CULTUREMART 2007

The Here Arts Centers’ annual CULTUREMART presents 17 new works that blur the lines between dance, theatre, music, new media, puppetry and visual art. The projects featured in CULTUREMART uphold the concept that it’s no longer possible for a single art form to reflect the flurry of images and sound bytes experienced on a daily basis. As the world multi-tasks, instant messages, blogs and communicates through digital streams, the exchange of words, images and sounds occur simultaneously, resulting in undigested content. The hybrid performances of CULTUREMART embrace that content by integrating it into exciting new works, creating a sense of voice, purpose and understanding.

Automaton Repertory ProjectJanuary 2nd-28thIf one has ever wondered how to come to terms with the constant future shock of the American hyper-reality, just think how hard it is for a 1950’s tin man to negotiate. In Automaton Repertory Project a self-contained robotic puppet theatre installation, the Robot heroes compete with the driving forces of change. Automaton Repertory Project is open to the public and free of charge.

Routine Hearing January 2nd and 3rdClick here for TicketsThis excerpt from the larger project Exercises for the Body Politic by David Evens Morris and Juliet Chia moves to the beat of an original score featuring the luminaries of political oratory. Audience members are inivted to drink, play cards and sample tracks from the golden oldies of Goldwater and McGovern to the modern sounds of Limbaugh and Moore. In this interactive work, a pair of headphones set the stage for an auditory grand ballet.

MakeshiftJanuary 4th and 5thClick here for TicketsIn this work, urban multimedia artist Adam Matta uses a mix of beatboxing, video and art installation in an attempt to bridge the physical gap between his Egyptian roots and an American upbringing. Closely placed cameras capture his every move, a digital pedal loops and distorts his voice, and freshly painted tires create paintings as Matta performs trick moves on his bike.

Bride and The Food ProjectJanuary 6th and 7th Click here for Tickets
In Bride, the artistic director of the puppet company Lone Wolf Tribe investigates the obsession of Creators who will stop at nothing to control everything. Augustine transforms himself and his life-sized foam rubber puppets to animate a story of male Creators pitted against their most feared foe: the divine female. Bride pairs the Frankenstein story with the ancient defeat of Goddess culture by “the one true God.”

In The Food Project Ellen Beckerman, the artistic director of Lightbox, and playwright Madeleine Geore ask us to consider breakfast, lunch, and everything in between. How happy do our meals really make us? Using found texts, interviews and a highly physical style, Beckerman and George expose the intense relationship among Americans, food and happiness.

10 Plates and Glossolalia: 8 Pataphysical Questions from The Blue FlowerJanuary 8th and 9thClick here for Tickets10 Plates is a multicultural journey that traverses the intersections among urban myths, storytelling and food. In their style of hysterical physical theatre, Ex. Pgirl treads the line between danger and humor, revealing the ridiculous, disturbing and heartbreaking aspects of everyday fears through the perspectives of five female performers.

Glossolalia: 8 Pataphysical Questions from The Blue Flower is an ever-shifting historical expedition through music, politics and art through the world of Babble speak, composer Jim Bauer’s original, improvised language for this two-person multimedia Dada-insipired performance featuring Ruth Bauer and Meghan McGeary.

Foodstable, Removable Parts and Red Fly/Blue Bottle January 10th and 11thClick here for TicketsInspired by H.G. Lewis’ notorious gore film Blood Feast, Foodstable mutilates its source material to create a beautifully fractured performance. Following the story of innocent romance attempting to survive in a world awash in horror and fear, director Richard Toth molds and shapes the film’s images and sound to create song, dance and a dialogue between contemporary performers and Blood Feast.

In the name of love, how far might you go? The unrequited lover in the new musical work Removable Parts contemplates voluntary amputation. Performed by composer and lyricist Corey Dargel with pianist Kathleen Supove, this duet playfully exposes the disastrous relationship between a broken heart and a mind willing to give in to its logic.

Red Fly/Blue Bottle, a song-cycle pieced together from found sound, creates a journey through the haunted landscape of a secret war and its ineffable fallout, giving voice to the buzzing of a prophetic red fly, telescope-carrying sunflowers, and a secret code embedded in ordinary household objects. Writer Stephanie Fleischmann and composer/performer Christina Campanella collaborate with video designer Peter Norrman to reveal a richly visual world in which nothing is what it seems.

Ophelia 3January 12th and 13thClick here for TicketsDreams and reality converge, as the character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet inspires playwright and director Aya Ogawa’s haunting exploration of contemporary communities. Through three disparate stories of displacement, isolation and disconnection, this work exposes the cultural crises that pervade our global society.

Pinchas, the Fish-People, and the Great FloodJanuary 14th and 15thClick here for TicketsAs the flood approaches, what will happen to the Fish-people and Noah’s downstairs neighbor, Pinchas? In this schtetyl-ized dance fable, directed and choreographed by Tami Stronach, the terrific tribulations and gentle triumphs of those left behind by gentle Noah are captured in exquistite images and theatrical dance.

TRACES/fadesJanuary 16th and 17thClick here for TicketsHow does one respond to a loved one’s mind in decline? To one’s nation in decline? What is left behind? In TRACES/fades, playwright and director Lenora Champagne uses video, music and satirical text to explore the crumbling landscape of the memories that slip so easily from ones grasp.

The Ludicrous Trial of Mr. P and Drum of the Waves of HorikawaJanuary 18th and 19thClick here for TicketsFrom the Middle Ages through the early 20th century, animals were put on trial for causing death by a bite or a kick in the head. In The Ludicrous Trial of Mr. P playwright Susan Yankowitz and puppet designer/director Jane Catherine Shaw use eleborate puppetry, masks and video to take the audience on a bizarre journey into the world of criminal prosecution where a dirty rat is, quite literally, a dirty rat.

Loud, violent, transgressive and fueled by radical politics, Kabuki and 1970s punk were both unforgiving performance movements that captured the stories of social disorder. The Theater of a Two-headed Calf calls on both forms to take on Drum of the Waves of Horikawa, a five-episode sage by Mozaemon Chikamatsu, the “Shakespeare of Japan.”

Oh What War
January 20th and 21st
Click here for TicketsDirector Mallory Catlett, writer Jason Craig and designer Peter Ksander present a soldier’s fantasy of flagrant disobedience that follows a band of deserters stuck in No Man’s Land. A mash-up of mud, vintage war songs, video footage and battle noise, this original Juggernaut Production zeros in on the great war machine that holds us captive.

WicketsJanuary 25th-28thClick here for TicketsImmersed in a mystery, eight 1970’s stewardesses find themselves split between the private self and the public persona in Wickets, a radical adaptation of Maria Irene Fornes’ Fefu and Her Friends. Set inside an airplane, the entire theatre becomes the stage for this celestial rock opera where the audience is surrounded by high-flying actions–in the aisles, galleys and lavatories of a trans-Atlantic flight.