In anticipation of our next production Caught, an exciting art-theatre hybrid from Christopher Chen and Lee Sunday-Evans, our theme this week is BLURRING BOUNDARIES. Check out these five upcoming performances that merge mediums to creating exciting hybrid art!
1. The Paper Hat Game by Torry Blend at 3 Legged Dog, June 22 – July 17
A puppetry-projection-theatre hybrid from puppeteer Torry Bend and computer artist Raquel Salvetta de Prada. The Paper Hat Game tells Scotty Iseri’s true story of his adventures (and misadventures) as whimsical prankster “The Paper Hat Guy” through the language of Toy Theater and projection. The hero of this visual kaleidoscope has a simple game: handing out paper hats on the subway with the intention of bringing a bit of childlike joy to daily commuters. But even heroes fall on hard times, and despite the Paper Hat Guy’s daily attempt to brighten the city, the city isn’t always able to reciprocate. Torry Bend transforms this almost-true story into a constantly shifting landscape of city life.
2. Performance Space 122’s RAMP: Dane Terry at House of Yes, June 22 – July 17
A dance-theatre hybrid from composer, performer and writer Dane Terry. Terry brings a work in progress showing of his Sci-Fi stage-work, Mister Pictures In Boomtown. The piece centers around an art-deco skyscraper in downtown Columbus, Ohio spanning two different time periods 600 years apart. Dane Terry’s showing is the culmination of a two-week long residency provided by Performance Space 122.
3. Earth in Pain by Gio Kusanagi at STANDARD TOYKRAFT, June 24
Gio Kusanagi is the artistic director as well as the choreographer/dancer and his solo-dance will be accompanied by Helen Combers singing and piano. This evening-length-dance-theater will include Gios unique and wide range of dance vocabularies, based on American modern dance, jazz dance, ballet, martial arts, and Butoh dance (Japanese avant-garde dance), along with live music and responsive singing between Helen and Gio in the format of short musical-type-acting. The story includes the notion that the fundamental solution to the contemporary world problems is our retrieval of inner connectivity to the earth itself.
4. SONG by Leyna Marika P at HERE Arts Center, June 29 – July 2
SONG is a movement-based opera inspired by traditional Japanese theater performed to connect to the dead and departed. SONG is poem, a pocket of time, a wish, a lie, a piece of you, a fragment of me, or a way to become we. Taking place in a mysteriously mechanical space ruled by timelessness and music, a game unfolds guiding the performers in creating fragmented self-portraits as they express the difficulties around social life, the sense of self, and a longing to escape it all. SONG illuminates the thread between life, death, and music in a musically interactive landscape with seven distinct performers.
5. Golem by 1927 at Lincoln Center Festival, July 26–31
Like a giant graphic novel burst into life, Golem invites you into a dark and fantastical tale of an extraordinary, ordinary man. Created by the award-winning London-based performance company 1927, this synthesis of handmade animation, claymation, live music, and theater is a dystopian fable for the 21st century that cleverly and satirically asks who—or what—is in control of our technologies?
In Golem, which draws inspiration from both the shadowy figure of Jewish folklore as well as the early 20th-century literary work by Gustav Meyrink, humankind’s downfall comes about through a time-saving, life-simplifying gadget bought by the masses—a nightmare of the digital revolution made all the more ghoulish by the candy-colored world in which it is set.
