SoloNova Arts Festival

Join terraNOVA Collective for the 5th Annual soloNOVA Arts Festival celebrating the best solo artists in the country! This year’s festival features innovative performers from diverse disciplines, including painting, movement, digital performance, monologues, music, multimedia and Escritura Acto.

Opening the Festival is Kim Wayans in the New York premiere of A Handsome Woman Retreats (…a seriously funny journey to inner peace) and recent NYU Experimental Theater Wing graduate, Eric Lockley in his piece Last Laugh (featured at LaMaMa in February 2008).

The festival also features six other New York, U.S. and World Premieres with artists coming from all over the country, Puerto Rico and Canada including "a must-see" one-man Hamlet that was a hit at the 2007 Edinburgh Festival Fringe; ever-provocative Christen Clifford delving deep into her parents sex life and the latest Nellie Tinder creation.

Delight in their tales, and rediscover the joy of solo artists at the top of their game in the hottest solo artist festival of the summer.

PARTICIPANTS

A Handsome Woman Retreats (…a seriously funny journey to inner peace)
Written & Performed by Kim Wayans
Directed by Iona Morris
New York Premiere
An unhappy woman suffering from panic attacks attends a ten-day silent meditation retreat to root out the source of her anxiety. It’s an often funny, sometimes painful, journey of self-discovery. Along the way, Kim introduces many of the unique characters whose influences contributed to the Wayans family becoming one of the most successful families in entertainment today.
Wednesday, June 18 at 7:00pm
Friday, June 20 at 7:00pm
Saturday, June 21 at 2:00pm
Monday, June 23 at 7:00pm

The Last Laugh
Written & Performed by Eric Lockley
Directed by Jonathan McCrory
Created at NYU’s Experimental Theater Wing and featured at LaMaMa, ETC. Two black performers begin to confuse performance and reality in this comedic satire. Their struggle to fulfill their obligation to entertain while maintaining an authentic self-hood is a thought-provoking character-study that considers the challenges of pleasing the public, paying the bills, battling stereotypes, and somehow remaining true to one’s self.
Wednesday, June 18 at 9:00pm
Friday, June 20 at 9:00pm
Saturday, June 21 at 4:00pm
Monday, June 23 at 9:00pm

Hamlet (solo)
Written by William Shakespeare
Performed by Raoul Bhaneja
Directed by Robert Ross Parker
US Premiere
Hope and Hell Theatre Co. (Canada) in association with Richard Jordan Productions (UK) present the Winner of the Montreal English Critics Circle Award: Best Touring Production and a hit at the 2007 Assembly Rooms Edinburgh Festival Fringe, this one man, 17 character tour de force is described by the Montreal Gazette as "an extraordinary inter­pretation that allows the great play to speak for itself." Developed over seven years with director Robert Ross Parker (Vampire Cowboys Theatre) and in residency at Shakespeare’s Globe (UK), Shakespeare’s greatest play is distilled down to the essence of live theatre: The Audience, The Actor and The Text.
Thursday, June 19 at 7:00pm
Saturday, June 21 at 7:00pm
Wednesday, June 25 at 7:00pm

(What I Know About) My Parents’ Sex Life
Written & Performed by Christen Clifford
Developed by Daniel Fish
World Premiere
From elder porn to nursing homes, from her father’s Viagra prescription to her mother’s racy correspondence – Best of Fringe award-winning solo artist and second time soloNOVA participant (BabyLove 2006), Christen Clifford illuminates the universal and takes us on a journey through elderly sexuality in youth obsessed America.
Thursday, June 19 at 9:00pm
Saturday, June 21 at 9:00pm
Sunday, June 22 at 4:00pm
Wednesday, June 25 at 9:00pm

Prometheus Bound
Written & Performed by Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya
New York Premiere
Emerging from a theatrical poetics that makes the act of writing visible on stage, Prometheus Bound/Prometeo Encadenado is a show of languages, body and machine. Spoken and graphic lines meet, converse and clash; the public becomes the chorus; the performer, a song; demons surge from the machine. Make theatre the ghost of your senses.
Thursday, June 26 at 7:00pm
Saturday, June 28 at 7:00pm
Sunday, June 29 at 2:00pm
Monday, June 30 at 7:00pm

Sally M.I.A.
Written & Performed by Krista DeNio
Directed by Ashley Hughes
New York Premiere
Sally: M.I.A. is a surreal and voyeuristic techno-tragedy. Memory, imagination, past and present collide as Sally takes up residence in her post-human existence. Now fully automated, flashbacks of her human past penetrate and fragment her world.
Thursday, June 26 at 8:30pm
Saturday, June 28 at 8:30pm
Sunday, June 29 at 3:30pm
Monday, June 30 at 8:30pm

Tongue-in Paint
Written & Performed by Moana Niumeitolu
World Premiere
Tongue-in Paint is a vibrant, colorful mixture of painting and performance, where a palette of 13 assorted characters interwoven with song, food, dance, poetry–and painting!–to tell a story of being born in Tonga, raised Mormon in Utah, and coming to NYC to fulfill the dream of being an Artist.
Friday, June 2 at 7:00pm
Saturday, June 28 at 2:00pm
Tuesday, July 1 at 7:00pm
Wednesday, July 2 at 7:00pm

Take Heart
A Nellie Tinder creation
Written & Performed by Julia May Jonas
Directed by Jess Barbagallo
World Premiere
Take Heart is an evocative recounting of the humorous and disturbing tale of a child liar and her inevitable downfall. Through stories, songs and autoharp, Nellie Tinder’s latest salvo blurs the line between memoir and characterization, touching upon pre-adolescent lust, B-musicals, drunkenness, literature and the sword of Damocles.
Friday, June 27 at 8:30pm
Saturday, June 28 at 4:00pm
Tuesday, July 1 at 8:30pm
Wednesday, July 2 at 8:30pm