by The Happiest Medium on January 19, 2012
Superman 2050
Theater Un-Speak-Able
Writer and designer: The Ensemble, Theater-Un-Speak-Able
Director: Marc Frost
Superman 2050 is featuring seven actors performing on a single 3’ by 7’ platform. It is an original Superman story, taking place in a fictional Metropolis in the year 2050. At no time do any actors exit the platform, instead existing as either speaking character or background object in each scene, utilizing transitional moments both within and between scenes to shift between the two. It is a fast-paced, high-energy show for all ages.
Show Times:
- Thu 1/19 @ 7:30pm
- Sat 1/21 @ 2:30pm
- Sun 1/22 @ 7:00pm
Answers by Zachary Baker-Salmon – Producer
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Zachary Baker-Salmon: Our company, like the titular character in our play, hails from the Midwestern United States. We aim higher than corn fields and tornadoes, however, for our approach to storytelling is heavily influenced by European forces. Our “Platform Style” is taught at the London International School of the Performing Arts and our mentor is Italian. Did I mention she’s teaching a three day workshop coinciding with the festival? Sign up if you want to know where the real action is.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 19, 2012
Alita the Show
Writer and Director: Freia Canals and Denise Kornitz
A bilingual show (Spanish/ English) for the entire family.
Princess Alita lives in a world of luxury amidst the walls of her palace. She is oblivious to all that surrounds her and knows little outside of her own environment. One day she is sent on a mission that will change her forever.
Show Times:
- Wed 1/18 @ 4:30pm
- Sat 1/21 @ 12:30pm
- Sun 1/22 @ 11:00pm
Answers by Freia Canals and Denise Kornitz: Writers, Directors, Producers and Performers
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Freia Canals and Denise Kornitz:
We are from Barcelona (Spain) and Buenos Aires (Argentina), but we have lived in different places including Madrid, London, Oxford, Israel and finally New York.
Yes, we brought to our show all our experiences and a big part of who we are.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 19, 2012
The Knocking Within
ANIKAI Dance Theater
Texts from William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, MacBeth, Titus Andronicus and Othello
Selected and compiled by Wendy Jehlen
Direction, concept: Wendy Jehlen
Choreographer: Wendy Jehlen with Pradhuman Nayak
ANIKAI Dance Theater premieres “The Knocking Within,” a new text-based work looking at insanity and a dysfunctional relationship through texts from three of Shakespeare’s tragedies – Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello and Titus Andronicus.
The scenes will not play out in a linear manner, but rather will be woven into each other, so that the effect is of the disorientation of unmitigated mental illness and a relationship out of control, or is it the nightmares of two lovers?
Show Times:
- Tues 1/17 @ 6:00pm
- Fri 1/20 @ 8:30pm
- Sun 1/22 @ 3:00pm
Answers by Wendy Jehlen
Artistic Director
ANIKAI Dance
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Wendy Jehlen:
We are from India and the US, by birth. However, this work, and all ANIKAI works, draws on influences and deep study of traditions from throughout the world. The subjects are also universal – dreaming, the space between waking and sleeping, relationship, love, fear. I believe that our work speaks to that culture of people who do not identify themselves with any one place, but rather with a global community.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 19, 2012
WOYZECK MUSICAL DEATHMETAL
Gorilla repertory Theater
Writer: Christopher Carter Sanderson
Director: Christopher Carter Sanderson
Choreographer: Erin Porvaznika
Enervated by hunger and oppressed by his poverty, Woyzeck struggles to earn money for his common-law wife and their very young son. Scraping together money from his job as a private in the Army, which he supplements by doing odd jobs and shaving his captain for tips daily, Woyzeck slips into madness. As we have journeyed through this terrible landscape, we have seen everything through Woyzeck’s eyes using theatrical tools like cross-casting, rock, folk, and death-metal music and fabulous anachronistic costuming. Only in the very last scene, where the sheriff speaks clearly, does not sing in any way, and is dressed in contemporary costume do we wonder if Woyzeck was ripped out of today’s tabloid murder headlines… or set in Woyzeck’s hallucinatory world of late-1800’s Germany… or is it Norway?
Show Times:
- Wed 1/18 @ 10:00pm
- Sat 1/21 @ 3:30pm
- Sun 1/22 @ 1:00pm
Answers by Christopher Carter Sanderson, Writer of the book, lyrics, and music / Dirctor / Drummer
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Christopher Carter Sanderson:WOYZECK MUSICAL DEATHMETAL was born in Oslo, Norway where I lived and worked while it was commissioned and originally developed, in part with the help of a Fulbright grant. Many aspects of Norwegian culture influenced the tone and atmosphere of the piece, including Norway’s folk music and Death Metal music. There are one or two specific references that the perceptive will pick up, too.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 18, 2012
HORRIPILATION!
Kaliyuga Arts
Written and performed by John Sowle
Director: Steven Patterson
This stunning work combines the Natya Shastra, a remarkably refined and elaborately detailed pre-Christian theatre text from India, with Teyyam, a primitive South India ritual, to create a work that “plunges audiences into a dazzling realm of color and movement, virtually unknown in the West but filled with amazing insights and invaluable lessons for all those who treasure theatre.”
Show Times:
- Mon 1/16 @ 6:30pm
- Thu 1/19 @ 10:00pm
- Sat 1/21 @ 8:00pm
Answers by Steven Patterson, director
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Steven Patterson: Our production company, Kaliyuga Arts, is currently based in Catskill, NY, approximately 2 hours north of Manhattan, although our production itself concerns a westerner’s encounter with the practices of an ancient (but still living) Indian theater tradition. It therefore offers NY audiences an opportunity to view the basics of an art-form and a culture with which they may be totally unfamiliar in an accessible, entertaining, and audience-friendly format.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 18, 2012
The Night of the Assassins
National Theatre Company of the Dominican Republic
Director: Orestes Amador
The assassins of Jose Triana are three brothers who unfold a macabre game, dream about the murder of their parents, develop a generational conflict, and are accompanied by a hatred exacerbated to the abuse of the paternal power and the heavy oppression that feels.
Show Times:
- Tue 1/17 @7:30pm
- Thu 1/19 @ 6:00pm
- Sun 1/22 @ 1:00pm
Answers by Wilson Ureña, actor
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Wilson Ureña: we are from Dominican Republic. Our play has an international language that adapts to any audience. Day to day things, taking the subject of the peoples abuse to the weaker ones which results in more violence and vengeance. Which makes the audience see that Respect to your children’s decisions and choices is necessary so they can be greater human beings.
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by The Happiest Medium on January 17, 2012
GARBO
Writer: Joe Gulla
Director: Brian Rardin
This short comedy/drama tells the story of Joe, a gay New Yorker enjoying an extended holiday in Rome, Italy. Like any foreigner who visits the Eternal City, Joe’s daily life is filled with ever-changing sensorial delights – culture shock at its best! But, it is not until he happens upon the tiny, candle-lit GARBO BAR – hidden on a small cobblestoned street in the ancient quarter of Trastevere – that his emotional adventure TRULY begins! Funny and heartfelt, GARBO explores why life and love may be better lived outside the closet… even (or especially) in the shadow of the Vatican!
Show Times:
- Fri 1/20 @ 6pm
- Sat 1/21 @ 8pm
Answers by Joe Gulla (Playwright, Producer, Performer)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Joe Gulla: Roma! My play is set in a small, sexy bar hidden on a cobblestoned street in the ancient quarter of Trastevere… Rome! The name of the bar is GARBO. Experiencing GARBO is like being handed a First Class ticket to Rome’s Fiumicino Airport where a handsome Italian man greets you at baggage claim, tosses you on his vespa and drives you to the Eternal City’s coolest cocktail party!
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by The Happiest Medium on January 17, 2012
Legacy of the Tiger Mother
Book and Lyrics: Angela Chan & Michael Manley
Music: Angela Chan
Director: Lysander Abadia
Got Mommy Issues? Join us on a musical journey of old school parenting in a new country.
Show Times:
- Mon 1/16 @ 8:00pm
- Wed 1/18 @ 6:30pm
- Thu 1/19 @ 6:30pm
Answers by Angela Chan – Producer/Co-writer/Lyricist/Composer
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Angela Chan: East meets west in our show about a first generation Chinese immigrant, Lily, and her daughter Mei as they endure the trials and tribulations of old school parenting in a new country. We hope to show NYC audiences a taste of tough love, Asian style!
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by The Happiest Medium on January 17, 2012
Sanctuary
Susanne Sulby writer, actor, co-director,
Andrea Haring co-director
An exploration of the struggles and tragedies of war and our need for sanctuary. A fast paced energetic multi media exploration of the roles we have played in war throughout time. Multiple characters expose the connections of fear, bigotry, power and religion with war and how they find sanctuary from it.
Show Times:
- Monday, 1/16 @ 9pm
- Wednesday, 1/18 @ 6pm
- Friday, 1/20 @ 7:30pm
Answers by Susanne Sulby (writer, actor, co-director)
Karen Tortora-Lee’s Question
This is an international festival. What part of the world are you coming from … and will your show tantalize the NYC audience with a taste of your nation’s culture?
Susanne Sulby: Though this is an International show I am from the US. Sanctuary is about our Universal experience as women in relation to war. This Story is told through the eyes of the three main characters, the house wife, an international war correspondent and Sanja Sihilovic a POW in Bosnia. ‘Sanctuary’ exposes the connection of fear, bigotry, power and religion to war throughout history and across the world. Using multiple characters, Film projection, movement and sound, I explore the human tragedy of war as well as the roles and responsibilities of individuals in the conflict of nations. Sanctuary makes immediate on the stage some of the most pertinent issues of our time.
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by Antonio Miniño on January 16, 2012
L-R: David Riley, Sebastian Galvez & Juan Carlos Lopez in "Wearing Lorca's Bowtie"; photo by Sion Fullana
AENY-The Bridge is a non-profit organization which was established in the fall of 2010 to promote inter-disciplinary artistic collaborations and build a cultural bridge between Spain and the United States.
Last December I was witness to one of their great creations and wanted to introduce this fairly new company to The Happiest Medium readers.
Helmed by Josh Hecht & Ignacio Garcia-Bustelo, the creation was Wearing Lorca’s Bowtie, an innovative multi-disciplinary piece inspired by internationally acclaimed Spanish poet and playwright Federico Garcia Lorca’s trip to New York. The riveting production, which incorporated dance as much as acting and bilingual text, received a short run at the Duke on 42nd Street.
Both Josh (JH) and Ignacio (IGB) graciously answered some questions for THM.
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