new work. The common thread of all 600 HWM productions is a rigorously-tuned investigation of presence and humanity, not only in moments of performance, but in process and aftermath. www.600highwaymen.org

photo by Maria Baranova


44 45

CYNTHIA HOPKINS

a liVing docuMenTarYFRIDAY, OCTOBER 47-7:45PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

This is a preview from a new work in progress by Cynthia Hopkins titled a living documentary: a musical performance experiment exploring the challenges of earning one’s living as a theatre artist in the 21st century. Come see the World Premiere at New York Live Arts in March 2014! Artist Statement: whatever enrages, disturbs, and/or frightens me most becomes the subject of my work. My creative process is a survival technique that alchemizes a combination of inner and outer (personal and socio-political) demons into works of intrigue and hope, for the audience and for myself. Through the integration of my work as a writer, composer, and performer, i strive to investigate new forms of theatrical narrative, and thereby to create a unique communication with my audience: one which provokes emotion, stimulates the senses, and enlivens the mind. My goal is to obscure the distinctions between edification and entertainment through the creation of works as philosophical as they are entertaining, as intellectually challenging as they are viscerally emotional, as deeply comical as they are tragic, and as historically aware as they are immediately engaging. About Cynthia Hopkins: Works include This great country (Fusebox Festival 2012, River to River Festival 2013), everyone was chanting Your name (Abrons Arts Center 2013), The record (The Invisible Dog 2013), empire city (2011; Editors Pick, Village Voice, Time out new York), and This Time Tomorrow (2010), performed in the basement of a historic church. Upcoming for A Living Documentary: World Premiere at New York Live Arts March 5 – 8, 2014 cynthiahopkins.com

photo by Jeff Sugg

JEROME ELLIS & JAMES HARRISON MONACO

aaron/MarieFRIDAY, OCTOBER 47:45 - 8PM | SEGAL THEATRE

aaron/Marie is a high-speed literary and live music spectacle, performed by a narrator and a musician. It follows the mixed tales of a missing roommate, an exile, and various ghosts of the Northeastern United States. Music and narrative intertwine through an ongoing saga of connected stories.

Artist Statement: we like to make live theatre that feels like reading a modern book. we like to tell stories that have a musical quality to their structure. we like to make live music that evokes narrative action and weaves together disparate stories. we like to combine storytelling, music, and theatre in such a way that the audience sees spectacles in their mind.

Collaborating Artists: Jerome Ellis: Composer, Writer, Performer; James Harrison Monaco: Writer, Composer, Performer; Joe Cantalupo: Designer; Rachel Chavkin: Co-director; Annie Tippe: Co-director

About Jerome Ellis and James Harrison Monaco: Jerome Ellis and James Harrison Monaco are a writing, performing, and composing duo. Their current project aaron/Marie has been performed (in development phases) as part of Under The Rader Festival’s INCOMING! at Joe’s Pub, at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest 2013, at JACK, at AUNTS-Catch, and at Fresh Ground Pepper. Their other duo-show, They ran and ran and ran, played at HERE Arts in April 2010. Together they composed and performed the live score to loVe Machine (dir. Andrew Scoville) at the Incubator in May 2013.

Separately, Jerome is a composer who makes concert pieces for piano, live electronic dance suites, ambient pieces for the saxophone, and theatre scores. He recently scored Debutante at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, and has performed his own music at JACK, The Tank, 5C Cafe and Cultural Center, and Fresh Ground Pepper, among other venues. James is a writer and performer, who has performed his own theatre work at HERE Arts, soloNOVA at The New Ohio, and Dixon Place (among other spots), and he also writes fiction.

photo by Bailey carr


46 47

JAY SCHEIB & CO.

PlaTonoV, or The diSinheriTedFRIDAY, OCTOBER 48:30-9:30PM | ELEBASH RECITAL HALL

Jay Scheib’s Platonov, or the disinherited is a new, live cinema adaptation of Chekhov’s first full-length play. Platonov chronicles an emotionally bankrupt society of anti-heroes who are less heroically also losing their loves, their homes and perhaps, their humanity as well! It is journey with a sense of humor first and foremost that races into the dark hearts of ecstasy, loyalty, selflessness, money, and pride — it’s a play about falling in and out of love and losing ones way in the world. Staged as a site-specific, live cinema performance that mixes freely the experience of Shakespeare in the park with the nostalgia of the drive-in movie — simultaneously a play on a stage and a film broadcast to a theatre near you.

Collaborating Artists: Stage Design: Josh Higgason and Jay Scheib; Sound Design: Anouschka Trocker; Video Design: Josh Higgason; Costumes: Laine Rettmer and Alba Clemente; Associate Director: Laine Rettmer; Assistant Director: Tara Amadinejad; with performances by Judy Bauerlein, Todd Blakesley, Sarita Choudhury, Mikeah Jennings, Jon Morris, Virginia Newcomb, Ayesha Ngaujah, Laine Rettmer, Jay Scheib, Natalie Thomas, and Tony Torn; Produced by ArKtype / Thomas O Kriegsmann in association with Jay Scheib & Co.

About Jay Scheib: Jay Scheib is an international stage director, designer and author of plays, operas, ballets, and hybrid performance-driven live art events. Winner of both the Guggenheim Fellowship and an Obie Award for the Direction of his stage adaptation, world of wires, Scheib’s works continue to garner rave reviews and accolades internationally. Having topped Time Out New York’s listing of the Top Ten New York City Theater Directors in 2009, Scheib’s recent staging of Thomas Adès’ opera Powder her Face for New York City Opera at BAM was called “dazzling,” by Anthony Tommasini of the new York Times. In addition to staging productions for National Theatres in Europe and Asia, Scheib is also a Professor for Music and Theater Arts at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where his research focuses on the continued development of genre-defying performances and the deep integration of new (and used) technologies for the stage. Working with a regular roster of collaborators, Scheib’s direction of Jay Scheib & Co. has garnered an international reputation for physically daring and emotionally charged adaptations of both classic and maverick texts.

Upcoming for Platonov, or the Disinherited: La Jolla Playhouse, Without Walls Festival, La Jolla CA — October 3 – 13, 2013; The Kitchen — January 9 – 25, 2014.

www.jayscheib.com

3d Model by Josh Higgason

THE QUEER AND NOW:REBECCA PATEKbirdS can FlY awaY FroM oTher ThingS buT huManS haVe To walk or runFRIDAY, OCTOBER 48:45-9:30PM | SEGAL THEATRE

• An investigation into the nature of our nature.• Where and how in the universe do we inhabit and also why?• What is our current role in your life?• I don’t know but I am okay with that for now.• and vice versa Artist Statement: I am interested in reclaiming elements of performance that are considered wrong, awkward, uncomfortable, overlooked and that are frequently dismissed. using satire, i incorporate the marginalized facets of performance, making them the central focus of the work. The un-choreographed events in the performance environment: inter-relational dynamics both onstage and between performer and audience, power dynamics, emotional subtext, things that are felt but not publicly acknowledged. i am interested in discomfort and embarrassment of the performer. Situations onstage which create an emotional conflict that is funny and absurd, but also frightening or disturbing. About Rebecca Patek: Rebecca Patek is a New York-based choreographer and performance artist creating work that synthesizes dance, theatre and comedy. Patek is an Artist in Residence at Movement Research (2011 to 2013). She was also awarded a 2010-11 Residency at Dance Theater Workshop (New York Live Arts). She has attended residencies at the Atlantic Center for the Arts and at Earthdance as part of the E/merge Artist Residency. Patek’s work has been presented at The Museum of Arts and Design, The Chocolate Factory Theater, Dance Theater Workshop, 92nd Street Y, Movement Research at Judson Church, Brooklyn Arts Exchange,The Joyce Soho, Dixon Place, Mulberry Street Theatre, The Tank, Aunts, Triskelion Arts, The LoFt, The Overture Center (Madison WI), Brickyard Pond (NH) and Nexus Foundation for Today’s Art, among other venues. Works commissioned in 2012 include you and i of the storm for the Museum of Arts and Design, and real eyes for The Chocolate Factory Theater. www.rebeccapatek.com

photo by Vincent lafrance


48 49

THE QUEER AND NOW: CHRIS TYLER

#haShTag: a PerForMance arT PerForManceFRIDAY, OCTOBER 48:45-9:30PM | SEGAL THEATRE

For his PRELUDE commission, Brooklyn-based performance artist Chris Tyler in collaboration with avant-garde celebrity James Franco and teenage nightlife sensation Ashleigh Nicolle Smith will create #haShTag, a three-part project based around Marina Abramovic’s famous work Marina abramovic institute: The Founders (2013). Its themes will range from fame, sex, love and dancing. Throughout the performance, the trio will intervene as both “artists” and “presences” as audience members attempt to interrogate their own perceptual modalities.

Artist Statement: exploring contemporary existence as a cultural interface, the audience will share in the “adrenaline of art” and watch in real-time as #HASHTAG explodes onto the physical and virtual universe at once on october 4, our “big bang!” on this day our trio venges with forte to bring the performance industry into a new age, an age where commerce drives art drives pop drives commerce, and the “artist” once again is in control of the “icon.”

Collaborating Artists: Chris Tyler, James Franco, and Ashleigh Nicolle Smith

About Chris Tyler: Chris Tyler (b. 1988, Suffern, New York) is a performance maker intrigued by the intersections of mass culture, queer theory, and the technological complexities of contemporary identity. In other words, he really likes Taylor Swift, pornography, and screaming into the Internet. Recent credits include This is a Play about being gay (Wild Project), waiting for barbara (New Museum), Squirts: new Voices in Queer Performance (La MaMa E.T.C.), and a crucible (Wild Project). A graduate of Brown University and the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics, Chris also hosts and curates Trl >>> Total rejects live!, a monthly performance art cabaret at Williamsburg’s This ‘N’ That.

About James Franco: New York-based artist James Franco (b. 1978, Palo Alto, California) is a multi-talented actor, film director, screenwriter, musician, and performance artist. Franco carries on the Warholian marriage of celebrity and art, using media to constantly re-invent himself as an artist. Franco is specifically interested in exploring the multiple levels of addressing an audience, through platforms such as commercial film, installations, experimental short film, and performance. Major exhibitions include Gagosian Gallery, New York (2011); Clocktower Gallery, New York (2010); Peres Projects, Berlin (2011); and Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (2010).

About Ashleigh Nicolle Smith: No stranger to the stage, Ashleigh Nicolle Smith (b. 1999, Sloatsburg, New York) is thrilled to be making her Martin E. Segal Theatre Center debut in this year’s PRELUDE festival. Favorite roles include guys & dolls Jr. (Rusty Charlie), into the woods Jr. (Cinderella U/S), and The wizard of oz (Barrister of Munchkinland/Poppy/Citizen of Emerald City/Flying Monkey). This past spring, Ms. Smith had the honor of competing as a semi-finalist in the acclaimed Mr(s) Williamsburg Pageant at Sugarland Nightclub in Brooklyn, New York. She is currently an 8th grade student at Suffern Middle School, where she studies voice, dance, and acting in addition to academic subjects. For Mom.

notchristyler.com

photo by Mars Hobrecker

TENTH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

cloSing nighT ParTYFRIDAY, OCTOBER 410PM-1AM | LITTLEFIELD PERFORMANCE + ART SPACE

Celebrate the 241 artists and companies featured in the first ten years of PRELUDE and ring in the decade to come! PRELUDE will provide transportation to the Closing Night Party on Friday, 10/4, leaving from outside CUNY Graduate Center at 9:30pm. In order to assure a seat on one of our party buses, you must sign up in advance. Sign-up sheets will be available in the Segal Lobby throughout the entire festival.

Littlefield Performance + Art Space Located on Degraw Street between Third and Fourth Avenues 622 Degraw Street, Brooklyn

The FirST annual FrankY award: kaTe Valk

Named in honor of MESTC Executive Director and PRELUDE founder Dr. Frank Hentschker, the FRANKY Award was created to recognize an artist who has made a long-term, extraordinary impact on contemporary theatre and performance in New York City.

We are thrilled to present the first annual FRANKY Award to the incomparable Kate Valk.

Kate’s dear friend and frequent collaborator, Paul Lazar, will present the award.

About Kate Valk: Kate Valk began working with director Elizabeth LeCompte and The Wooster Group in 1979 after receiving her B.A. from New York University. Since then, she has co-composed and performed in all of the Group’s theatre productions, dance pieces, and works for film, video, and radio. Valk founded The Wooster Group’s MS 131 Residency at Dr. Sun Yat Sen Middle School in the Chinatown neighborhood of Lower Manhattan, and the Group’s Summer Institute, a free, three-week performance intensive program for public high school students. She has led workshops and master classes at American University, Brown University, Carnegie Mellon University, Columbia University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, The New School, New York University, Northeastern University, The O’Neill Center, Smith College, and Wesleyan College. Articles and publications Valk and her work have appeared in Art Forum, Bomb Magazine, the Chicago Sun-Times, the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, Newcity Stage, Time Out New York, among others, as well as the The Wooster Group Work Book by Andrew Quick and Breaking The Rules: The Wooster Group by David Savran. Valk has received an OBIE Award in 1998 for Sustained Excellence of Performance, a BESSIE Award in 2002 for her performance in To You, The Birdie! (Phèdre), and a Foundation for Contemporary Performance Art Fellowship in 2004. She was a mentor in the Rolex Mentor and Protégé Arts Initiative for 2008-2009, and was awarded a TCG/Fox Foundation Resident Actor Fellowship in the Distinguished Achievement category in 2009.



50 51


roYal oSiriS karaoke enSeMble:eVerYThing one in The diSk oF The Sun

Artist Statement: under the cosmic glow of an led pyramid, The royal osiris karaoke ensemble (roke) sings, chants, recites, and dances forgotten hits from the VhS vaults of self-help gurus, cult leaders, corporate speakers, politicians, mediums, and extraterrestrial channels, along with original songs, entombing the relics of a future civilization in lyrical self-preservation.

Collaborating Artists: Sean McElroy, Tei Blow, Siobhan Gandy, Leanne Grimes, and Maria Baranova (documentarian)

About the Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble: Led by installation/performance artists Tei Blow and Sean McElroy, the Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble re-performs the work of self-help gurus, motivational speakers, and their own pyramid-themed musical compositions in a gold-clad site-specific spectacle.

Upcoming for ROKE: Show at Jack, Brooklyn Oct 25–Nov 2 2013

erin MarkeY

About Erin Markey: Erin Markey creates comedic performances and original music for stage and video. Major works include Puppy love: a Stripper’s Tail (P.S. 122), The dardy Family home Movies by Stephen Sondheim by erin Markey (San Francisco Film Society), looking for limbo (Lincoln Center Director’s Lab) and currently, the recurring erin Markey at Joe’s Pub with Kenny Mellman (Public Theater). She was a featured artist in the critically acclaimed our hit Parade (Joe’s Pub). She has shown other work at New Museum, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Under The Radar, 54 Below, Ars Nova and received NYFA’s 2012 Cutting Edge Artist Fund Grant. As an actress, Markey is a company member of Obie Award winning Half Straddle, has performed with Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company, and starred in Tennessee Williams’ green eyes, receiving Boston’s Elliot Norton Award for Outstanding Performance. She was a series regular on TV’s Jeffery and cole casserole (LOGO Network). She is currently an artist in residence at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX).


neal MedlYn:chaMPagne JerrY

Champagne Jerry, also known as Neal Medlyn, is a great rapper who likes snacks, books, sexual intercourse, and rhyming. Champagne Jerry was born when Neal Medlyn’s friend Max Tannone who had success with a Jay-Z /Radiohead “Jaydiohead” mashup album some years back, wrote and asked if he would want to write raps. It quickly became an all-consuming new project with Neal writing original underground-y contemporary hip hop songs in a style all his own, using the name Champagne Jerry, a nickname Bridget Everett gave him one fateful night when he walked around drinking an entire bottle of champagne. Featuring original songs, created with producer and remix master Max Tannone, Adam Ad Rock Horovitz, Carmine Covelli and others, Champagne Jerry is the most significant occurrence in all of our lives. He has performed to at Joe’s Pub and BAM, among others.

Collaborating Artists: Neal Medlyn/Champagne Jerry; Farris Craddock, Hype Engineer and Sergeant at Arms; Max Tannone, Producer, DJ, and Senior VP of Innovation; Gillian Walsh, Ghost of Champagne Past; Sophia Cleary, Executive Associate

About Neal Medlyn: Neal Medlyn is also a performance artist best known for his series of pop star-inspired performance pieces, presented in New York and on tour throughout the U.S. and Europe. His work has been presented at the New Museum for Contemporary Art, the Kitchen, Dance Theater Workshop and many others. He has collaborated with a wide range of other artists, including Karen Finley and Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys (neal & bridget are F**king and adam is watching at Le Poisson Rouge), among others. Along with Kenny Mellman and Bridget Everett, Medlyn was a co-creator and co-host of our hit Parade, the popular monthly show at Joe’s Pub, which has been named among the top cabaret shows in New York for three years. He was also active in the dance community as a dancer and a Bessie Award-winning sound designer, working with artists Miguel Gutierrez, Adrienne Truscott and David Neumann, among others.

Upcoming for Champagne Jerry: August 15, 2013, 9:30PM at Joe’s Pub, as well as monthly online premieres

photo by Amos Mac photo by carmine covelliphoto by Maria Baranova


52 53

BIOS:DISCUSSION PARTICIPANTS

neal Medlyn; photo by Max tannone

ANNIE BAKER’s (re: (no subject)) full-length plays include The Flick (Playwrights Horizons, winner of the Susan Smith Blackburn Award and an Obie Award for Excellence in Playwriting, Drama Desk and Lucille Lortel nominations for Best Play), Circle Mirror Transformation (Playwrights Horizons, Obie Award for Best New American Play, Drama Desk nomination for Best Play), The aliens (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Obie Award for Best New American Play), body awareness (Atlantic Theater Company, Drama Desk and Outer Critics Circle nominations for Best Play/Emerging Playwright), and an adaptation of Anton Chekhov’s uncle Vanya, for which she also designed the costumes (Soho Rep, Drama Desk nomination for Best Revival). Her work has also been produced in England, Australia, Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Peru, Venezuela, Mexico, Latvia, Sweden and Russia. She is a Residency Five playwright at the Signature Theater and a member of New Dramatists, MCC’s Playwrights Coalition and EST. A published anthology of her work, The Vermont Plays, is available from TCG books.

SARAH BENSON (Performing new York city) has been the Artistic Director of Soho Rep since 2007. She co-curated the PRELUDE Festival with Frank Hentschker in 2005-6. Recent New York credits include: lucas hnath’s a Public reading of an unproduced Screenplay about the death of walt disney (Soho Rep); David Adjmi’s elective affinities, (site-specific) new Yorker & Time out new York Best of 2011; Sarah kane’s blasted (Soho Rep) for which Benson received a Drama Desk nomination and OBIE award, The Lisps musical Futurity (A.R.T. & Walker Arts Center, upcoming New York) Polly Stenham’s That Face (Manhattan Theatre Club); Gregory Moss’ orange, hat & grace (Soho Rep). Other credits include: Gregory Moss’ house of gold (Woolly Mammoth) and ajax (A.R.T.). She is currently developing César Alvarez’s electronic musical The universe is a Small hat (Berkeley Rep Ground Floor) Upcoming: Richard Maxwell’s Samara, basetrack (BAM’s Next Wave Festival). At Soho Rep, Benson has commissioned and produced work by artists including David Adjmi, Annie Baker, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Dan LeFranc, Thomas Bradshaw, Cynthia Hopkins, Jomama Jones, Young Jean Lee, John Jesurun, Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Anne Washburn. This work has been recognized with seven OBIE awards, five Drama Desk nominations, and The new York Times Outstanding Playwriting Award. Benson moved to New York from London on a Fulbright for Theatre Direction. She has served as a mentor in the directing programs at NYU & Yale. She is editing the upcoming anthology: The Methuen drama book of new american Plays (summer 2013).

CLAIRE BISHOP (Performing new York city) is a British art historian and critic based in the PhD Program in Art History at CUNY Graduate Center, New York. Her books include installation art: a critical history (2005) and artificial hells: Participatory art and the Politics of Spectatorship (2012), for which she won the 2013 Frank Jewett Mather award for art criticism. She is the editor of Participation (2006) and 1968-1989: Political upheaval and artistic change (2010), and her curatorial projects include the performance exhibition double agent at the ICA, London (2008) and the PRELUDE.11 performance festival at CUNY Graduate Center (2011). She is a regular contributor to artforum, and her next book, radical Museology, or, what’s contemporary in Museums of contemporary art? will be published this fall.

ANDREW HORWITZ (Performing new York city) is a writer, curator and producer based in NYC. He is the founder of Culturebot Arts & Media, Inc. and publisher of culturebot.org, a website devoted to critical conversations on arts and culture. As a curator, he most recently helmed The River To River Festival for The Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2011-2013). He has worked as Director of Strategic Partnerships for the Foundation for Jewish Culture, producer at Performance Space 122

and co-curator of PRELUDE. He has served on numerous grant panels and consulted for foundations and arts institutions. He has taught career development workshops at artist service organization The Field and continues to work with independent artists on new projects in all disciplines. Prior to becoming a full-time arts administrator in 2002, Andrew worked as an interactive producer and brand strategist at several global advertising agencies to support his work as a theatre-maker, performer and freelance writer.

ADAM HOROWITZ (The willing Participant) is a writer, educator, performer, and Co-Executive Director of Bowery Arts + Science. Adam has presented original theatrical work with ensembles across Europe and in South America and has written about performance and cultural agency for Theater Magazine. A graduate of Yale University and a 2009 Fulbright Scholar in Colombia, Adam has consulted on program development and community engagement with a variety of cultural organizations and social enterprises. He is a founding team member of The Future Project – a national initiative to reinvigorate and re-imagine public high schools. Currently an Artist Fellow with the Hemispheric Institute of Performance and Politics at NYU, Adam lives in Brooklyn, and is barn-raising the United States Department of Arts and Culture.

BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS‘s (re: (no subject)) plays include neighbors, appropriate, and gloria. His work has been or will be seen at the Signature Theater, the Vineyard Theater, the Public Theater, The HighTide Festival (UK), the Actor’s Theater of Louisville, Victory Gardens in Chicago, and the Woolly Mammoth in DC. He is a Lila Acheson Wallace fellow at the Juilliard School and a playwright-in-residence at the Signature. Recent honors include the Tennessee Williams Award, the Paula Vogel Award, and the Helen Merill Award for Emerging Playwrights.

MELANIE JOSEPH (The willing Participant) is a theatre maker and founding Artistic Producer of The Foundry Theatre.

SIBYL KEMPSON’s (re: (no subject)) plays have been presented in NYC, Minneapolis, Austin, Omaha, Gettysburg, Bonn, Germany and almost in Baltimore. Big Dance Theater’s production of her play ich, kürbisgeist opens on Hallowe’en at New York Live Arts (in case you missed it at the Chocolate Factory last year!), and there’ll be another production of it by the Red Eye Theater Company in Minneapolis around the same time. Other current collaborators include Elevator Repair Service, David Neumann/Advanced Beginner Group, Rude Mechs & Salvage Vanguard Theater, Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble and New York City Players. She is a 2013 McKnight National Residency and Commission Recipient, a MacDowell Colony Fellow, and a member of New Dramatists. She holds an MFA in Playwriting from Brooklyn College. Her plays are published by 53rd State Press, PaJ, and PlaY: a Journal of Plays.

GAVIN KROEBER (The willing Participant) is Founder and Director of the Studio for Social Production, a New York-based enterprise that works with artists and presenting organizations across the visual arts, performing arts, and urban fields to conceptualize and realize new art projects. His work focuses on the transformation of institutional and disciplinary forms and emphasizes performative, event-based, social, and site-specific practices. Kroeber is additionally co-founder of the event-based curatorial platform Experience Economies and was Producer at Creative Time from 2005 until 2010. He holds a BA in Literature-Theatre from Reed College and a Masters in Design Studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design.

DAVID LEVINE’s (Performing new York city) work encompasses performance, theatre, installation, and video. Dividing his time between NYC and Berlin, where he is Director of the Studio Program at the European College of Liberal Arts, Levine has directed at the Atlantic Theater Company, the Vineyard Theater/NYC, and Primary Stages/NYC and has presented his performance projects at such international art spaces and surveys as MoMA, Documenta XII, Rohkunstbau, Town House Gallery/Cairo, HAU2/Berlin, PS122/NYC, and the Watermill Center, and the Sundance Theater Lab. David’s work has been featured in The new York Times, artforum, Theater, art in america, bomb, cabinet, Theater heute, art review, die Zeit, Tdr, The Village Voice, Time out, and the believer, and he has received grants from the New York Foundation for the Arts, the Kulturstiftung Des Bundes, and Etants Donnes/French Fund for Performance.

ROB MARCATO (Performing new York city) is currently Artistic Line Producer at Signature Theatre where he’s been since 2011. Prior to that, he was Producer at Soho Rep from 2007-2011, Co-chair of the 2010/11 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Producing Associate at The Play Company, and Artistic Associate at P.S. 122.


54 55

MAx POSNER’s (re: (no subject)) plays include The Thing about air Travel, The Famished, gun logistics, Snore (and other sorts of breathing), and Judy. His plays have been staged and developed at Actors Theatre of Louisville, Page 73, Williamstown Theatre Festival, Soho Rep, Clubbed Thumb, The Hangar Theatre, Curious Theatre Company, and Production Workshop. Max was the 2012 P73 Playwriting Fellow, a 2013 MacDowell Colony Fellow, and is an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. He received the Weston Award for playwriting and the Heideman Award from Actor’s Theatre of Louisville. He is currently a member of Ars Nova’s Playgroup and is working on a commission for South Coast Rep. As an actor, he has appeared in Gregory Moss’ punkplay, Heiner Muller’s hamletmachine and Wallace Shawn’s a Thought in Three Parts. He is a graduate of Brown University and is a Lila Acheson Wallace fellow at Juilliard. Max was born and raised in Denver and lives in Brooklyn.

MORGAN VON PRELLE PECELLI, PhD (Performing new York city) is currently the Vice President of Institutional Advancement at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Before joining LMCC in 2011, she served as Director of Development at Performance Space 122 (09-11), Co-curator (09 and 10) and Dramaturg (08) at the PRELUDE Festival, Artistic and Development Director for Emerging Artists at 3LD Art & Technology Center (07-08). She is on the Board of Directors of the Ontological-Hysteric Theater where she was the Managing and Programming Director from 04-06. In 2005, she started the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, through which she curated and produced festivals and residencies (05 and 06). In 2010, she completed her PhD in Anthropology at Columbia University. The title of her dissertation was “Tendrils of lost Time and the Self: an aesthetic anthropology of new York city’s “Post”-avant-garde.” Part art-historical document, part socio-cultural post-industrial anthropology, her dissertation took a critical look at the socio-economic conditions of a generation of artists coming of professional ‘age’ during the decade from 1999 to 2009, following in the wake of the American Avant-Garde theatrical and performance artists of the 1970s and 80s, and living at the aesthetic edges of New York City’s cultural life, urban landscapes, hybrid economies, and fragmented histories.

GEOFFREY JACKSON SCOTT (Performing new York city) is a social strategist specializing in connecting institutions and artists to their desired publics through the design and implementation of platforms that foster dialogue, interaction and participation. As Director of New Play Development at Victory Gardens Theater, he is responsible for leading all audience engagement and development initiatives from concept to implementation and all facets of the project development process from strategic planning to final production. He spent eight seasons at New York Theatre Workshop supporting the cultivation, development, and production of new work. From 2007-2009, Jackson Scott served as curator of the PRELUDE Festival. During his tenure, the festival expanded to more directly foster an environment in which artists and audiences could gather and engage with those issues and concerns that motivate contemporary creative work. Throughout his career he has collaborated with institutions large and small and both emerging and established artists such as: Elevator Repair Service, UNIVERSES, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Edith Freni, Jordan Seavey, Thomas Bradshaw, Betty Shamieh, Matthew Lopez, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Christopher Oscar Peña, May Adrales, Andrew Ondrecjak, Julian Mesri, Judith Malina/The Living Theatre, Aaron Landsman, John Jesurun, Dan Safer/Witness Relocation, Phil Soltanoff/Mad Dog Experimental, National Theatre of the United States of America, David Levine, Richard Foreman and Marina Abramovic. He holds a BA in Theatre with a Concentration in Directing from Columbia College Chicago and an MA in Media Studies with a dual concentration in Technology and Society and Visual Culture and Cultural Studies from New York University. In the fall of 2013, Jackson Scott will be teaching a playwriting seminar at DePaul University.

TODD SHALOM (The willing Participant) works with text, sound, and image to re-contextualize the body in space using vocabulary of the everyday. He is the founder and director of Elastic City. In this role, Todd leads his own walks, collaborates with artists to lead joint walks, and works with artists in a variety of disciplines to adapt their expertise to the participatory walk format. He often collaborates with performance artist/director Niegel Smith. Together, they conceive and stage interactive performances in public and private environments. Todd’s work has been presented by organizations such as Abrons Art Center, Creative Time, ISSUE Project Room, The Kitchen, The New Museum, P.S.122, and Printed Matter.

HELEN SHAW (Performing new York city) is a theatre critic for Time out new York, though her theatre writing has also appeared in TheaterForum, Playbill, The Village Voice, american Theater, PaJ, The new York Sun and as the introduction for Mac Wellman’s latest collection of plays, The difficulty of crossing a Field. She has also dramaturged for Janos Szasz, Lear deBessonet, Martha Clarke and Simon McBurney, and she teaches theatre studies at NYU.

NIEGEL SMITH (The willing Particpant) is a performance artist and theatre director who sculpts social spaces into unique communal environments where we make new rituals, excavate our pasts and imagine future narratives. His walks have been produced by Elastic City, the PRELUDE Festival and PS 122 and his theatre by The Public Theater, Classical Theatre of Harlem, HERE Arts Center, Hip Hop Theatre Festival, Summer Play Festival, New York Fringe Festival and the Phoenix Theatre Ensemble. Niegel often collaborates with Todd Shalom. Together, they conceive and stage interactive performances in public and private environments. Niegel is a graduate of Dartmouth College, the associate director of the Tony Award-winning musical Fela! and has received grants and fellowships from Theater Communications Group, the Van Lier Fund and the Tucker Foundation. Before surviving high school in Detroit, he grew up in the North Carolina piedmont, fishing with his dad, shopping with his mom, and inventing tall-tale fantasies with his two younger brothers.

ANNE WASHBURN’s (re: (no subject)) plays include The internationalist, a devil at noon, apparition, The communist dracula Pageant, i have loved Strangers,The ladies, The Small and a transadaptation of Euripides’ orestes. Her work has been produced by 13P, Actors Theater of Louisville, American Repertory Theatre, Cherry Lane Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, The Civilians, Dixon Place, Ensemble Studio Theater, The Folger, London’s Gate Theatre, NYC’s Soho Rep, DC’s Studio Theater, Two River Theater Company, NYC’s Vineyard, and Woolly Mammoth. Awards include a Guggenheim, a NYFA Fellowship, a Time Warner Fellowship, Susan Smith Blackburn finalist, residencies at MacDowell and Yaddo, and an Artslink travel grant to Hungary to work with the playwright Peter Karpati. She is an associated artist with The Civilians, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, and is an alumna of New Dramatists and 13P. Currently commissioned by MTC, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, and Yale Rep.

SARAH BISHOP-STONE (Alt. Space Production Coordinator) is a Brooklyn-based dramaturg, producer, and social media junkie. Since 2010, she’s been making plays and things with Little Lord (www.littlelord.org), and until recently she worked in audience and campus engagement at Peak Performances (Montclair State University). Find her on Twitter at @sbishopstone. BRAD BURGESS (Production Assistant) is the Executive Producer of The Living Theatre, and Associate Artistic Director under Judith Malina, founder of the company in 1947. He oversaw all productions at 21 Clinton Street from 2007-2013, the longest run in an NYC venue for The Living in 66 years. He produced ten plays with the company, five new works written by Malina, and five revivals, including an OBIE Award-winning production of The brig in 2007. He also worked with all the presented groups, international groups, festivals and artists, accounting for hundreds of events and productions until The Living left the space in February 2013. He is proudly still an actor. SHELLEY CARTER (Company Manager) is a director and producer. Since moving to Brooklyn in 2010, she has interned for or assisted Brian Mertes, Alex Harvey, Daniel Fish, the Under the Radar Festival, and SPACE on Ryder Farm and has produced her own work at JACK in Clinton Hill. Prior to living in New York, she held an Arts Management fellowship at the American Conservatory Theater and was an artistic assistant at ZSpace in San Francisco. Currently, she is a producing apprentice to Andy Horowitz, company manager to Taylor Mac, deviser and dramaturg on NYU Grad’s Project Project (Feb 2014), and workshopping an original piece in a karaoke bar that remixes Strindberg with relationship self-help books (premieres Spring 2014).

BIOS:THE PRELUDE TEAM

cynthia Hopkins; photo by Jeff Sugg


56 57

MICHAEL COSTAGLIOLA (Sound Technician) is a Brooklyn-based sound designer and composer. He studied music at Brown University, where he received the Weston Award for Music Composition. He is the resident composer for the AntiGravity Theatre Project, and a Teaching Artist in Sound Design for the Roundabout Theatre Company. Credits include Yermedea raw (AntiGravity at La MaMa), what it Means to disappear here (UglyRhino, NY), The beckett cycle (Brick Theater, NY), angelina ballerina the Musical (Vital Theatre, national tour), The inexplicable redemption of agent g (Vampire Cowboys, NY), el extraño Viaje (El Reló, Madrid), and bernarda’s backstage (Winged Cranes, Madrid). www.michaelstags.com.

CALEB HAMMONS (Curator) is a performance curator and cultural producer working in New York City and the Hudson Valley. Currently the Associate Producer at Bard College’s Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts, he facilitates all Live Arts Bard and SummerScape programming, commissions, and artist residencies. Prior to his time at Bard, he was the Producer at Soho Rep. (NYC) and the founding Producing Director of Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company. He is the Co-Curator of the acclaimed Brooklyn-based performance series Catch, and from 2007 until its implosion in 2012 Caleb served in various capacities for the playwright’s collective 13P. He has been a guest speaker at the Yale School of Drama, NYU/Tisch School of the Arts, and Carnegie Mellon University School of the Arts. Caleb holds a BFA from the NYU/Tisch Experimental Theatre Wing and was a member of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance’s inaugural class at Wesleyan University. FRANK HENTSCHKER (Curator/Executive Director, The Segal Center) Dr. Frank Hentschker, who holds a Ph.D. in theatre from the now-legendary Institute for Applied Theatre Studies in Giessen, Germany, came to the Graduate Center in 2001 as Program Director for the Graduate Center’s Martin E. Segal Theatre Center and was appointed to the central doctoral faculty in theatre in 2009. Among the vital events and series he founded at the Segal Center are the World Theatre Performance series, the annual fall PRELUDE Festival, and the PEN World Voices Playwrights Series. Before coming to the Graduate Center, Hentschker founded and directed DISCURS, the largest European student theatre festival existing today; he acted as Hamlet in Heiner Müller’s Hamletmaschine, directed by the playwright, performed in the Robert Wilson play The Forest (music by David Byrne), and worked as an assistant for Robert Wilson for many years. KIMON KERAMIDAS (Web Developer/Director of Digital Initiatives, Martin E. Segal Theatre Center) has been working on web sites and databases at The Segal Center for nearly a decade. Kimon developed the Segal Center’s main site, as well as sites for PRELUDE.8, 9, 10, 11, 12, and 13, ExP.Girl Dance Theatre, Foundry Theatre, and the American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning. During the day, Kimon is Assistant Professor and Director for the Digital Media Lab at the Bard Graduate Center, where he is responsible for integrating digital media across the curriculum and for providing guidance for digital initiatives in academic publishing and exhibition design. Kimon holds a B.A. in Theatre from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in Theatre with a certificate in Interactive Technology and Pedagagoy from the CUNY Graduate Center. He has taught courses on interface design, theatre, performance, new media, and instructional technology and pedagogy at the Bard Graduate Center, The Cooper Union, Marymount Manhattan College, the CUNY Graduate Center, and in CUNY’s Online Baccalaureate Program.

SARAH ROSE LEONARD (Party Producer) is a dramaturg, director, and producer. She works as the Associate to Antje Oegel at AO International. Sarah was the Next Generation Fellow at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center from ’12 – ’13, where she helped produce PRELUDE.12 and line produced many events. She also curated/produced Guadalupe, an annual performance event about ideas of femininity, at The Segal Center. Her work as a director includes a cross-cultural trilogy that was produced in Santiago de Chile and at the Little Theatre at Dixon Place. She has dramaturged for Guillermo Calderón (Villa, TBA Festival), Eliza Bent (The hotel colors, The Bushwick Starr), and Sheila Callaghan (lascivious Something, Women’s Project), among others. Sarah runs Smith + Tinker, a collaborative writers group hosted by HERE. She was Literary Resident at Playwrights Horizons from ‘09-‘10, is on the literary team at Page 73. Sarah was a member of the ‘12 Lincoln Center Directors Lab and earned her BFA in Directing and Creating Original Work from NYU. PETER MILLS-WEISS (Technical Director) is a performance artist and technician from NY. Recently: sound design for Richard Foreman’s old Fashioned Prostitutes and a “performance” in The designated Mourner, both at the Public Theater.

GREG REDLAWSK (Stage Manager) is a director, stage manager, and playwright living and working in NYC, and he is extremely excited to be returning to PRELUDE for a third year. Most recently he worked on the production of Somewhere Fun at the Vineyard, and is currently working at HERE Arts on the upcoming production of Trade Practices. As a director and playwright, he has had work presented with That Toy Pony, Theater IN ASYLUM, Emerging Artists Theatre, and Special Sauce Company, and most recently he served as the AD for Ugly Rhino’s glamdromeda. In addition, he has served as a teaching artist with New York Theatre Workshop, where he was also an Artistic/Casting Intern in the fall of 2010. MATT ROMEIN (Technical Director) is a theatre/dance technician who has been working in NYC since 2011. Most recently he worked as the video coordinator for the inaugural Live Ideas Festival at New York Live Arts, as well as continued technician work for New York Live Arts, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, and Catch. Outside of that he works as an interactivity coder and performance maker. REBECCA SHEAHAN (PRELUDE Director of Administration/Managing Director, The Segal Center) began her career in the arts at The Market Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Rebecca has lived in New York City since 2003, working as Director of Marketing for St. Ann’s Warehouse and 651 ARTS, and as a marketing and PR consultant for various artists and companies. She was also a co-producer and marketing consultant for the PRELUDE Festivals in 2008 and 2009. RACHEL SILVERMAN (Producer) is theatre-maker, -viewer, -lover and producer. She is very happy to be producing PRELUDE for a second year. Other producing credits include PRELUDE.12, UglyRhino’s site-specific what it Means to disappear here and 13P’s OBIE Award-winning a Map of Virtue. Rachel is the Artistic Producing Associate at New York Theatre Workshop, where she coordinates all workshop programming and artist development activities, including a weekly Monday @ 3 reading series, summer residencies at Adelphi University and Dartmouth College and NYTW’s Process in Performance conversation series. BA: Wesleyan University, Theatre and Sociology. MARY SPADONI (Stage Manager) is so pleased to be working on her second PRELUDE! New York: Somewhere Fun(The Vineyard), good Person of Szechwan (The Foundry, upcoming at The Public), Volpone (Red Bull Theater), luther, enfrascada, and dot (Clubbed Thumb), Map of Virtue (13P), Paradox of the urban cliché (LAByrinth), The birthday boys (ArtEffects), The book of grace (The Public). Regional: Weathervane Theatre, Goodspeed Musicals, Music Theatre Green Bay, and three seasons at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Mary is a graduate of St. Norbert College and a writer for www.piesetc.com. SARAH STITES (Design Coordinator/Next Generation Fellow, The Segal Center) is a director, choreographer, and sometime-writer and curator. Recent directing credits include Query (9BC Performance Project), The Seagull (Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre), and all My Sons (Metropolitan Ensemble Theatre). Current projects include what doesn’t kill You and clandestinos: The Mark Sanford Story. LISA SZOLOVITS (Production Assistant) is a Brooklyn-based director and developer of new plays. She has made work on the East Coast with the Playwrights Horizons Resident Workshop, Ars Nova, Dixon Place, Columbia University, NYU, The Assembly, UglyRhino, Tugboat Collective, Lost Theater, Manhattan Shakespeare Project, and Williamstown Theatre Festival, as well as with Theatre of NOTE, The Echo, and Circle X in Los Angeles. lisasz.com

LINDSEY TURTELTAUB (Production Coordinator) is a production stage manager for theatre, opera, and events based in New York City. Recent NY credits include Sontag: reborn, a civil war christmas, Food and Fadwa (New York Theatre Workshop), Forces! (STREB), The Mikado (Carnegie Hall), Soldier Songs (Prototype Festival), brooklyn babylon (BAM Next Wave Festival.) Regional credits include autumn Sonata, a delicate balance, battle of black and dogs, Pop! (Yale Rep), dog days (Montclair), carnage a comedy, gulliver’s Travels, love’s labor’s lost (Actors’ Gang.) She has also stage managed events with Jazz at Lincoln Center, the Music Center in Los Angeles, LA Stage Alliance, and the Brooklyn Philharmonic. MFA, Yale School of Drama.


58 59

PRELUDE AT 10ABINGDON THEATRE COMPANY, THE ACTORS THEATRE WORKSHOP, INC., AMERICAN RENAISSANCE THEATRE (ARTC), BANANA BOAT PRODUCTIONS, BLACK MOON THEATRE COMPANY, BOOMERANG THEATRE COMPANY, CAP 21 (COLLABORATIVE ARTS PROJECT 21), THE CARIBBEAN CULTURAL THEATRE, THE DREAM THEATRE, ERGO THEATRE COMPANY, FREESTYLE REPERTORY THEATRE, GOLDEN FLEECE, LTD., HAMM & CLOV STAGE COMPANY, HERE ARTS CENTER, THE HYPOTHETICAL THEATRE COMPANY, JEAN COCTEAU REPERTORY, JUGGERNAUT THEATRE COMPANY, MESSENGER THEATRE COMPANY, METROPOLITAN PLAYHOUSE, MIND THE GAP THEATRE, NEOPACK, PAN ASIAN REPERTORY THEATRE, SIX FIGURES THEATRE COMPANY, STRIKE ANYWHERE PERFORMANCE ENSEMBLE, TEATRO I.A.T.I., THIRTEENTH NIGHT THEATRE COMPANY, XOREGOS PERFORMING COMPANY, YOUNG PLAYWRIGHTS, INC., MARIE-LOUISE MILLER, SARAH CAMERON SUNDE, ELLEN STEWART, VALLEJO GANTNER, ERIC DYER, PAUL LAZAR, JOHN JESURUN, MARIANNE WEEMS, CYNTHIA HOPKINS, SHEILA CALLAGHAN, ANNE WASHBURN, LISA D’AMOUR, PAVOL LISKA, BIG ART GROUP, ERIN COURTNEY, THE NATIONAL THEATER OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, MADELYN KENT, DIVISION 13 PRODUCTIONS, THE BUILDERS ASSOCIATION, ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, JOHN JESURUN, AYODELE CASEL, YOUNG JEAN LEE, JAY SCHEIB, RICHARD MAXWELL / NYC PLAYERS, MAC WELLMAN, RADIOHOLE, BIG DANCE THEATER, CHARLES MEE, JR, JENNIFER MORRIS, DEAN MOSS, THOMAS BRADSHAW, CARL HANCOCK RUX, JENNY SCHWARTZ, TENT, JOYCE CHO, MALLORY CATLETT, JUGGERNAUT THEATRE CO., TARGET MARGIN, MABOU MINES, CYNTHIA HOPKINS, EX.PGIRL, WILL ENO, NICK FLYNN, JASON GROTE, COLLAPABLE GIRAFFE, BROOKE O’HARRA & THE THEATRE OF A TWO-HEADED CALF, JAY SCHEIB, LOLA ARIAS, 31 DOWN, ADAM BOCK, CHRISTINA CAMPANELLA, THE DEBATE SOCIETY, STEPHANIE FLEISCHMANN, JOSH FOX / INTERNATIONAL WOW COMPANY, KRISTEN KOSMAS, LABORATORY THEATER, DAVID LEVINE / CINE, LIGHTBOX, LUCIDITY SHOWCASE INTERNATIONAL, MASATAKA MATSUDA, JOHN MORAN, AYA OGAWA / KNIFE, INC., TOSHIKI OKADA, ANNIE-B PARSON / BIG DANCE THEATER, THE PLAY COMPANY, DAN SAFER/WITNESS RELOCATION, ANDREW SCHNEIDER, MARK SCHULTZ, RACHEL SHUKERT / THE BUSHWICK HOTEL, RANBIR SIDHU, KAMERON STEELE / SOUTH WING, THE TEAM, MIKUNI YANAIHARA, SARAH BENSON, ADAM BOCK, JIM NICOLA, ALEX TIMBERS, DAVID COTE, MADELEINE GEORGE, RICHARD NELSON, ERIC DYER, MAC WELLMAN, BROOK STOWE, JAMES SCRUGGS, THOMAS BRADSHAW, DAVID HENRY HWANG, MELANIE JOSEPH, JASON GROTE, MORGAN JENNESS, KRISTIN MARTING, NORMAN FRISCH, IVAN TALIJANCIC/WAX FACTORY/ BLINDNESS, TAL YARDEN/ SECOND LIFE STREET THEATER, THE AIR BAND/ FREE ELECTRON, ANDREW SCHNEIDER/ EDP, RUTH SERGEL & PETER VON SALIS/ UNTITLED PROJECT, FLUXCONCERT, NEAL MEDLYN, BIG DANCE THEATER, THE PAPER INDUSTRY, MOVING THEATER, OKWUI OKPOKWASILI, RICHARD FOREMAN, TEMPORARY DISTORTION, BIG ART GROUP, THE BUILDERS ASSOCIATION, RICHARD FOREMAN, SHEILA CALLAGHAN, BRANDEN JACOBS -JENKINS, JENNY SCHWARTZ, JOYCE CHO, RAUL VINCENT ENRIQUEZ, BANANA BAG & BODICE, NYC PLAYERS, NTUSA, ANDY HORWITZ, GEOFFREY SCOTT, RAUL VINCENT ENRIQUEZ , ROSELEE GOLDBERG, PAUL LAZAR, BONNIE MARRANCA, DEBRA SINGER, PETER VON SALIS, MALLORY CATLETT, MORGAN VON PRELLE PECELLI, JAY SCHEIB, MARIANNE WEEMS, VICTOR WEINSTOCK, JENNIFER WRIGHT COOK, YEHUDA DUENYAS, ROBERT ELMES, ZANNAH MASS, TERESA VASQUEZ, MARTHA WILSON, DAVID COTE, ERIC DYER, SUSAN FELDMAN, CYNTHIA HEDSTROM, CADEN MANSON, KIM WHITENER, MORGAN VON PRELLE PECELLI, ERIC DYER, RICHARD FOREMAN, VALLEJO GANTNER, NELLO MCDANIEL, JAY SCHEIB, SYLVAN OSWALD, GEORGE HUNKA, MARCY ARLIN/IMMIGRANTS’ THEATRE PROJECT, LEAR DEBESSONET/STILLPOINT PRODUCTIONS, ERIC TING, THE PLAY COMPANY, FRANK HENTSCHKER, STEVE CUIFFO, WILLIAM CUSICK, JOHN JESURUN, DAVID MICHALEK, BRIAN ROGERS / THE CHOCOLATE FACTORY, DAN SAFER / WITNESS RELOCATION, PHIL SOLTANOFF / MAD DOG EXPERIMENTAL, ADRIENNE TRUSCOTT, MARINA ABRAMOVIC, BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION, ANDREW DINWIDDIE, AARON LANDSMAN, DAVID LEVINE, THE LIVING THEATRE, OBJECT COLLECTION, RADIOHOLE, JAY SCHEIB, THEATRE OF A TWO-HEADED CALF, ERIN COURTNEY, BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS, KRISTEN KOSMAS, NYC PLAYERS / CHRISTINA MASCIOTTI, WUTURI PLAYERS, MARION SCHOEVAERT, KIM KWANG LI, HWANG JI WOOM KIM MYUNG HWA, ARWEN LOWBRIDGE, ROBERT ZUKERMAN, JUSTIN KREBS, SHEILA LEWANDOWSKI, HÉLÈNE LESTERLIN , VALLEJO GANTNER, KRISTIN MARTING, JEFF HNILICKA, LISA PHILLIPS, HARRIET TAUB, JONAH BOKAER, JEREMY JAMES PICKARD, MICHAEL JOHNSON-CHASE, ANDY HORWITZ, STEVE CUIFFO, JOHN JESURUN, WILLIAM CUSICK, DAVID MICHALEK, MORGAN VON PRELLE PECELLI, ADRIENNE TRUSCOTT, DAN SAFER, BRIAN ROGERS, PHIL SOLTANOFF, CLAIRE BISHOP, MARINA ABRAMOVIC, THE BRUCE HIGH QUALITY FOUNDATION, AARON LANDSMAN, DAVID LEVINE, ANDREW DINWIDDIE, SARAH BENSON, JAY SCHEIB, BROOKE O’HARRA, KARA FEELY, JUDITH MALINA, ERIC DYER, GEOFFREY SCOTT, ERIN COURTNEY, KRISTEN KOSMAS, BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS, CHRISTINA MASCIOTTI, JOYCE CHO, ROBERT QUILLEN CAMP, HOI POLLOI, TRAJAL HARRELL, THE TEAM, HERE, AARON LANDSMAN, THE FIELD, JIM FINDLAY, JULIE ATLAS MUZ, PENNY ARCADE, ISHMAEL HOUSTON-JONES, JOE SILOVSKY, KIMON KERAMIDAS, REID FARRINGTON, ANDREW SCHNEIDER, REGGIE WATTS, DJ SPOOKY, MALLORY CATLETT, SYLVAN OSWALD, CHRISTINA DEROOS, KEVIN DOYLE, JENNIFER WRIGHT COOK, YOUNG JEAN LEE, KEVIN CUNNINGHAM, TANYA SELVARATNAM, MEGAN SPRENGER, CARLA PETERSON, ERIC DYER, ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, DANIEL FISH, JAY SCHEIB, JACKSON POLLOCK BAR, NINA BEIER, TEMPORARY DISTORTION, ROBERT FITTERMAN, WILL HOLDER, DONELLE WOOLFORD, HALF STRADDLE, DOLL PARTS, ELEVATOR REPAIR SERVICE, BIG DANCE THEATER, MAC WELLMAN & STEVE MELLOR, OTSO HUOPANIEMI, LUMBEROB, JACKSON POLLOCK BAR, JACKIE SIBBLIES DRURY, YOUNG JEAN LEE’S THEATER COMPANY, JAKE HOOKER/THE PLASTIC ARTS, SUZANNE BOCANEGRA & PAUL LAZAR, CLAIRE BISHOP, RICHARD MOVE, JULIA ROBINSON , HELEN SHAW, JEFF JONES, SIBYL KEMPSON, ROB MARCATO, PABLO HELGUERA, CLAUDIA LA ROCCO, FAYE DRISCOLL , RICHARD FOREMAN, MIGUEL GUTIERREZ AND THE POWERFUL PEOPLE , BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS, DAVID LEVINE, CADEN MANSON/BIG ART GROUP, JOE RANONO AND FRIENDS, TINA SATTER/HALF STRADDLE , JAY SCHEIB & CO., MARIA STRIAR, MAC WELLMAN, LEAH NANAKO WINKLER/EVERYWHERE THEATER GROUP, ANONYMOUS ENSEMBLE , TEI BLOW, HANNAH BOS, WILLIAM BURKE, CORINA COPP, ERIN COURTNEY/ADHESIVE THEATER PROJECT, JACK FERVER, DANIEL FISH , LUCAS HNATH AND SARAH BENSON, MYLES KANE, KARINNE KEITHLEY , JEFF LARSON, YOUNG JEAN LEE, DJ MENDEL, NATURE THEATER OF OKLAHOMA, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, CULTUREBOT, ANNIE DORSEN, ALEC DUFFY / HOI POLLOI, JULIANA FRANCIS-KELLY, YELENA GLUZMAN/SCIENCE PROJECT, SIBYL KEMPSON, HEIDI SCHRECK AND KEN RUS SCHMOLL, NIEGEL SMITH, ELIZA BENT AND DAVE MALLOY, POOR BABY BREE, JOSHUA CONKEL, COREY DARGEL, COLE ESCOLA, BRIDGET EVERETT, JENN HARRIS, KRISTINE HARUNA LEE, THE KIOSKERS, LUMBEROB, AMBER MARTIN, ANDREW ONDREJCAK AND SHARA WORDEN, MOLLY POPE, NELLIE TINDER, TONY TORN, YACKEZ, DANIEL FISH, TAYLOR MAC, PEARLDAMOUR, BIG DANCE THEATER, MALLORY CATTLETT / RESTLESS NYC, CYNTHIA HOPKINS, CANDEN MANSON / BIG ART GROUP, JAY SCHEIB & CO., ANDREW SCHNEIDER, JIM FINDLAY, NATURE THEATER OF OKLAHOMA, KRISTINE HARUNA LEE, WOODSHED COLLECTIVE, ANDREW ONDREJCAK, THE ASSEMBLY, KATHERINE BROOK / TELE-VIOLET, 600 HIGHWAYMEN, JEROME ELLIS AND JAMES HARRISON MONACO, REBECCA PATEK, CHRIS TYLER, CESAR ALVAREZ AND SARAH BENSON, INSTITUE FOR PSYCHOGEOGRAPHIC ADVENTURE, UNITED STATES DEPARTMENT OF ARTS AND CULTURE, ELASTIC CITY (FEATURING TODD SHALOM AND NIEGEL SMITH), AARON LANDSMAN, ROYAL OSIRIS KARAOKE ENSEMBLE, NEAL MEDLYN, ERIN MARKEY, KATE VALK, JEFFREY M. JONES, KIPPY WINSTON, DAVID LEVINE, FRANK HENTSCHKER, SARAH BENSON, ANDY HORWITZ, GEOFFREY JACKSON SCOTT, MORGAN VIN PRELLE PECELLI, CLAIRE BISHOP, ROB MARCATO, CALEB HAMMONS, HELEN SHAW, GAVIN KROEBER, NIEGEL SMITH, TODD SHALMON, AARON LANDSMAN, ADAM HOROWITZ, ANNIE BAKER, BRANDEN JACOBS-JENKINS, SIBYL KEMPSON, MAX POSNER, ANNE WASHBURN

ALL PRELUDE.13 EVENTS ARE FREE! Most events are first come, first served; however, there are a few events at the festival that require advance registration. Sign-up sheets will be available in the Segal lobby starting on the first day of PRELUDE and will be available each day until the event is full.

Jim Findlay: Dream of the Red Chamber / a performance solo for two sleepers (see pages 23 and 39)This event is intended for an audience of two people at a time, scheduled in thirty minute increments. Participants must sign up in advance. Sign-ups will be available in the Segal Lobby throughout the festival.

Elastic City (featuring Todd Shalom & Niegel Smith): Selfies (see page 30)This is an interactive event for an audience of twelve. Participants must sign up in advance and remain present for the full duration of the piece. To ensure yourself a spot on this walk, please sign up on the Elastic City website: http://www.elastic-city.org/walks/selfies. Pending availability, sign-up will be available in the Segal Lobby on Wednesday and Thursday. This event is open to audience members 18 years and older.

Closing Night Party BusCome celebrate the 10th Anniversary of Prelude at Littlefield Performance + Arts Space beginning at 10pm on Friday 10/4. Buses leave from The Graduate Center at 10pm, but you must sign up to secure your spot! Sign-ups will be available in the Segal lobby for the duration of the festival.

In the spirit of PRELUDE, registration for sign-up events is also first come, first served.

SPECIAL THANKS

Thanks to The Graduate Center, CUNY; William Kelly, Chancellor, GC CUNY; Chase Robinson, President, GC CUNY; Professor Marvin Carlson, Ph.D. Program in Theatre, Director of Publications, MESTC;

The Graduate Center, CUNY Staff: Peter Harris, John Chianese, Cecelia Denniston, Bradley Hoelscher, Hector Merced, Bo Olsson, John Ribeiro, Steven Tomas, Dan Tracy, Orlando Rosario, Audio/Video Services-Information Technology; Michael Byers, Daisy Romero, Charles Scott, Facility Services and Campus Planning; John Flaherty, Stan Miller, Security and Public Safety; Diane Rosenblum, Assistant to the Director of Security and Public Safety; Gayle Moynihan, Manager, Room Reservations; Ray Ring and Chris Lowry, Building Design and Exhibitions. Althea Harewood, David Tse, Business Office; Marilyn Marzolf, Sandy Robinson, Kathleen Stolarksi, Office of the President; Reggie Lucas, Milton Mendez, Randy Reyes, Mail Facility; Sundoc Douglas, Hector Sanchez, Jerzy Strojek, Joseph Valez, and Peter Viegas, Graphic Arts Production Services; Christian Capelli, Mailing Center.

Special thanks to Katherine Carl, Curator of the James Gallery and Deputy Director of the Center for Humanities at The Graduate Center CUNY, Kaitlin Meyers, Graphic Design Assistant, and Maria Moreno at 4OVER4.

Thanks to The Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College; New York Theatre Workshop; Bill Bragen, Lincoln Center; Lewis Cullman & Louise Kertz Hirschfeld; Susan & Jack Rudin.

MARTIN E. SEGAL THEATRE CENTERTHE GRADUATE CENTER | CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK365 FIFTH AVENUE (AT 34TH STREET) | NEW YORK, NY 10016WWW.PRELUDENYC.ORG

ph

oto

by

Ma

ria

Ba

ran

ova

prelude.13 program guide

Documents