Announcing Auditions for
YOUNG JEAN LEE’S THEATER COMPANY - THE SHIPMENT
Written and Directed by Young Jean Lee
Award-winning, internationally touring theater company seeks trained, non-Equity African-American actors (male and female) of all ages who are available to rehearse 20 hours/week from September 26-October 24 and December 1-January 7. This will be for a tour (World Premiere) to the Wexner Center (Columbus, OH) from October 26-November 2 and a run in New York at The Kitchen (NYC Premiere) from January 8-24. Experience with experimental/non-traditional theater and collaboration a must. Dance and hip-hop skills a plus. This is a paying gig.
THE SHIPMENT is an extremely awkward exploration of the experience of being black in America, written and directed by a Korean-American — an uneasy confrontation with cultural covetousness and cluelessness that stirs up all the questions that people try to avoid.
AUDITIONS BY APPOINTMENT ONLY
FRIDAY 15 AUGUST
SATURDAY 16 AUGUST
CALLBACKS:
SUNDAY 17 AUGUST
MONDAY 18 AUGUST
Please submit your headshot, resume, and availability during the above dates to: shipmentauditions@gmail.com
For more information about the show and the company, please visit www.youngjeanlee.org.
Joshua Light Show to perform free outdoor concert with German electronic musician Manuel Göttsching at Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival on August 15, 2008
The Joshua Light Show, known by many a New Yorker for creating the iconic psychedelic imagery that set
the stage for musicans such as Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, The Who, Grateful Dead, The Doors and Frank Zappa at Bill Graham’s legendarylower-east-side rock palace, the Fillmore East, performs this summer at
Lincoln Center’s Damrosch Park alongside German electronic musician Manuel Göttsching for the American concert premiere of seminalminimalist compostion, E2-E4. Full press release online at http://harknessav.org/JLS_GOTTSCHING.htm
on my more immediate production/performance horizon:
“The Soundscaper” (the project that was recently showcased at the Museum of Contemporary art in Genoa, Italy) will be now shown at LACDA (Los Angeles Center For Digital Art) for the International New Media Expo in Downtown Los Angeles .
The show will run from August 14th to the 16th
Opening Reception: Thursday August 14, 7-9pm
Here some information about the Los Angeles Center For Digital Art http://www.lacda.com
Also our project “Mocean” will be reinstalled for the 12th Annual DUMBO Art Under the Bridge Festiva. We will be building a new more engaging version of the project .
The show will run form September 26 – 28, 2008
While I am far past the days of making performance art about my own predilections, predations and perversities, I will still on occasion watch others do it. Personally, I just burned out on living my private life in public. When you’re open about non-traditional sexuality it is easy for others to demonize and vilify you, or to spread libelous and malicious rumors. So I applaud people who are willing to explore these issues in a performance context and risk cennsure and ridicule. Yet I’m wary of the results, as these efforts are often overly earnest and less-than-artful.
After multiple solicitations I went to go see Pack of Others‘ Peg-Ass-Us as part of the HOT Festival at Dixon Place (sometimes known as DP). The description of the show was “A tale of boy-meets-girl, but the whole involves much more than the sum of their parts! In a no-holes-barred sexploration of ‘pegging,’ these lovers sing, dance and tease along the delicious line between fetish/preference, queer/straight, wrong and oh-so right…” which is pretty much what it delivered.
In the show Sophie Nimmannit and John Leo present a lighthearted and entertaining story of their relationship which has a few kinks in it - mainly that John likes to get pegged. Over the course of the evening they discuss the logistics of pegging, John’s sexual history and his discovery of his fetish, and various lessons in biology, anatomy, mythology and dancing. I think there was dancing. There was definitely music, burlesque, puppetry and audience participation. Oh and nudity. Full-frontal, both genders. It was a fun show and managed to treat some pretty uncomfortable topics lightly and humorously.
That being said - I felt that while they TOLD a lot of information, they didn’t necessarily reveal what is going on underneath. They briefly talked about John’s background but very little about Sophie’s and spent even less time discussing the interior worlds that accompany the sexual experience. I understand that it is a story of a relationship and kind of a funny Sex Ed lecture/demo gone awry - but I wanted it to be fictionalized and more narrative somehow, to have an arc, to trace the evolution from ignorance to puzzlement to awareness to action; whether it is coming out as a gay or realizing ones unconventional predilections, the process of discovery is usually gradual and moves through phases. I think that journey could serve as the architecture of the piece and the other bits could come off of there - it is more interesting to follow someone’s path to self-knowledge than learn about the mechanics of a sex act.
Also, at one point they talked about meeting each other and how they both were glad to find someone to “explore” with, not on the internet. I think that is a really interesting story as well, something I would have liked to have seen enacted, not just described. How do people negotiate intimacy? How do people set boundaries? How do we reveal our secrets to each other and what does it mean to find someone who will accept you despite, or perhaps even celebrate you for, your eccentricities?
So, its a fun show with attractive performers - both of whom are gifted clowns and physical theater artists - but I think they could do more with the material at hand.
On the opposite end of the perversity spectrum is James Carter’s Feeder: A Love Story as part of Collective:Unconscious’s undergroundzero festival. Feeder tells the story of Jesse, an overweight woman, and Noel, her lover. Noel is a feeder, Jesse is a gainer. That is exactly what you think it is. Noel is an aspiring dominant with a fetish for morbidly obese women and Jesse is a heavy-set submissive who likes to be taken care of. Noel feeds Jesse and she gains weight, lots of it. I don’t want to give anything away but let’s just say things get out of hand. Their love is predicated on this extreme relationship and it works both as metaphor and as fetish. Jennifer Conley Darling gives a powerful and nuanced performance as Jesse and Kevin Cristaldi is sympathetic and convincing as Noel.
While the show is a little uneven I have to give the writer, director and actors credit for making this creepy and somewhat implausible fetish completely real and believable. It is a really fucked-up play about some seriously fucked-up people. But underneath their dysfunction there is something resembling a need for love; there are real human impulses behind it and I found myself simultaneously amused, horrified and saddened by the events onstage.
As I said, I think it is risky to explore weird sex stuff in a theater, but I think Feeder does it in a thoughtful way - not just talking about the perversity of the fetish, but exploring the emotional undercurrents and power dynamics. There’s no nudity, no sex, not even any profanity, and yet it is unsettling and a little shocking. It is not experimental - it is definitely a play play - but it was fun to see a well-made conventional play take on such unconventional material.
And on a completely different but somewhat related note, my friend Rachel has a book on spanking coming out:
Old Uncle Culturebot has been doing a lot of soul searching of late. Wrestling with big issues and ideas, life, you know - existential shit. If he were a character from Winnie The Pooh he would definitely be Eeyore with frequent but sporadic bouts of Tigger-y goodness.
Anyhoo, last night we got one of our rare invitations to see a Broadway show. Usually Culturebot only gets Broadway tickets either when the show is totally lame and they’re trying to get some kind of manufactured buzz going or when its downtown kids made good. I still usually get stuck in the nosebleeds (even my friend who edits a theater publication for teenagers gets to sit in the orchestra!) - Dammit, people, don’t you understand that I am FAMOUS AMONG DOZENS!! I am a TITAN OF CULTURE!!! You must BOW BEFORE ME PUNY HUMANS!! Okay, maybe not, whatevs. But gosh darn it don’t we love it when the downtown kids make good. And by kids I mean, you know, people in their 30s and early 40s who have busted their friggin’ humps since they were 21 working day jobs to pursue their dreams of being able to make a living wage and maybe getting some health insurance for doing what they love.l
So praise the lord and pass the ammunition for [title of show], the little musical that could and did and, god willing, is going to run a good long time. And I think it will. Unlike the last “downtown kids made good” musical to his Broadway - Passing Strange - I don’t think [title of show] will have trouble finding audience. Basically, Broadway audiences are heavily populated by young folks who dream of being on the Broadway stage (and the parents who indulge them). And since this show speaks directly to their dreams and aspirations, I think its a sure bet.
But wait! Its not just for those kids, oh no. Its for everyone who has ever had a dream, goldangit, and who has worked and sweated and persevered in the face of obstacles. It is for anyone who has done that and still has a sense of humor and likes catchy tunes.
Its like Rent only not totally full of shit. The cast of [title of show] is hilarious and funny, the writing is sharp and the music (I’m not a musicals person so I’m not authoratitive) is really enjoyable and catchy. But the best part is the show isn’t pretentious, nor is it stupid. Its true. And to be honest, after seeing a lot of really, really experimental stuff over the past few months, it is nice to see a show that is both artful and entertaining, that gives you emotional satisfaction while shedding a little insight into your life. Look, is it about big ideas and huge concepts? No. Will it make you laugh and possibly cry? Yes, yes it will. I cried, I did. During Susan Blackwell’s “Die, Vampires, Die” song - where she does this wonderful little speech about the Vampires of Despair, I cried. But those of you who know Uncle Culturebot know that he is a softie, he is emotional, he is a sensitive nurturing caregiver who brutally excoriates and crushes the people he loves best. (jk, totes jk!)
But enough about me. Why are you still sitting here reading? Why aren’t you clicking here to buy tickets!? Let’s make sure these plucky thespians get to stay on Broadway for a long, long, long time!
Reggie Watts and I are constructing our next show TRANSITION for the 2008 Portland Institute of Contemporary Art’s Time-Based Arts Festival, and we need 24 actors to star in a filmed staged rehearsal for a fake avant-garde production of Neil Simon’s “The Odd Couple”. Renamed “The Odd Dozen,” the short documentary will chronicle the rigors of staging a version of the Simon classic, with 12 Felixes and 12 Oscars inhabiting the stage at once, speaking in chorus.
We need 24 actors of any size, shape, race, age, etc.
You do not even have to be an actor.
Just show up and have fun.
WNYC and NPR Music will team up to present a special live webcast of Celebrate Brooklyn! and Wordless Music’s presentation of Deerhoof and Metropolis Ensemble at the Prospect Park Bandshell, on Friday, July 18th at 7:30pm. The concert can be heard on WNYC2, WNYC’s 24-hour online music service, available at www.wnyc.org, and at www.npr.org/music.
WNYC’s David Garland, weekend host of Evening Music and mastermind behind Spinning on Air, will host the concert and interview some of the performers and creative minds behind this innovative pairing during intermission. In addition, www.npr.org/music will host a live chat-room for listeners, and will upload photos of the event to the site as it happens.
WNYC will present an encore broadcast on Friday, August 1 at 8pm on 93.9FM, and the concert will remain available for on-demand streaming at www.wnyc.org and www.npr.org/music
The mercurial San Francisco experimentalists Deerhoof have been called “the most creative band in indie rock today” by LA Weekly, among countless discerning critics. They forge a distinctive sound out of sophisticated improvisation, fierce dissonance, and weirdly catchy melodies. Deerhoof is paired with the ground-breaking Metropolis Ensemble, which will perform two works: The Rite: Remixed, a collaboration between composers Ryan Francis and Ricardo Romaneiro and producer/engineer Leo Leite using the latest software for music notation and performance from electronica to re-mix Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring; and Two-Part Belief, by composer Ricardo Romaneiro, which employs similar ground-breaking technological and performative techniques to a new end: the creation of a new music composition.
I’ve been cleaning my apartment and found this poem that I wrote back when I was writing poetry. I haven’t had much time to do anything creative personally for awhile and with my marginal cultural authority beginning to wane I might as well full and truly indict myself as a dilettante and almost-ran man of occasional letters.
CREPUSCULE
Your room is always cold.
Roll over, dear, give me back my arm.
And some blanket.
Please?
We have written poems of a sort:
there is ink on our fingers,
there are papers on the floor.
We had words
that came to blows
that came to kisses
that came to blows
that came to words.
That is how we make love and poems.
And it is evening, slate grey, again.
Looking over the foot of the bed
there are more cigarettes in the ashtray
than I can count from here:
three empty bottles of wine,
another half-empty,
and one nearly full.
We laughed when the check-out girl
looked at us
with our wine and cigarettes
and our single bag of chips
and said, “Dinner?”
Call for Submission
CREATIVE CARTOGRAPHIES
Curator: Jeanne Gerrity
BAC Gallery invites artists working in photography, painting, drawing, and mixed media to apply. Creative Cartographies will explore the contemporary impulse to create structure and meaning in an increasingly chaotic world through the incorporation of maps into visual media. The works in the exhibition should not only depict literal maps of actual locations, but also represent imagined geographies rooted in the artists’ own subjectivity.
Deadline: July 17, 2008
* Only two-dimensional work / work that can be hung on the wall will be considered for this exhibition. (Unfortunately we cannot accept video submissions, but you can submit a still as a stand alone image.)
* All work chosen must be sturdily framed with D rings (paintings on stretcher bars do not need to be framed but should have D rings
* All work must have been conceived within the past three years.
at DEITCH STUDIOS
Andy
bbarbareschi
vanessa