HERE announced its 2010-2011 which features presentations from many of its HARP (HERE Artist Residency Program) Artists. HERE is unique among downtown presenter/producers in its longterm commitment to artists developing work over the course of several years. This season is full of longterm projects coming to fruition as well as some return engagements and a few special presentations.

HARP artist presentations include:

“Border Towns” by Nick Brooke
Phantom Limb’s “The Fortune Teller” by Erik Sanko & Jessica Grindstaff
“Soul Leaves Her Body” by Peter Flaherty & Jenny Marytai Liu
“Mosheh” by Yoav Goal
“Secret Rendezvous” by The South Wing

Plus a Puppetry Festival featuring “Sonnambula” by Michael Bodel and “Don Cristobal: Billy-Club Man” by Erin Orr & Rima Fand

AND

SPECIAL PRESENTATIONS CURATED BY HERE:
“Sleeping Beauty” by Colette Garrigan and Company Accès L’air’
“As The Eyes of The Seahorse” by Mural & The Mint and Nichole Canuso Dance Company

— MORE DETAILS—

HERE 2010-2011 Season Line-Up:

First up is Border Towns by Nick Brooke/The Cabinet, which plays HERE’s mainstage from September 10-18. A collision of recordings from the borders, this production melds musical sampling, lip-synching, live singing and theater into a genre all its own. Yodels, anthems, ambient sounds and fringe broadcasts are layered in perfect lockstep with seven performers, who mimic sampled collages of sound effects, pop songs and musical ephemera in a theatrical reflection on location and culture. With myopic precision, musical Americana is reconstructed one town at a time. Border Towns is co-directed with Jenny Rohn, and performed by members of The Cabinet. Developed through HARP.

Also in September, Sleeping Beauty by Colette Garrigan and France’s Company Accès L’Air’ takes to HERE’s Dorothy B. Williams Theatre, appearing September 28 – October 2. At her birth they call her “Princess.” Her fate is sealed. Left to her own devices and brilliant imagination, this modern day Princess pays off her debts and takes her skeletons out of the cupboard once and for all. Arriving in the United States after an international tour, this creative retelling of the Briar Rose tale joins shadow puppetry, object theater and passionate monologue with a hard-hitting story filled with dark humor by renowned Liverpool-born French-transplant puppeteer Colette Garrigan. A startHERE and Dream Music Puppetry Program presentation.Soul Leaves Her Body by Peter Flaherty & Jenny MaryTai Liu plays a mainstage engagement November 5 – 23. From a boat, a light is seen blinking in a distant high rise. A family sits down for tea. An intercom buzzes, a home is emptied. A steaming cup of tea remains. Set in Hong Kong and based on a 13th Century Chinese story about a young woman who rips her soul from her body, this densely choreographed work unfolds live onstage through film, dance theatre, video, and foley sound. SOUL LEAVES HER BODY is a story for modern life, love and family. Developed through HARP.

In a special return engagement, Phantom Limb’s The Fortune Teller created and directed by HARP alum Erik Sanko & Jessica Grindstaff appears at HERE’s Dorothy B. Williams Theatre from October 28 – December 4. Seven unsavory strangers gather for a reading of a will. An alligator lawyer meets them at the door. Their future is in the hands of a mysterious fortune teller. Back by popular demand, this feature length marionette performance weaves the haunting music of Danny Elfman and Erik Sanko with an eerily comic and macabre tale of fate and fortune. Created and directed by Erik Sanko and Jessica Grindstaff, The Fortune Teller drew rave reviews and garnered strong audience response in an extended run at HERE in Fall 2006. Originally developed through HARP. A Dream Music Puppetry Program presentation.

Philadelphia band The Mural and The Mint teams up with Nichole Canuso Dance Company in As the Eyes of the Seahorse, a collaborative work integrating live music and immersive choreography. Nichole Canuso weaves a series of movement prose that reflects, joins and pushes against the power and presence in the songs of The Mural and The Mint, whose music spans the spectrum of acoustic lullaby to epic sweep, incorporating guitars, cajon, bike wheels, plastic cups, digital loops, pianos, analog keyboards and voice. Set to play December 9 – 11 in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre at HERE, the show is performed in the round, as dancers and musicians interact, trade places and draw focus to different areas of the space. A hemispHEREs presentation.

Back in the mainstage, MOSHEH by Yoav Goal is set to play January 26 – February 5. MOSHEH is a hybrid opera tracing the life of the legendary Biblical figure Moses. Through immersive video projections and highly stylized music, costuming and movement, MOSHEH brings four female characters to the forefront of the Biblical story – mother, sister, adoptive mother, and wife – who nurtured and protected the leader from birth. A series of episodes based on a short narrative in the book of Exodus follows the evolution of a hero from infancy through maturation and acceptance of his mission. The female characters highlight ancient pagan traditions veiled in the text, while their extensive arias, sung in Hebrew, are punctuated by appearances of God, a jealous and fearsome father figure, who bestows on Moses a harsh an arduous gift. MOSHEH evokes a spiritually charged, ancient/futuristic ritual. Developed through HARP.

Next in the mainstage is Secret Rendezvous by The South Wing, playing April 7 – 23. Led by Kameron Steele and Ivana Catanese, Brooklyn-based The South Wing theatre company presents its translation/adaptation of Kobo Abe’s 1977 novel Secret Rendezvous, chronicling the bizarre and erotic adventures of a man searching for his missing wife in a mysteriously vast underground hospital. This production is brought to American audiences for the first time through The South Wing’s neo- expressionist lens. Developed through HARP.

Finally, the season concludes in Spring 2011 with a Puppetry Festival in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre featuring two Dream Music Puppetry Productions, developed through HARP:

• Sonnambula by Michael Bodel. Bellini’s pastoral opera, La Sonnambula is peeled back to reveal the experience of young Amina on the day before her wedding, surrounded by her village but lost in her own mind. A sleepwalker, Amina exists in the space between sleeping and waking, vibrant and lifeless. Visceral choreography of two dancers converges with puppetry on multiple scales. Amina’s world decomposes. Soprano Mme. Giuditta Pasta, performed by Casey Cole, is brought to life, moments before she steps onto the stage of La Scala, 1831.

• Don Cristóbal: Billy-Club Man by Erin Orr & Rima Fand. For centuries, the puppet Don Cristóbal has charmed audiences with his drunken, lusty, billy-club wielding antics. But does he secretly struggle with his role as the Billy-Club Man and long for love and escape? Through

experimental puppetry, clowning and live music, Don Cristóbal, Billy-Club Man explores the violent appetites of Cristóbal’s on-stage persona and follows him off-stage to reveal his poetic possibilities. Inspired by the puppet plays of Federico García Lorca, the piece features shadow, hand and large figurative puppetry by Erin Orr and evocative original music by Rima Fand.