Photo: Maria Baranova
HOME is a large-scale, visual physical theatre work – combining dance, movement, illusion, live music and a lot of home-spun engineering – that explores and explodes concepts of “home” versus “house.” In the midst of chaos and entropy, we struggle to build community, infrastructure, art and family and yet, things fall apart. During the BRIClab residency, Geoff Sobelle will pilot innovative ways of working with unprepared audience members to recollect past houses and dream of future homes and open a space for reflection on homes, homelessness, housing, building, destroying and change.
ARTISTS BIO
Geoff Sobelle (Lead Artist & Performer) is an independent theatre artist and maker of absurdist performance works. With his roots in the Philadelphia collaborative theatre-making scene, his independent work has recently taken off. This work includes Flesh and Blood & Fish and Fowl (Edinburgh Fringe First Award) and The Object Lesson (Edinburgh Fringe First Award, Carol Tambor Award, Total Theatre Award, NYTimes Critics Pick). His work under the name Rainpan43 includes all wear bowlers (Innovative Theatre Award, Drama Desk nomination), Amnesia Curiosa, machines machines machines machines machines machines machines (OBIE award – design), and Elephant Room. He has been a company member of Philadelphia’s Pig Iron Theatre Company since 2001. www.geoffsobelle.com
Julian Crouch (Creative Consultant) is a Brooklyn-based theatre practitioner, artist and musician originally from the UK, known for his groundbreaking production of Shockheaded Peter, Satyagraha at the Met Opera, and the Tony nominated Broadway set of Hedwig and The Angry Inch. A co-founder and former artistic director of Improbable, a UK based theatre company, his shows have been seen throughout the world. He is particularly known for his incorporation of large scale live animation within his productions. Crouch is currently designing and directing the Berlin Staatsoper’s production of King Arthur, and the Met Opera’s 50th year Gala, and designing sets and costumes for Christopher Wheelon’s Nutcracker at the Joffrey Ballet.
David Neumann (Choreographer) is a director, choreographer, dancer and actor. He studied theater at SUNY Purchase and danced with several choreographers including Doug Elkins, Jane Comfort, Sally Silvers and Doug Varone. As his work expanded into theater, opera and film, he worked with artists including Hal Hartley, Laurie Anderson, Peter Sellars, Lee Bruer, JoAnn Akalaitis, and Robert Woodruff. Neumann founded his own company, the Advanced Beginner Group in 2001, with work presented at PS122, New York Live Arts, Central Park Summerstage, BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn, Symphony Space, and The Kitchen. Neumann and company have been honored with four Bessie Awards, a 2009 Creative Capital Grant, a 2011 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award for Dance and a 2014 NDP Production Grant from New England Foundation for the Arts for I Understand Everything Better.
Steven Dufala (Scenic Designer) is a multidisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia. He works primarily in collaboration with his brother Billy and is drawn in particular to works that explore overlapping concerns of various disciplines. He makes drawings, clothes, furniture, prints, music, sculpture, photos, books, and thinks about what all these things have in common and what on earth people do with them. Steven has been working intermittently with dance and theatre as a designer for about 15 years with Pig Iron Theatre Company, BalletX, anonymous bodies, Geoff Sobelle and others. With his brother Billy, he received an Obie Award for design with rainpan 43’s machines machines machines machines machines machines machines. The brothers co-teach sculpture at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and are represented by the Fleisher/Ollman gallery in Philadelphia. Their work is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the West Collection.
Stefanie Sobelle (Dramaturg) writes about 20th- and 21st-century literature, art, and architecture and is the author of The Architectural Novel, a book about the role of the house in American fiction, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Her work has been supported by The Huntington Library, California Institute of Technology, Society for the Preservation of American Modernism, and the DeYoung Museum, among other institutions. She teaches English at Gettysburg College and is an editor at the Los Angeles Review of Books. She shared a childhood home with Geoff.
Steve Cuiffo (Illusion Designer) creates unique performance, art, theater and magic. He is an actor and magician who makes solo, as well as, collaborative works with other artists and theater companies. His work incorporates aspects of sleight of hand, misdirection, imitation and re-enactment. Theater credits include: Queen of the Night (as Sarastro); Elephant Room (with Geoff Sobelle and Trey Lyford); Spirit Wife (with Eleanor Hutchins); Steve Cuiffo IS Lenny Bruce AT "Carnegie Hall" (St. Ann's Warehouse); North Atlantic (Wooster Group); Next Stop: Amazingland (Center Theatre Group); Digital Effects (Off The Grid); Hell Meets Henry Halfway (Pig Iron Theatre); Fluke (Radiohole); The Passion of the Crawford (with Lypsinka); Major Bang (Foundry Theater); Patriot Act - A Public Meditation (New York Theatre Workshop). Cuiffo is a two-time Princeton University Atelier recipient Artist. He is also on the Board of Directors for the Conjuring Arts Research Center in New York.
BRIClab is a commissioning and residency program that offers local artists time and space to explore and expand the possibilities of their work in music, dance, theater and multi-disciplinary performance. Work-in-progress showings, presented with moderated artist-audience dialogues, open artists’ process and creativity to BRIC’s diverse public. This fall, BRIClab features artists and projects mining ideas of migration, immigration and home.
Venue Information:
The intimate, flexible studio space within BRIC House is dedicated to emerging and mid-career artists, with an audience capacity of 50-75 for rehearsals and performances in a workshop setting.
Beginning Nov. 1, 2022, attendees of any BRIC House programming will no longer have to show proof of vaccination or a negative test to enter the building. Masks are encouraged but not required in all BRIC operated spaces. If you have questions regarding this protocol, please email Safety@bricartsmedia.org