View a full press release for the 2016-17 season

For Immediate Release
July 7, 2016
ABRONS ARTS CENTER ANNOUNCES FINAL SEASON UNDER
LEADERSHIP OF ARTISTIC DIRECTOR JAY WEGMAN
Line Up Of Boundary-Pushing Theater, Dance and Performance Includes
12 World Premieres
“During his tenure [Wegman] has transformed the Playhouse and the building’s two smaller theaters from rental locations
to spaces that sponsor performance innovators like Taylor Mac, Richard Maxwell, Half Straddle and Les Frères
Corbusier.” – Alexis Soloski, The New York Times, 2015
“In a venerable 100-year-old community center on the Lower East Side, there’s an arts program with an exciting new
feeling–revitalized, innovative, and vibrant, with new student courses, new artist residencies, and a teeming new calendar
of events that involve some of the best-known, some of the newest, and some of the bravest downtown artists.”
– Ross Wetzsteon 2014 OBIE Award citation.
On February 12, 1915, the Abrons Arts Center’s Henry Street Settlement Playhouse opened its doors on the Lower East
Side. Since that day, it has remained a vital cultural resource, providing audiences with artistically bold work while
offering artists opportunities to dynamically grow. Since becoming Artistic Director in 2006, Jay Wegman has done
much more than maintain “one of the last standing locations for avant-garde performance downtown” (The New York
Times, 2009). He has created an arts venue that is unique to the city’s cultural landscape, presenting an international mix
of cutting-edge performing and visual artists, both established and emerging, from across the country and around the
world, as well as from New York City. In a 2015 New York Times profile, Wegman says Abrons is “a place for people to
succeed or fail or land somewhere in between.”
The OBIE Award-winning institution, has drawn a diverse audience to its historic home at the Henry Street Settlement on
the Lower East Side, and has garnered a wealth of critical acclaim in various disciplines. Abrons Arts Center’s 2016-17
season, the final one curated by Wegman, underscores the organization’s increasing stature and its unique programmatic
profile.
Wegman will be assuming the role of Director at NYU’s Skirball Center for the Performing Arts. About the 2016-17
season and his departure Wegman says: “It’s been a privilege to guide Abrons through the last decade of its lifecycle. I
wanted to create a vibrant home for artists – a place of safety and experimentation, where process is prized over product.
In today’s increasingly commercialized art market, I hope Abrons can stand as an example of an organization that places
the artistic work first, above all else.”
The lineup, comprised almost entirely of premieres, includes:
•
A unique mix of traditional circus, opera, dance and sound, Circus Amok takes to the streets of New York,
(Sunday, September 11)
•
OBIE Award-winner Brendan Connelly and Bessie winner Scotty Heron’s collaboration Appalachian Spring
Break blends the roles of choreographer and composer as they generate all movement, light and sound onstage,
(September 16-25)
•
OpenICE aims to share the most essential elements of ICE’s creative process--creation, collaboration and
performance--with a wider audience, through free concert and activity programming. Season launch September
16-18.
•
Joshua William Gelb directs the 1866 musical The Black Crook in celebration of its 150th anniversary,
(September 17–October 7)
•
Paul Lazar stars in Suzanne Bocanegra’s Artist Lecture: When a Priest Marries a Witch, (September 23 & 24)
•
Abrons will be partnering with Lincoln Center’s Boro-Linc Manhattan to present La Casita featuring an
impressive lineup of artist-activists exploring the far-reaching social, political, and expressive powers of oral and
visual tradition, (Saturday, October 1, 3-5pm)
•
Drag fabulist Dickie Beau brings icons like Marilyn Monroe to life in Blackouts, an ethereal revitalization of lipsyncing, and impersonation performance, (October 6 – 15)
•
Witness Relocation present The Loon, an evening length dance / theater performance inspired by the sociology
of domestic life and party games, directed by Dan Safer, (October 13-29)
•
Brooklyn Based theatre company Little Lord present NOW IS THE TIME. NOW IS THE BEST TIME. NOW
IS THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE, an epic treatise on trying to leave one’s mark on a world that never
stands still, (October 19–November 5)
•
The world premiere of Wilderness by En Garde Arts is a live documentary-performance illuminating the parentchild relationship in cases of mental health issues, (October 20–November 13)
•
Aaron Landsman conducts an art-based discussion with architects, urban planners and critics on the preservation
and gentrification of the Lower East Side, entitled Perfect City (Tuesday, October 25)
•
Trans South Asian performance art duo Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian otherwise known as
DarkMatter regularly performs to sold-out houses and are known for their quirky aesthetic and political panache,
present #ItGetsBitter, a stinging critique of the personal and political and an imagining new ways of being and
resisting together. (November 3 – 6)
•
Travelogues: Pere Faura; In no dance, no paradise, Spanish choreographer Pere Faura takes on the iconic works
of dance in this Abrons series curated by Laurie Uprichard, (November 11-13)
•
REAL TALK / KIP TALK is a series of live talk shows about the state of contemporary performance in New
York City, hosted by Kippy Winston, (December 3, February 20 & April 15)
•
Legendary downtown theater maker Anna Kohler is posing naked for painters – but who is looking at whom?
MYTHO? Lure of Wildness is a unique, immersive, and sensory experience, (December 7 – 23)
•
The eighth annual American Realness festival, (January 5–15)
•
The US premiere of Dutch choreographer Jan Martens’ Sweat Baby Sweat covers the lifetime of one man and
one woman in just one hour, (January 27 & 28)
•
New York City Players present a return of Richard Maxwell's critically acclaimed Good Samaritans, (February
8 – March 4)
•
This series of motivational speeches and TED-style talks by Tiny Little Band, entitled Your Hair Looked Great
asks us what defines the good life, and how do we define success? (February 9 – 25)
•
The Terrifying is a world premiere from Minor Theater, which brings horror movies to live theater,
experimenting with sound, darkness, silence and suspense, (March 9 – April 01)
•
Aynsley Vandenbroucke uses experimental literary devices to create a series of live, three-dimensional essays,
(March 30 – April 01)
•
Mourning Becomes Electra continues Target Margin Theater’s two-season exploration of Eugene O’Neill,
(May 3 – 20)
•
Commissioned by Abrons Arts Center, The Joyce and The Chocolate Factory, Ivy Baldwin’s latest work Keen
(Part 2), is an exploration of that which we avoid, the contours of grief, (May 31–June 11)
•
2016 Guggenheim Fellow Christina Masciotti returns to Abrons Arts Center with world premiere Raw Bacon
from Poland, (June 1 – 18)
•
Dylan Crossman’s dance piece Here We Are uses movement and an electronic soundscape by Jesse Stiles to
explore the concept of humanity within formalism, (June 15–17)
Show descriptions are below. Abrons Arts Center is located at 466 Grand Street, on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. Tickets
can be purchased by calling 212.352.3101 or visiting www.abronsartscenter.org.
ABRONS ARTS CENTER 2016-17 SEASON
[CIRCUS/THEATER]
Circus Amok
Sunday, September 11
Amphitheater
Circus Amok returns to the streets of New York for their 23rd madcap spectacle, adding a dash of opera to their singular
mix of traditional circus, new dance, raucous sounds, and twisted narrative. In an attempt to thwart what ails us, Circus
Amok uses high theory and low comedy to create a temporary euphoria, fueled by anger and seasoned with sass, sending
the spectator out into the world ready to turn up the heat.
[PERFORMANCE]
Brendan Connelly and Scotty Heron: Appalachian Spring Break
September 16–18 & 23–25
Experimental Theater
Appalachian Spring Break is the first collaboration of composer/musician Brendan Connelly (Obie-winning Theater of a
Two-headed Calf) and Bessie-winning choreographer/performance artist Scotty Heron – a staple of the downtown scene
in the 80’s and 90’s. Connelly and Heron play with the iconic, confused and clichéd relationship of choreographer and
composer, glancing sideways at Martha Graham and Aaron Copland’s only collaboration and its sepia-toned Americana.
The lines of collaboration are gleefully blurred in this duet, where all movement, sound and light are generated and
manipulated by the onstage duo.
[New Music]
OpenICE
September 16 – 18 & Spring 2017 [Dates TBD]
OpenICE aims to share the most essential elements of ICE’s creative process--creation, collaboration and performance-with a wider audience, through free concert and activity programming. On the heels of a blockbuster season of OpenICE
programming, the musicians of ICE catalyze a flurry of activity as they take up residency at the Abrons Arts Center for
the 2016-2017 season. OpenICE also invites the audience to be a part of the creative process through open rehearsals and
discussions, where questions about the works and the collaborations will be welcome and encouraged. High quality
documentation of OpenICE activities feed a growing online archive of HD content, which is free for all to explore
on digitice.org. ICE is thrilled to team up with the Abrons Arts Center engagement staff to turn the building into an “open
space” for sonic experimentation!
The 2016-17 OpenICE season launches September 16-18 with a celebration of new and different ways of performing and
experiencing music. Percussionist Greg Stuart and his students from the University of South Carolina join ICE to present
the World Premiere full performance of sound sculptor Michael Pisaro’s epic Ricefall 2, for grains of rice falling on
objects. Pisaro’s music will continue to activate gallery spaces through performances by ICE violinist Erik Carlson. The
weekend will culminate in a concert featuring new music by Icelandic composer Anna Thorvaldsdottir alongside master
vocalist and improviser, Sofia Jernberg.
[THEATER]
Joshua William Gelb: The Black Crook: An Original, Magical, and Spectacular Musical Drama
(World Premiere)
Book by Charles M. Barras
Lyrics by Theodore Kennick
September 19–October 7
Underground Theater
In September 2016 The Black Crook – often considered to be the first piece of musical theatre that conforms to the
modern notion of a "book musical" – celebrates its 150th anniversary, marking the rumored birth of the American
Musical. From the rubble of the Civil War, The Black Crook emerged taking an entire country by storm; an unprecedented
commercial juggernaut that contributed, whether first musical or no, to a popular melting-pot entertainment that blended
art both high and low. The Black Crook is an origin story for the spectacle that is America, and 150 years after the fact, it
will be exhumed once again. This production is conceived and directed by Joshua William Gelb.
[PERFORMANCE/THEATER]
Suzanne Bocanegra: When a Priest Marries a Witch, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra, Starring Paul Lazar
September 23 & 24
Playhouse
In 2010 the Museum of Modern Art Suzanne Bocanegra asked to give a lecture about her work. For that lecture she
made a theater piece When a Priest Marries a Witch, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra Starring Paul Lazar. Paul
Lazar, an actor long associated with the Wooster Group and co-founder of Big Dance Theater, performs as her, telling the
story of how she became an artist, growing up in Pasadena, Texas. Part personal narrative, part cultural history, the piece
focuses on a wild scandal that happened in her local Catholic church: a tale about identity, artistic expression, the Pope,
and obviously, a witch.
[MUSIC/SPOKEN WORD]
Lincon Center’s Boro-Linc: La Casita
Part of Lincoln Center Outdoors
Saturday, October 1, 3-5pm
An impressive lineup of artist-activists convene to explore the far-reaching social, political, and expressive powers of
oral and visual tradition. Here, wordsmiths share the stage with musicians and dancers to uncover how poetry,
song, movement and storytelling can unleash personal truths, construct identity, and fundamentally alter historic
narratives. The event includes performances by MC & Poet Toni Blackman, vocalist Gino Sitson and Legacy Women,
an all-women’s traditional musical group rooted in Afro-Dominican and Afro-Puerto Rican traditions.
[PERFORMANCE/CABARET]
Dickie Beau: Blackouts (U.S. Premiere)
October 6–8 & 13–15
Playhouse
Drag fabulist Dickie Beau embodies counter-cultural figures and movie stars alike. Miming to spoken word rather than
song, Beau has revitalized the tradition of lip-syncing, performing with the showmanship of a drag artist and the
melancholy of a clown. At home on the stages of clubs, theaters and cabarets, he has received awards including the
Oxford Samuel Beckett Theatre Trust Award
For his first major U.S. solo show, Dickie Beau conjures the wayward spirits of Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, and
journalist Richard Meryman. In uncanny impersonations performed to a shadowy soundscape of their own voices, he
merges reality with illusion and his identity with those of his idols. The result is an ethereal portrait of icons in exile and a
reflection on the lingering impressions they’ve left behind.
[THEATER / DANCE]
Witness Relocation: The Loon (World Premiere)
October 13–15, 20–22, 27–29
Experimental Theater
An all new, evening length, knock-down-drag-out, dance/theater show based in part on "Voices of the Loon” (an
educational record put out by the Audubon Society in 1980); the work of sociologist Erving Goffman; “At Home" - Bill
Bryson’s study of the history of domestic life; party games; and what happens when the party is going VERY late into the
night/next morning. A follow up of sorts to WR’s acclaimed 2006 “Dancing vs. The Rat Experiment”. Choreographed and
Directed by Dan Safer.
[THEATER]
Little Lord: NOW IS THE TIME. NOW IS THE BEST TIME. NOW IS THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE.
(World Premiere)
October 13-29
Underground Theater
New York City, 1809: an older gentleman of questionable mental health goes missing. Now, over 200 years later, Diedrich
Knickerbocker has reemerged in the Catskills, hiding out in the decayed ruins of a once legendary Borscht Belt resort.
When his anxieties finally manifest themselves as terrifying garden gnomes, and his vengeful liver-eating bird-woman of
a wife crashes through the ceiling, our modern/ancient hero is thrust from the mundane into the mythic. Inspired by
Prometheus Bound, The Book of Ecclesiastes, Dirty Dancing, and the writings of Washington Irving, Now is the Time is
an epic treatise on trying to leave one’s mark on a world that never stands still. Coleslaw included.
[THEATER]
En Garde Arts: Wilderness (World Premiere)
October 21–November 13
The Playhouse
Six kids stand at the brink of emotional chaos. A mother risks losing her child forever. Thoughts racing, emotions firing,
one question plunges forward: how do we persevere when we feel most alone in the world?
In this captivating documentary theatre piece, En Garde Arts employs their signature brand of multi-media storytelling to
illuminate the real experiences of young adults who struggle to find meaning in their lives, and parents who refuse to give
up hope for their kids. Developed over two years through firsthand interviews and extensive field research, Wilderness
features a driving folk score and sweeping video landscapes. The penetrating, no holds barred docu-drama transports us
from our familiar domestic confines to the brutal and enlightening solitude of the high desert, where we have no choice
but to confront our demons—and hopefully develop the courage to change.
[PERFORMANCE]
Aaron Landsman: Perfect City
Tuesday, October 25
265 Henry Street
Get a glimpse inside the process of Perfect City, a multi-form project that asks us to imagine answers to pertinent
questions about gentrification, capitalism, and community. Bringing young people from the Lower East Side into
conversation with architects, urban planners, and critics, a long-table discussion will consider how to preserve the
vibrancy of the neighborhood. Aaron Landsman is a singular performance-maker, playwright, and actor whose work
engages vital issues—from faith and suicide to empathy and public policy—across forms.
[DANCE]
Travelogues: Pere Faura (U.S. Premiere)
November 11–13
Experimental Theater
In this work, Spanish choreographer Pere Faura takes on the iconic works of dance – Singin’ in the Rain, Anne Teresa de
Keersmaeker’s Fase, Saturday Night Fever, and Swan Lake in his inimitable fashion with both enormous respect and with
his tongue firmly in cheek. Curated by Laurie Uprichard.
[THEATER / PERFORMANCE]
REAL TALK / KIP TALK (World Premiere)
December 3, February 20 & April 15
Playhouse, Studio 302, Underground Theater
REAL TALK / KIP TALK is a series of live talk shows about the state of contemporary performance in New York City,
hosted by Kippy Winston, media mogul, Internet sensation, and citizen of the world. Since Kippy's weblog took flight in
2008, Kippy’s larger-than-life persona and cottage industry empire has grown to encompass Kippy Winston Media, a
boutique PR firm servicing all things theatrical; The Radish, a semi-autumnal gossip rag; Just Ask Kippy, a brief yet
potent advice column; and an active social media presence. Formatted like a talk show but with room for debate, REAL
TALK / KIP TALK blurs the lines between art and life and challenges participants of all stripes and creeds to engage in
real talk about our starry performance landscape.
[PERFORMANCE]
DarkMatter: #ItGetsBitter
November 3-6
Experimental Theater
Expect poetry, comedy, fashion, storytelling, and a purposefully chaotic mixture of all of the above as DarkMatter debuts
new and remade works. In #ItGetsBitter, Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian share stories of navigating the
world as trans South Asians, delivering stinging critiques of the personal and political while also imagining new ways of
being and resisting together.
DarkMatter is the trans South Asian performance art duo Alok Vaid-Menon and Janani Balasubramanian. Based in New
York City, DarkMatter regularly performs to sold-out houses and was recently part of The Public Theater’s Under the
Radar Festival, Lincoln Center’s La Casita Festival, and the Queer International Arts Festival. Known for their quirky
aesthetic and political panache, DarkMatter has been invited to perform on stages across the world. Co-presented with
Mount Tremper Arts.
[THEATER / PERFORMANCE]
Anna Kohler: Mytho? Lure of Wildness (World Premiere)
December 7–23
Experimental Theater
A woman, naked on a podium, being carefully and bluntly scrutinized by the probing eyes of the painters in the room.
Who is looking at whom? Who is more vulnerable? MYTHO? Lure of Wildness is an experiment, a study of the beast
within, of beauty and it's transformation from young and fresh to old and worn, but not resigned. Conceived and
performed by legendary downtown theater maker Anna Kohler, directed by Caleb Hammond, and featuring renowned
performance artist Hapi Phace, MYTHO? immerses the audience in a unique sensory experience with media projection by
Shaun Irons and Lauren Petty and new aroma technology from Harvard team David Edwards and Rachel Fields.
[DANCE/PERFORMANCE]
American Realness
January 5–15
American Realness, the magnetic two-week festival of contemporary dance and performance curated by Ben Pryor, is
back at Abrons for the eighth edition.
[DANCE]
Jan Martens: Sweat Baby Sweat (US Premiere)
January 27 & 28
Playhouse
The acclaimed Dutch choreographer Jan Martens returns to Abrons with Sweat Baby Sweat, an investigation on the
symbiosis of storytelling and abstraction told through the relationship between a man and a woman. The result is a onehour performance in which a lifetime is passing. All Martens’ works explore the possibility of a perfect balance and
symbiosis between storytelling and conceptualism. He is not trying to create a new movement language, but instead he
molds and recycles existing idioms and places them in a different setting, so a new idea emerges. In his work the beauty of
the incomplete human being stands up front, rather than to excel in choreographic complexity or physical virtuosity.
[THEATER]
Tiny Little Band: Your Hair Looked Great (World Premiere)
February 9–25
Underground
What defines the good life? How do we define success? Why is everyone all up in trying to be about famous folks? In
their latest show, Your Hair Looked Great, Tiny Little Band (Ghost Stories – Time Out NY Critic's Pick) intends to find
some answers. In the process, they'll ask you to question life decisions, define value, and determine your role as an
individual within a greater society. A wild mash-up of motivational speeches, keynote presentations and TED-style talks
turned on their head, Your Hair Looked Great pops open the hood of the Ambition-mobile to see what makes that baby
purr.
[THEATER]
New York City Players: Good Samaritans
February 8 –March 4
Playhouse
New York City Players present a return of Richard Maxwell's critically acclaimed Good Samartians, a play with songs.
In a dining hall at a rehabilitation center, pleasure battles virtue in this urban story of an intake counselor and her patient.
Written and directed by Richard Maxwell.
[THEATER]
Minor Theater: The Terrifying (World Premiere)
March 9–April 1
Playhouse
The Terrifying is a new theater piece about fear. In a creepy little village on the cusp of modernity, two teenagers and their
families are stalked by a ravening monster. The piece takes cues from horror movies, but searches for a visceral scariness
specific to live theater, experimenting with soundscapes and tableaux, textures of darkness and silence, suspense and
sudden eruption. Building toward a final confrontation between girl and demon, The Terrifying asks how you can live
every day with forces that want to destroy you—including the urge to destroy yourself.
[DANCE]
Aynsley Vandenbroucke (World Premiere)
March 30– April 1
Underground
In this new performance, Aynsley Vandenbroucke uses experimental literary devices to create a series of live, threedimensional essays. She plays with the lines between fact and fiction, narrative and abstraction, legibility and
complexity. She works with - and against - the role of formal structures in writing, moving, and making a life.
[DANCE]
Abigail Zbikowski: The other side of disarray (World Premiere)
April 13–15
Playhouse
Fueled by the ethos and energy of punk and hip-hop, Abby Zbikowski and her crew of dancers, a.k.a. the New Utility,
present their newest work, The other side of disarray. This evening of hard-hitting physicality takes place in a combative
space between abstraction, representation, and function in dance. Performers continuously utilize, break down, and
reassemble ballistic action of the body, forcing them to simultaneously to locate their abilities to act, ignore, fight, freeze,
see, and be seen at rapid-fire speed.
[THEATER]
Target Margin: Mourning Becomes Electra
May 3–20
Playhouse
Mourning Becomes Electra is the most massive vivid complex drama in American literature – it’s a Greek tragedy, it’s an
American history play, it’s a family romance. Eugene O’Neill captured the essence of our country in this great trilogy:
love, race, money, and war. Now the unique sensibility of Target Margin shocks it into the present tense. Target Margin
Theater gets drunk on Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra. With passionate irreverence, this production
explodes the American project. Intimate and intense, entertaining and challenging, you will never have a ride like it.
[DANCE]
Ivy Baldwin (World Premiere)
Keen (Part 2)
May 31–June 11
Playhouse
Choreographer Ivy Baldwin’s latest work, Keen (Part 2), is commissioned by Abrons Arts Center, The Joyce and The
Chocolate Factory. This new dance for the Abrons Playhouse builds upon Baldwin's recent Keen (Part 1) for the
Philip Johnson Glass House in New Canaan, CT. Keen (Part 2) is performed by Baldwin, Anna Carapetyan, Eleanor
Smith, and Katie Workum, with a score by Justin Jones, lighting by Chloe Z. Brown, and costumes by Mindy
Nelson. Keen grows out of an open-eyed exploration of that which we uncomfortably avoid: the contours of grief – the
rites and rituals, spoken and unspoken, public and hidden, age-old and brand-new, grieving and salutary.
[DANCE]
Dylan Crossman: Here We Are (World Premiere)
June 15–17
Underground
Here We Are is a study on humanity within formalism by choreographer and former Cunningham dancer Dylan
Crossman. Through a mix of virtuosic, pedestrian and gestural movement, Crossman reveals the beauty and vulnerability
within, acknowledging human flaws and the desire to connect to one another. Jesse Stiles' electronic soundscape will
dress the Playhouse where performers will let each audience member see them for who they are.
[THEATER]
Christina Masciotti: Raw Bacon from Poland (World Premiere)
June 1-18
Underground
2016 Guggenheim Fellow, returns to Abrons Arts Center with Raw Bacon from Poland. For Dennis, a shoe-salesman and
aspiring personal trainer, it seems the fight to keep his life together after serving in Iraq just won't let up. He’s managed to
anesthetize the enduring wounds of that service with prescription drug abuse, but when he’s arrested on a domestic
violence charge and sentenced to Brooklyn Treatment Court, he’s forced to find new ways to handle his volatile tangle of
mixed emotions.
About Abrons Arts Center
The Abrons Arts Center is the OBIE Award-winning performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. The
Abrons supports the creation and presentation of innovative, multi-disciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their
practice with educational programs, mentorships, residencies and commissions; and serves as an intersection of
engagement for local, national and international audiences and arts-workers.
Each year the Abrons offers over 250 performances, 12 gallery exhibitions and 30 residencies for performing and studio
artists, and 100 different classes in dance, music, theater, and visual art. The Abrons also provides New York City public
schools with teaching artists, introducing more than 3,000 students to the arts.
Press Contact: Emily Reilly and John Wyszniewski at Blake Zidell & Associates, 718.643.9052,
Emily@blakezidell.com or john@blakezidell.com.
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