Themes

THEME: MANIFESTOS 2012

The age of irony is over; the age of the new idealism has begun! Or perhaps…certainty is over, and anything that pretends to have confidence is intellectually dishonest! Whether you are manifestly against manifestos (Richard Foreman), furious at the unjust conditions of the current field (Leah Nanako Winkler), quantifying the reasons we still make and need live art (Tina Satter) or just hoping for a performance-credo that will get the audience on its feet (Faye Driscoll), you will find your rabbleroused at Manifestos 2012.

THEME: THE FUTURE OF THE CINEMA IS THE STAGE

We are now in the fifth generation of artists making theater from within a video-heavy environment, yet there can still be a strange seam whenever projection and live performance come together. Wherever we looked, we found artists working on that border, basing their work on media techniques like editing (Phil Soltanoff) or live moving-image manipulation (Myles Kane), or repurposing Hollywood content into new, playful hybrid forms (Lucas Hnath, Jack Ferver). Those works that do their best to worry at the still-fraying divide have been gathered under an umbrella we are calling (to take Julie Talen’s phrase) The Future of the Cinema is the Stage.

THEME: IMITATION OF PARTICIPATION

Some form of participation is inherent in all live art. The debate surrounding authenticity and community in the process, content, and reception of performance is at the forefront of contemporary theater practices. Works that attempt to enact our shared political (Anne Dorsen), critical (Culturebot), spiritual (Niegel Smith), and anthropological (600 Highwaymen) experiences attempt to engage and expand our notions of spectatorship. We call this Imitation of Participation.

THEME: THE RETURN OF SINGSPIEL

Music and song have always played a central and defining role in the art of live performance, and the current scene is no exception. Young artists are reclaiming old forms (Avant-Cabaret, Andrew Ondrejcak & Shara Worden), subverting (Lumberob), and celebrating (Nellie Tinder) the communion embedded in theater’s oldest traditions. We call this The Return of the Singspiel.

Prelude.12 at a Glance

OCT. 3

OCT. 4

OCT. 5

Skip to toolbar