Performance Space 122

Avant-Garde-Arama!
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, DANCE, MUTLI-MEDIA, NEW MUSIC, LIVE ART
Fri, Sept 18 + Sat, Sept 19
"Orchestrated mayhem and the excitement that ensues are the only predictable variables...Try as it may to maintain theatrical composure, [A.G.A.] always ends up degenerating, or exploding, into an all-out party." - Flavorpill

P.S. 122's longest-running series, this multidisciplinary mini-festival features an exuberant and eclectic line-up of the wildest experimental performance shorts to be found in N.Y.C. Curated by Salley May and the A.G.A. Committee, this year's off the wall extravaganza will be hosted by David Ilku and Gina Vetro and will feature season opening festivities. Anything can - and will - happen!

Cupola Bobber - Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me
N.Y. PREMIERE | THEATRE
Thu, Sept 24 - Sun, Sept 27
"...this pair of Chicago-based 30-year-olds can lay claim to a special talent for alternative performance-making of disarmingly odd, cosmic charm." - Donald Hutera, The Times of London

"What Samuel Beckett doing standup would be." - trailerpilot.com

A gigantic internal adventure of miniscule proportions that explores the Sea, both as mythology and as awesome presence. Using Cupola Bobber's home-spun minimal aesthetic and poker-faced absurdist charm, Stephen Fiehn and Tyler B. Myers - like Laurel & Hardy channeling Gilbert & George - visit the seaside and swim in the sand.

Way Out West, the Sea Whispered Me is a National Performance Network Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Links Hall and P.S. 122 in partnership with the National Performance Network.
Photo by Jennifer Korff

Maria Hassabi - Solo & Soloshow
WORLD PREMIERE | DANCE
Solo
Co-presented with Crossing the Line
Tue, Sept 29 - Sun, Oct 4
SoloShow
Co-presented with Performa 09
Thu, Nov 12 - Sun, Nov 15

Single ticket - $20, $15 (students/seniors/FIAF members)
Package for both Solo and SoloShow - $30

"The boundaries between dance, artwork, installation and performance are subtly blurred...every sculptural position suggests unverifiable meaning...The quality of the darkening light is as beautiful as a painting, but the effect - the music, the spatial emptiness - is pure theater." - Roslyn Sulcas, The New York Times (on GLORIA)

A diptych of two autonomous evening-long solos that play between opposing orientations. The performer moves from a solitary contemplation in Solo, to a devotion to 'show-culture' in SoloShow. Hassabi continues her rigorous exploration of representations of the female body - embedded within art history, pop culture, and the performance of daily life - dissolving into the physicality of contemporary dance. Performed alternately by Hassabi and Hristoula Harakas; with lighting by Joe Levasseur, clothing by ThreeAsFour, dramaturgy by Marcos Rosales, sound score by James Lo, and set design by Scott Lyall and Hassabi.

With funding from the National Performance Network, MCAF supported by the N.Y.C. Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by LMCC and The Brown Foundation, Inc. of Houston. Co-produced and presented by Performance Space 122, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, the French Institute Alliance Francaise (FIAF) as part of the Crossing the Line Festival, and the 2009 Visual Art Performance Biennial, Performa 09.
Photo by Marcelo Krasilcic

John Jahnke / Hotel Savant - The Archery Contest
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, MULTI-MEDIA
Fri, Oct 2 - Sun, Oct 18

"Dandy theatrical experimenteur...mind bending." - Time Out, New York

Downtown's enfant terrible delivers a frisky and hyper-stylized sex comedy that shoots straight into the heart of marriage in America. Behind this Technicolor Romantic Pastoral lies a glittering and scathing indictment of rules and regulations, rituals and rites of spring. A foursome and a sexton breach the boundaries of matrimonial shackles and dive headlong into a hedonistic lifestyle with complex consequences.

Presented by Performance Space 122. Developed at 3LD Art & Technology Center; with additional support from Art International Radio (AIR), NYSCA, and The MacDowell Colony. Photo (c) 2009 Josef Astor

31 Down - The Assember Dilator
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE
Thu, Oct 8 - Sun, Oct 18

"31 Down is an amazing and groundbreaking company and their work deserves a broad audience." -Martin Denton

The Assember Dilator is a sonic meltdown of science fiction and perversion focused on the development of x-ray vision and its consequences, obvious and unknown. Through hypnotic aural and visual design 31 Down is confronting issues of medical research, sources of funding and the responsibility of science in the near future. Dealing with themes of transcendence, control and greed, specific notions of human interaction with science and nature are unraveled. This is an intense work featuring a doctor and a nurse's journey, as they become lab rats in their own hallucinogenic medical trial.

This work was developed with the support of: free103point9, Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, The Bushwick Starr and OfficeOps.

Temporary Distortion - Americana Kamikaze
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, MULTI-MEDIA
Sat, Oct 24 - Sat, Nov 14

"I've never seen anything like this on the stage...so compelling, so haunting, so thoroughly absorbing." - Nytheatre.com (on Welcome to Nowhere: Bullet Hole Road)

"Discover Temporary Distortion...intimate theater for our time." - Le Mondé

Following sold-out runs at Performance Space 122 in 2008 and 2009 and a sensational sneak preview at Prelude '08, Temporary Distortion return and climb back inside one of their signature box structures - this time delving into the worlds of Japanese ghost stories and "J-Horror". A theater and cinema hybrid, Americana Kamikaze is haunted by vengeful spirits and doppelgangers, impossible physical manipulations, elliptical storylines, creepy sound designs, equally creepy cinematography, bizarrely happy endings - and even the saccharine pop songs.

Co-producers: Maison des Arts de Créteil (Paris), Le Manége (Maubeuge), Performance Space 122 (New York). Additional support provided by The Greenwall Foundation, The MacDowell Colony, The Nancy Quinn Fund, a project of A.R.T./New York, and the generous support of individual donors.
Photo by Jon Weiss

Morgan Thorson - Heaven
N.Y. PREMIERE | DANCE, NEW MUSIC
Sun, Oct 25 - Fri, Oct 30

BEST CHOREOGRAPHER 2008 - Best of the Twin Cities, Minneapolis-St.Paul City Pages

"Powerhouse" - Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times

Morgan Thorson teams with the sublime slowcore band LOW in pursuit of ecstatic perfection in a real-time performance ritual. This reverential spectacle transfers the myth of perfection from the religious to the theatre world as a roving chorus of performers undertakes angelic choral singing and Thorson's uniquely dynamic choreography. As extreme restriction is transformed into powerful kinesthetic experience, believers and non-believers, dance-enthusiasts and live music-lovers will be transported by Heaven.

Heaven is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by Diverseworks (Houston) in partnership with Performance Space 122 (New York), The Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), and NPN.
Photo by Cameron Wittig

Rabih Mroué - Rabih Mroué's Gift to New York
THEATRE
Sat, Nov 7, Sun Nov 8

A surprise reading for New York by an unannounced guest, followed by a selection of Mroué's video works.

"Mr. Mroué belongs to a tight-knit generation of artists, writers and filmmakers that has put Beirut back on the cultural map since the end of the civil war in 1990...With a string of formally inventive, astringent performance pieces to their credit, they are to Beirut what the Wooster Group is to New York: a blend of avant-garde innovation, conceptual complexity and political urgency, all grounded in earthy humor." - Kaelen Wilson-Goldie, The New York Times

LeeSaar The Company - Prima
WORLD PREMIERE | DANCE
Wed, Nov 18 - Sun, Nov 22

"LeeSaar's dances always require unwavering attention" - Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times

The physicality and explosive tempos synonymous with LeeSaar's award-winning choreography mature and ripen in the company's fourth presentation at Performance Space 122. In Prima, five arresting performers explore a world of pure sensation and energy. Teasing out the feminine and the virile, they are alternately playful and bashful as they navigate sexuality and temptation.

A co-production of Performance Space 122, the JCC (Manhattan), Fusebox Festival, and testperformancetest (Austin TX).

Lisa D'Amour & Katie Pearl with Emily Johnson - Terrible Things
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, DANCE
Fri, Dec 4 - Sun, Dec 20

"Next time D'Amour and Pearl bring their enchanting work to town be sure to take it in." - John del Signore, The Gothamist

"The collaborative team of playwright Lisa D'Amour and director Katie Pearl make beguiling, innovative theatre pieces." - American Theater Magazine

Science Tuesday meets Oklahoma angst as Lisa D'Amour and Katie Pearl flip P.S. 122 into a low-rent IMAX and get up close and in between molecules, quarks and memories. Have you ever wondered if all those lives you've imagined yourself living are actually happening in a parallel world(s)? Terrible Things takes audiences on a T-R-I-P inside the many lives of Katie Pearl and her action-figure literary mom. Expect an in-your-body out-of-body experience shaped by Katie Pearl, three killer dancers: Emily Johnson, Morgan Thorson, and Karen Sherman, two Brazilian Jiu Jitsu wrestlers, and 1000 marshmallows. Featuring the choreography of Emily Johnson.

Photo by Shelly Reese

Sibyl Kempson & Mike Iveson Jr. - Crime or Emergency
WORLD PREMIERE | THEATRE, CABARET
Fri, Dec 4 - Sun, Dec 20

"Nervy, bewitching performance" - John Del Signore, Gothamist

Two iconoclastic downtown performers threaten our Aristotelian/Stanislavskian conceptions of contemporary American theatre and identity as we safely understand it. In other words:

Mike Iveson, with his demonic arrangements of the indigenous music of their native New Jersey, joins Kempson in a rapturous and obsessive melodrama of consciousness. Together they distill this 11-person play into a desperate and harried duet (Kempson performs 10 out of 11 characters; Iveson performs the 11th and also underscores the entire evening with barely recognizable piano arrangements of early Bruce Springsteen songs.) Part cabaret fiasco, part aesthetic holocaust, their dual dueling performance pits them in a life-or-death struggle for the right to devour the soul of the play.

Developed at Dixon Place, Soho Rep, Fusebox festival, Austin TX.

All ticket prices and programs are subject to change.

All tickets to Performance Space 122 Fall 09
$20, $15 (Students/Seniors)



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