Culturebot

Hi All. I’m way behind on posting. I have too many jobs! But I will try and catch up this weekend, there’s lots of great stuff going on in NYC and all around the world! So, I will make my semi-regular call for writers. If you would like to get involved with Culturebot as a writer, send me a cover letter, writing sample (or links to writing samples) and resume at culturebot[at]gmail[dot]com.

I also need:

An Associate Producer for a collaborative theater project

A house manager/operations mgr/ managing director type person for the new performance space

AND most immediately I had a cancellation and need a third performer for the IRT benefit on Saturday night. Something funny, fun and 3-5 minutes long.

Once again, just email me at culturebot[at]gmail[dot]com and put something obvious in the subject line.

As usual, none of these positions are paid. Yet.

One Love!

Applications are now being accepted for the Conflux Festival 2008. Conflux is the art and technology festival for the creative exploration of urban public space.

I was at the Soho Rep party last night which was awesome! I know a lot of folks are out of town this weekend for Mother’s Day or what-have-you but still… I hope you can come to the IRT A.I.R. Open House Party Saturday night. It will hopefully be the first of many as we build a groovy new artistic community in our “Haiku Theater” in the West Village! We’ve got a great team of volunteers cleaning out the space from top to bottom all week long - its going to be a sight to behold!

See our space! Bring your friends! Make some new ones!
at
IRT Theater’s first A.I.R. Benefit Party
Celebrating the NEW ERA of IRT and the beginning of our Artist in Residence Program!
Saturday, May 10th 2008 from 7PM-12AM.
Open vodka bar from 7PM-9PM brought to you by SVEDKA
Dancing to DJ NICK HOOK, DJ Danny(face) and DJ Todd Weinstock.
Visuals by The Sunday Experiment!
& Special Guest Performances from Cherry Pitz, Kara Tyler & more!!

Admission is FREE; but donations are gladly accepted and heartily encouraged!
IRT
154 Christopher St. #3B
New York, NY 10014

www.IRTtheater.org

PS - we’ll still be going long after Avant-Garde-Arama at PS122 has wound down, so come on by after!

Here I am (I’m in the middle, with the bushy-ass beard!) at the HEEB Magazine release party for Rachel Shukert’s new book Have You No Shame?

photo by Mike Garten

For more party pix go here.
And definitely go buy Rachel’s book - its awesome!

Rachel used to write for us here at Culturebot. As soon as I figure out how to re-do author attributions, I will specify her posts. Or maybe her tags. She wrote about Richard Foreman, Amsterdam, and a bunch of other smart, hilarious columns!

SOHO REP WRITER/DIRECTOR LAB
10TH ANNIVERSARY PARTY
Monday, May 5 at 9pm
at Soho Rep

Free. First come, first served.
Celebrate the 10th anniversary of this landmark program.

We’ve all been having this conversation in private for a LONG time. Now Mike Daisey has not only made it public, he’s made it BIG TIME. Come join in the conversation as he takes his show to the Barrow Street Theatre. And then let’s figure out how to fix this dysfunctional beast all us theater junkies know and love. Info from press release below:

HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA, Mike Daisey’s monologue about theater, failure, passion, and hope, will transfer directly from a sold-out, critically-acclaimed run at Joe’s Pub to a strictly limited 6-week engagement at Off-Broadway’s Barrow Street Theatre.  Created and performed by Mike Daisey and directed by Jean-Michele Gregory, the show begins performances at the Barrow Street Theatre on Friday, May 16.  Final performance at Joe’s Pub: Sunday, May 11.

Mike Daisey has been called “the master storyteller…one of the finest solo performers of his generation” by the New York Times. In HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA he sinks his razor-sharp wit into a subject he knows well: the American theater, from the sublimely crass to the genuinely ugly. From gorgeous new theaters standing empty as cathedrals, to “successful” working actors traveling like migrant farmhands, to an arts culture unwilling to speak or listen to its own nation, Daisey takes stock of the dystopian state of theater in America: a shrinking world with smaller audiences every year. Fearlessly implicating himself and the system he works within, Daisey seeks answers to essential and dangerous questions about the art we’re making, the legacy we leave the future, and who it is we believe we’re speaking to.

HOW THEATER FAILED AMERICA earned rave reviews in its run at Joe’s Pub which began April 14th.  Variety wrote, “Surprising and poetic.  This piece should reach anyone who believes in live performance,” and Time Out New York declared, “Not only vastly entertaining, it’s also a call to action.”

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I remember the first time I saw the Grateful Dead. Well, actually, I don’t remember very clearly. It was sometime in 1983 or 1984, I was too young to drive but one of my friends’ older brothers was really into them and somehow we ended up going. At least I think that’s what happened. I can’t imagine that any of our mothers’ would have allowed us to go.

(Random side note, through the magic of Facebook I just found out that my high school friend Steve is now a philosophy professor at Gettysburg and wrote a book on Philosophy and the Grateful Dead!)

Anyway, the thing is, that it was an overwhelming experience – all these crazy-looking people doing weird stuff, all kinds of little dramas and surreal scenarios unfolding all around, and a few regular-looking guys onstage playing songs that went on forever, frequently transforming from songs into feedback and noise and strange Sci-Fi soundscapes. I was fascinated and excited by the promise of exoticism, rebellion and new worlds, certainly this was the strangest thing my sheltered 14-year-old suburban self had encountered. At the same time I was occasionally really bored. Everyone seemed to operating on some different level and I didn’t quite know why. Then I dropped acid.

This weekend I saw two very different shows that caused me to reflect back on what I learned from acid: Nellie McKay at the Rubin Museum and Fire Island at 3 Legged Dog.

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The Polish Cultural Institute and Martin E. Segal Theatre Center present

An evening with TR WARSZAWA’s Artistic Director GRZEGORZ JARZYNA

The Polish Cultural Institute and Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, the Graduate Center, CUNY, present an evening with Grzegorz Jarzyna, Poland’s famous director of theater and opera, and Artistic Director of TR Warszawa, one of the country’s most consistently astonishing theater groups. Jarzyna will discuss his work with Susan Feldman, Artistic Director of St. Ann’s Warehouse. The evening will include a DVD presentation of excerpts from Jarzyna’s previous acclaimed performances.

Monday, May 12, 2008, 6:30 PM

Martin E. Segal Theatre Center
The Graduate Center, CUNY
365 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10016
tel. 212.817.1860
Admission Free!!

St Ann’s Warehouse will present the US premiere of Jarzyna’s Macbeth at the Tobacco Warehouse, Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park on June 17 (12 performances total, June 17-29, 2008).

“A master of suspense, the heir of Hitchcock, Jarzyna composes his performances like movies.”– Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“The best international theater New York still needs to see.” – The Village Voice

>>>MORE ON GRZEGORZ JARZYNA

>>>MORE ON TR WARSZAWA
>>>MORE ON UPCOMING MACBETH AT ST. ANN’S WAREHOUSE

Our pal Alec Duffy sent this in about what he’s got going on:

Here it is. Inverse’s next big thing. Call it a musical, a play with music, a song play, or whatever, it’s called ME, it’s at the Ohio, it’s filled with amazing songs, and it’s the cast of a lifetime. And tickets are on sale!

We open on May 3 (one week from today), so get them now at www.smarttix.com. And yes, the rumors are true - we’re going to bring a live fish on stage and…well…you’ll have to come see for yourself.

Read all about it!

Soho Think Tank presents

ME

A New Musical from Inverse Theater
Book/Lyrics by Kirk Wood Bromley
Music by John Gideon
Directed by Alec Duffy

May 3rd through May 24th

At the Ohio Theater, 66 Wooster Street

Tickets will be $18.00 for all performances except for Tuesdays, which will be $10. Tickets may be purchased by calling Smarttix at 212-868-4444, or online at smarttix.com.

Soho Think Tank will present Inverse Theater’s latest musical, Me, directed by Alec Duffy, with book and lyrics by Kirk Wood Bromley and music by John Gideon. Performances will be at the Ohio Theater, located at 66 Wooster Street, between Spring and Broome Streets in Soho. Performances will begin on Saturday, May 3rd, continuing through Saturday, May 24th.

When Kirk Wood Bromley set out to write a text about himself, the result was something other than a simple autobiography. Similar to Charlie Kaufman’s film ”Adaptation,” where the author set out to adapt a novel but ended up writing a film about a writer trying to adapt a novel, Me is a theatrical meditation on self-identity, where Bromley starts out looking to write a play about himself and takes detours through his personal relationship with his placenta, the recent extinction of the white river dolphin of the Yangtze in China, and just what exactly he means when he says, “I am the chosen fish, chosen by me / To save the planet from humanity.”

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BK/BA (brooklyn/bay area) collaboration ripping your face off with experimental theater. woo-ha!!

SHOTGUN PLAYERS PRESENT
Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage
A Songplay
WRITTEN BY JASON CRAIG
DIRECTED BY ROD HIPSKIND

Created in collaboration with BANANA BAG & BODICE

BERKELEY— Any story that survives the test of time will have a few battle scars. After 1,000 years of telling and retelling, who decides what the facts actually were? What was the story of Beowulf before it was written down and what is it now in the hands of the academics? Flawed heroes, sympathetic monsters and haughty professors collide as one of the most twisted stories in the literary cannon comes to life—with a live musical score! Beowulf opens Friday, May 16th, and runs Thursday-Sunday through June 22nd at The Ashby Stage in Berkeley.

Shotgun Players and collaborating company Banana Bag and Bodice have gotten down to work inspecting this classic poem—adapting its powerful narrative to make a new play that is part homage and part parody. Beowulf: A Thousand Years of Baggage will breathe an operatic voice, allowing the original epic poem and the language of modern musical theater a uniquely outrageous platform on which to unite.

Some would say the old world character of Beowulf is a rugged warrior fighting for survival. Others would argue that he is fighting for the destruction of society. Is the great story a structurally pagan tale with Christian overtones or a Christian tale inspired by the book of Genesis? With so many contrary ideas, the only reasonable plan is to create a new version of Beowulf, one where each narrator battles to tell the story from their own perspective.

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