One Night Stand
Friday, October 8 - 8:30pm
These young writers, directors and actors are here to stay, only you may not have heard of them. Yet. Five writers, five directors and ten actors were given one week at BRICstudio to create new plays specifically for this evening. New works by writers Scott Adkins, co-founder of Brooklyn Writers Space; Carnegie Mellon/Moscow Art Theatre graduate Sarah Buff; award-winning playwright Barbara Cassidy; Danish playwright Ken Nielsen; and fiction writer Matthew Wright, directed by Joe Brady, Michael LoPorto, Abigail Marateck, Jen-Scott Mobley, and Kurt Taroff were unveiled. Curated by Susan Melinda Dunlap.
Sonic Calligraphy with Karin Okada
Saturday, October 9 - 8:30pm
Sonic Calligraphy, features Chinese-American jazz singer Peggy Chew and her partner, Swiss pianist Adrian Frey, returned to BRICstudio to perform their hypnotic and unique blend of music.This dynamic musical duo fulfills Duke Ellington’s prophecy of an Afro-Eurasian eclipse.
Japanese-American jazz vocalist and pianist Karin Okada opened with a sultry mix of Brazilian jazz standards and original compositions.
Shaken, Not Stirred
Friday, October 15, 2004 - 8:30pm
The breakdown of language, sleep, and a chocolate labrador lead to a spiritual void of enormous proportions in four unusual, short plays: Why Can’t Condi Sleep by Jack Ferver, who left BRICstudio audiences cheering last season when he performed this work’s companion piece about Camille Paglia; T. C. S. by Richard Loranger, about a founding member of the Nihilist Anarchists of America; an excerpt from I May See You on Tuesday by Julia May Jonas and Jenny Seastone Stern, a dance theatre piece based on Thorton Wilder’s novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey; and Ah Anna! by Alison C. Solomon, a one-character play inspired by Gogol’s Madman’s Diary. Curated by Susan Melinda Dunlap.
Up in the Air
Friday, October 22 & Saturday, October 23 - 8:30pm
“This is not television!” - Akim Funk Buddha. Akim was born in Syracuse, and raised in Zimbabwe, his cultural homeland. Returning to New York in 1990, he came to the city seeking a culturally relevant style of performance. He taught himself to stand still without blinking, tell stories, rap, tap dance, and Mongolian throat sing, and has studied dance in Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bali and France. Up in the Air was, in Akim’s words,“a cosmic cabaret of aerial and performance art” that reflected the eastern and western cultures that have influenced and infused his work. The evening featured performances by Akim Funk Buddha; belly dancing by the all-inclusive group Pure (Public Urban Ritual Experiment); musical compositions by musician/poet Kevin Steele a.k.a Mr. Kite; and El Raka.
Danspace Project: Out of Space @ BRICstudio
Friday, October 29 and Saturday, October 30 - 8:30pm
Danspace Project returned for a second season with an adventurous program of bold new works by a range of emerging dance artists: a solo by former Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane Dance Company member Germaul Barnes; a reflective and personal solo by Daman Harun, and another by Mina Nishimura that experiments with abstract concepts, and yet another by Smruti Patel fusing Indian classical dance with American contemporary dance and musical vocalizations. Not least is the New Jersey-based Usaama Dance Company, featuring West African dance performed by girls aged 8 -17 and directed by Karen Love. Curated by Marýa Wethers. For more info,visit www.danspaceproject.org.
Ample Sample
Friday, November 5 & Saturday, November 6 - 8:30pm
Our popular performance sampler featured Everton Sylvester, Bed-Stuy’s very own poet laureate who continues to refine his mix of words and music; a world of love and loss portrayed by Karen Zasloff and Vlada Tomova with shadow by shadow puppets and an accordian; excerpts from the famous Indian mythological epic The Ramayana as retold by Trilok Fusion; Brooklyn-based dancer/choreographer Shannon Hummel/CORA's Good Side, a wacky, headlong dive into the desire to be all women to all people; and director Eric Hunt’s Seven Minutes in Heaven, an hilarious revisiting of an awkward teenage game. Curated by Michelle Moskowitz Brown.
Co-presentation of Thalia Theater, Hamburg, Germany and The Goethe-Institut New York: und jetzt / and now
Wednesday, November 10 to Saturday, November 13 - 8:30pm
Sunday, November 14 - 6pm
“Terrorism” entered the world’s vocabulary in a new way after 9/11, and has pervaded even the most ordinary aspects of our lives. Playwright and director Sabine Harbeke, making her debut with the Thalia Theater, weaves material taken from interviews with New Yorkers shortly after 9/11 into a new play that poignantly captures the subtle changes to the way we live, think and work.
A woman who lost both her husband and her lover on September 11 finds unusual ways to help others appreciate life. / A brother from Dresden is visiting his sister, whose husband has hung out an American flag and is celebrating his birthday in his office overlooking Ground Zero. / One person doesn’t want to forget; the other one is praying and wants to live again. / Six people — everybody, that is — discuss dogs in bed, children screaming at night, feelings of guilt, lies and hypochondria. They laugh, they cry, they drink. Two people dance, one sings. As always.
Seven scenes from after September 11, 2001 — Stories that could be taking place in New York or Hamburg. And now?
Making its US Premiere with these performances, und jetzt / and now features performers from Actors Studio and the Thalia Theater of Hamburg. und jetz / and now offers a chance to see the work of an emerging new playwright hailing from one of Germany’s most innovative theaters known to American audiences for Robert Wilson’s music-theater works, including The Black Rider. In English and German.