CALENDAR » THEATER
Taylor Mac
The Lily’s Revenge
November 6-22, 2009
Thursday-Sunday at 6:30pm
photo: Lucien Samaha
Presented by HERE Arts Center
Taylor Mac’s epic extravaganza The Lily's Revenge tells the tale of a flower that goes on a quest to become a man and finds itself at the center of a revolution of flowers intent on destroying their oppressor: The God of Nostalgia. Part Noh play, part verse play, part vaudevillian theatrics, part installation, part puppet theater, and part dance, The Lily’s Revenge continues Mac’s radical experiments in genre-squishing and explores themes of alternative community and homogeneity in culture.
Supported by MAP Fund; Creative Capital; Franklin Furnace; J.B. Harter Charitable Trust; Lower Manhattan Cultural Council; New Dramatists' Creativity Fund and Working Sessions; New York Foundation for the Arts.
HERE Arts Center
145 6th Avenue (between Spring and Broome Streets, enter on Dominick Street)
$35
Tickets/Information: 212-352-3101
www.here.org
Archa Theater
1989 - WINDOW OF OPPORTUNITY
Documentary theater on the theme of: Freedom! Freedom?
November 10, 2009
Tuesday at 7:00pm
Archa Theater by Jan Langer
Presented by the Czech Center New York
Archa Theater’s documentary theater work asks if the people of Central and Eastern Europe, as well as residents of the West, took advantage of our window of opportunity in 1989. Within the framework of a fictitious live broadcast on RADIO 89 FM that incorporates dramatic comics Kurt and Kveta and online debates between Václav Havel, Jacques Rupnik, and JirÌ Cerny, this multimedia premiere examines themes of real and simulated freedom, escaping from the past, the connection between private and political worlds, and the borders between what was required under totalitarianism and what was conscious collaboration. Conceived by Tomás Vrba, Ondrej Hrab, and Jana Svobodová, and featuring Jaroslav Rudis, Eva HromnÌková, Philipp Schenker and university students who were born in 1989.
Created in cooperation with the Václav Havel Library and the Institutes for Contemporary History in Prague and Potsdam, Germany. With the support of the Culture Programme of the European Union.
Czech Center New York at the Bohemian National Hall
321 East 73rd Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)
FREE
Reservations: 646-422-3399 or info@czechcenter.com
www.czechcenter.com
Dragan Živadinov, Dunja Zupančič,
and Miha Turšič
Postgravity Art: Syntapiens
Informance: November 10, 2009, Tuesday at 8:00pm
50 hours for the 50 Years Theatre Project: continuing thru November 12 with interventions on the hour
Gallery hours: 12:00-6:00pm
Photo courtesy Zavod Delak
Presented by Performa 09 and Zavod Delak
The 50-year theatre project Noordung 1995–2045 was initiated with the idea that post-gravitational art is the condition under which art will be produced in the future. Noordung has performances scheduled every decade, and for its last performance in 2045, it will use a spacecraft to convey satellites into orbit to transmit signals to Earth representing the roles played by the deceased actors, while simultaneously sending 3D projections of their faces into deep space. Starting with the Postgravity Art informance on November 10 and continuing with hourly on-site and digital interventions through November 12, cosmonaut candidate Dragan Živadinov, mechatronic visual artist Dunja Zupančič, and designer of zero-gravity environments Miha Turšič will introduce basic concepts of theatre in zero gravity, fight for abstract theatre, and artistic satellites.
Eyebeam Art + Technology Center
540 W. 21st Street (between 10th and 11th Avenues)
$10
Information: 212-937-6580
www.eyebeam.org
Theatre of the Eighth Day
Wormwood
November 11-15, 2009
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 3:00pm (post-performance discussion on November 12)
photo courtesy of Theatre of the Eighth Day
Presented by the Polish Cultural Institute in New York and Abrons Arts Center
A rare revival of the Theatre of the Eighth Day's landmark 1985 production of Wormwood, performed by the original cast. Theatre of the Eighth Day, founded in 1964, inaugurated an underground movement of political theater in Poland. Wormwood, the group’s last production in Communist Poland, openly described life under martial law and ultimately led to the denouncement of Theatre of the Eighth Day by Polish authorities.
Supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Marshall of the Wielkopolska Region and President of the City of Poznań.
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street)
$15
Tickets/Information: 212-352-3101
www.abronsartscenter.org
www.PolishCulture-NYC.org
Playwrights Before the Fall: Eastern European Drama in Times of Revolution
November 16, 2009
Monday 6:30pm
Presented by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
A book launch for the first multi-author international anthology of Eastern European plays to appear in English. Edited by Daniel Gerould, the anthology features plays by Sławomir Mrożek, Portrait (Portret); Karel Steigerwald, Sorrow, Sorrow, Fear, the Rope, and the Pit (Hoře, hoře, starch, opratka a jáma); György Spiró, Chickenhead (Csirkefej); Matei Vişniec, Horses at the Window (Caii la fereastră); and Dušan Jovanović, Military Secret (Vojna tajna). The presentation includes staged readings of excerpts from the five plays and a panel with authors and translators on the playwrights’ role in the theatrical revolution of the 1980s.
The publication is supported by the Czech Center New York, Hungarian Cultural Center, Polish Cultural Institute in New York, Romanian Cultural Institute in New York, and Consulate General of Slovenia.
Martin E. Segal Theatre Center / The Graduate Center CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue (at 34th Street)
FREE
Information: mestc@gc.cuny.edu
www.TheSegalCenter.org
Deborah Brevoort
The Velvet Weapon
November 18, 2009
Wednesday at 7:30pm
Presented by La MaMa E.T.C.
A concert reading of The Velvet Weapon, an original backstage farce written by Deborah Brevoort and directed by George Ferencz. Inspired by interviews Brevoort and her colleague Pavel Dobruský conducted in the Czech and Slovak Republics with 43 ringleaders of the Velvet Revolution, The Velvet Weapon is a humorous examination of democracy told through a battle between high brow and low brow art.
Part of La MaMa EXPERIMENTS, a concert reading series of experimental plays curated by George Ferencz.
The Annex Theater at La MaMa E.T.C.
66 East 4th Street (between 2nd Avenue & Bowery)
FREE
Information: 212-475-7710
www.lamama.org
Dissident Acts: 3 Plays
Directed by Gary Cherniakhovsky
November 19-21, 2009
Thursday-Saturday at 8:00pm (post-performance talk on November 19)
Presented by the Theatre Department at Barnard College, Columbia University
An evening of short plays by Samuel Beckett, a member of the WWII resistance, and his political counterparts and dramatic inheritors, the Polish and Czech playwrights Sławomir Mrożek and Václav Havel. Beckett’s miniature 1982 Catastrophe interrogates the public role of art in a taut homage to Havel, at the time imprisoned for subversion of the state. Mrożek's 1958 The Police unveils the deep absurdity of totalitarianism, and Havel's 1975 Unveiling transforms this absurdity into the hypocrisy of its elite. Performed by students of Barnard College and Columbia University, with Hana Worthen (dramaturg), Simon Pastukh (scenic design), and Galina Solovyeva (costume design).
Partially supported by The Harriman Institute, Columbia University.
Minor Latham Playhouse, 118 Milbank Hall, Barnard College
3009 Broadway (at 118th Street)
$10 general admission/$5 with CU ID
Tickets: www.tic.columbia.edu
Information: www.barnard.edu/theatre/current_season.html
Untitled Theater Company #61
The Velvet Oratorio
November 19, 2009
Thursday at 6:00pm
November 30, 2009
Monday at 7:00pm
Velvet Oratorio. Photo by Arthur Cornelius
Untitled Theater Company #61 premieres The Velvet Oratorio, a retelling of the Velvet Revolution through text, choral music, and scenes based on Václav Havel's Vanek plays. The text for the oratorio draws upon U.S. State Department documents and corresponding Czechoslovakian / Soviet documents and interviews with journalists, diplomats, and ordinary people who were in the streets of Prague in November 1989. The Velvet Oratorio is a collaborative project between Edward Einhorn (playwright), Henry Akona (composer), and Karen Ott (dramaturg), the same creative team that was behind the Havel Festival.
Supported by The Czech Center New York and The Alma & Morris Shapiro Fund.
Bruno Walter Auditorium, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (November 19)
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue (at 65th Street)
FREE
www.nypl.org/research/lpa/lpa.html
Bohemian National Hall (November 30)
321-325 East 73rd Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)
FREE
Reservations: 646-422-3399 or info@czechcenter.com
www.czechcenter.com
Information: www.untitledtheater.com
Saviana Stanescu
NY Thru an Immigrant I or (r)evolution (Flagstories and other personal histories)
November 23, 2009
Monday at 6:00pm
Saviana Stanescu. Photo by Cristi Dima
Presented by the Romanian Cultural Institute in New York
Playwright Saviana Stanescu participated in the Romanian revolution as a college student in 1989. In this autobiographical performative lecture, she explores both her youth in Romania and immigrant experience in New York through the lens of a personal dichotomy between East and West and an ongoing negotiation between the old and new set of values.
Bruno Walter Auditorium, The New York Public Library for the Performing Arts
Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center, 111 Amsterdam Avenue (at 65th Street)
FREE
Information: 212-870-1630
www.nypl.org/research/lpa/
WaxFactory
QUARTET v4.0
Text by Heiner Müller, translated by Douglas Langworthy
February 24–28, 2010
Wednesday-Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 5:00pm
Production still from an earlier version of WaxFactory’s Quartet v4.0, directed by Ivan Talijancic. Photo by Tasja Keetman.
WaxFactory’s sci-fi QUARTET v4.0 stages East German playwright Heiner Müller’s controversial text in a sterile, post-apocalyptic world that serves as the arena for the vicious endgames of its protagonists. In WaxFactory’s production, the actors’ live performance is simultaneously broadcast with video images captured from multiple angles by surveillance cameras, which are edited, processed, and projected in real time. Conceived and directed by Ivan Talijancic, the production features performers Erika Latta and Todd Thomas Peters, surround sound design by Random Logic, video by Antonio Giacomin, and costumes by Haans Nicholas Mott, and a visual installation created in collaboration with architect Pavel Getov.
Supported by the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Greenwall Foundation, New York State Council on the Arts, NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and others.
Abrons Arts Center, Henry Street Settlement
466 Grand Street (at Pitt Street)
$15
Tickets/Information: 212-352-3101 or www.abronsartscenter.org
www.waxfactory.org
Revolution!
March 4-21, 2010
Thursday-Saturday at 8:00pm, Sunday at 3:00pm
Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre by Pavel Dobrusky.
Presented by Theater for the New City
In this new creative work that bridges puppetry, object theatre, and circus arts, Czech and Czech-American theater artists join together to offer their perspectives on the 1989 Velvet Revolution and an overview of the idea of revolution through the ages. Revolution! is performed in the tradition of Central European medieval street and traveling circus shows, using stilts and strings as a metaphor for an unstable revolution. Created and directed by Pavel Dobruský and Vít Hořejš with The Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre and guest artists from the Czech Republic: Facka/The Slap Theater, Pavel Strouhal, and Hana Kalouskova.
Made possible in part with public funds from the National Endowment of the Arts, New York State Council on the Arts, and NYC Department of Cultural Affairs. Additional support from the Trust for Mutual Understanding, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Czech Republic, Puppeteers of America, Materials for the Arts, Agentura Dell'Arte, GOH Productions, and private donors.
Theater for the New City
155 First Avenue (between 9th and 10th Streets)
$10
Tickets/Information: 212-254-1109
www.theaterforthenewcity.net
Untitled Theater Company #61
Rudolf II
March 5-28, 2010
Giuseppe Arcimboldo, The Emperor Rudolf II
Rudolf II’s thirst for knowledge, whether artistic, scientific, or mystical, was insatiable—as was his desire for lovers of both sexes. He was surrounded by visionaries like Tycho Brahe and Arcimboldo, plagued by visions of Libuše, and constantly attended by the mistress who had borne his only children, and his valet, a converted Jew whose secret relationship with Rudolf makes him the emperor’s most valued confidant. Set completely in Rudolf’s bedroom, the play is a portrait of an emperor who was both extraordinary visionary and self-destructive, as he confines himself and those closest to him to an increasingly suffocating atmosphere of paranoia and mounting madness.
Bohemian National Hall (November 30)
321-325 East 73rd Street (between 1st and 2nd Avenues)
Tickets: $18
Information: www.untitledtheater.com / info@czechcenter.com
BaPoDi (Banovce Underground Theatre)
The Gilded Red Cage
March 13 and 14, 2010
Saturday at 10pm, Sunday at 5pm
March 17 and 21, 2010
Wednesday and Sunday, 7:30pm
Silvester Lavrik. Photo by Vladimir Yurkovic
Presented by the Consulate General of Slovakia and The Tank
Slovakia’s Banovce Underground Theatre (BaPoDi) presents a program of two dramatic monologues by Silvester Lavrik, one of Slovakia's leading playwrights. Hana's Shame, performed by Katarina Morhacova, portrays a woman’s internal dialogue as she realizes that the main figures in her life simultaneously love her and destroy her. The Canary who Ate the Cat—a tour de force performed by Lavrik himself—captures the contradictions of socialist life via an endearing chameleon-turncoat-survivor who promises everything, yet delivers nothing. Plays are performed in English (translation by Janet Livingstone), with Radek Jahudka (set and costume design), Margit Garijszki (dramaturg) and Boris Lenko (music for Canary). An exhibit by Radek Jahudka of documentary photos from pre- and post-revolutionary Czechoslovakia will be on display in the theater lobby.
Implemented with the Plus421 Foundation and with financial support from the International Visegrad Fund, Open Society Foundation and the Central European Foundation in Bratislava.
La Mama Theatre (March 13 and 14)
74 East 4th St.
www.lamama.org/
web@lamama.org
212-475-7710
The Tank (March 17 and 21)
354 West 45th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)
$12
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com
www.thetanknyc.org
SAMETOVÁ - VELVETY
Directed by Pavel Dobruský
THIS EVENT HAS BEEN CANCELLED
March 25-28, 2010
Thursday-Sunday at 7:30pm
Hana Kalouskova, courtesy Agentura Dell’Arte
Presented by Agentura Dell'Arte and The Tank
Set in the Communist Ministry of Culture, a lonely young janitor daydreams while cleaning up the excrement of the regime. In her fantasy, the Velvet Revolution happens and she is selected to be the new minister. Using classic Czech cynicism and humor, this dance theater work utilizes an interactive set of panels that chronicle the events of the Velvet Revolution, and draws on influences from Hasek, Kafka, Kundera, and others. Performed by Hana Kalouskova, with an installation by Milan David, and documentary materials and projection by Pavel Stingl.
The Tank
354 West 45th Street (between 8th and 9th Avenues)
$15
Tickets: www.brownpapertickets.com
www.thetanknyc.org
© The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations, 2009