Director Suzanne Agins describes the process of collaborating with director Benjamin Kamine on curating “Let Me Ascertain You: War on Christmas,” the first cabaret performance of the Civilians’ 2015-16 season. The show explores non-Christian perspectives on the commercialization of Christmas.
In this episode of Let Me Ascertain You, the Civilians’ podcast, we hear songs and monologues from “The Way They Live,” the culminating performance of the company’s residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014-15.
With “Pike St.,” her first solo show since 2006’s “No Child…,” Nilaja Sun explores her native Lower East Side through the lens of a family weathering a brutal hurricane.
“I was noticing that, especially within the theater, a good bit of the material that discussed religion — specifically Christianity — did so satirically. Any time I notice a gap — something that’s not being talked about or said or noticed — then I want to rush in and make something for that barren space.”
Theater artist Talya Klein recounts her challenging experience with “Habitus,” an installation/stage show from multimedia dance company Vector that premiered in March 2015.
Jack Cummings III, Artistic Director of the Transport Group, reflects on the process of developing his company’s show “Three Days to See” from the writings of Helen Keller. It played at New York Theater Workshop during the summer of 2015.
“The thing I ask the artist is: What’s urgent to you? And then also: What can you do with groups that you might not be able to do by yourself? There is a politic there. Some people address it head on in a very overt way, and others are more nuanced.”
Micharne Cloughley reflects on the Civilians’ season as the first-ever theater company-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for which she wrote the play “The Way They Live.”
In May of 2015, Jennie Hahn of Maine’s Open Waters performance collaborative launched a multi-year investigation into the Penobscot River. She invited writer Cory Tamler to help launch the project, which will inform a performance event in 2017.
“The breaking of gentrification, the breaking of cultural ties — it’s a lot of what is happening in Harlem for us right now. That’s what so many people talked about — just losing the thread of the community, of a kind of cultural identity.”
Writer/performers Ilana Becker and Emilyn Kowaleski are bringing two very different investigative theater works to Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, a series that highlights emerging artists throughout the month of June.
“The whole thing about a tech is that the designers are all trapped at tables… So, in a way, the degree to which an audience member is trapped in a seat is very much the way the designers are trapped at their stations.”
“We never felt like ‘professional’ professional artists.” German theater collective Turbo Pascal aggressively creates free and public art in a country where the state-run theater monopolizes professional opportunities.
Performance art duo PearlDamour investigates the corners of America in their latest community engagement experiment and site-specific performance “Milton.”
In his nearly 50-year career, investigative theater pioneer Ping Chong has explored some of the more controversial topics of our time and inspired others to emulate his methodology.
Copyright © Extended Play 2014
