Buy Tickets: Thu, Sept 21 Buy Tickets: Fri, Sept 22
JACK&JILL is a comedy of errors structured on social codes and trainings from prison re-entry programs to debutante balls. The performance considers the metric-less damages of being in prison; not the time one has served, but the measure of one's dreaming that is given to the state. Aspirational class stories like those of the 1950s sitcoms the "The Honeymooners" and "Amos and Andy" intersect with real and imagined entering-society ceremonies like debutante balls.
Directed by Kaneza Schaal and starring Cornell Alston, the artists explore markers of transition and transformation, and the liminal ritual spaces that bridge worlds.
General Admission: Seated
Kaneza Schaal (Director) is a New York City based theater artist. Her recent work GO FORTH premiered at Performance Space 122 and then showed at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda. This fall, GO FORTH will be presented at the Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans. Schaal received a 2017 MAP Fund award, 2016 Creative Capital Award, and is the current Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage. Schaal's work has been supported by Baryshnikov Arts Center, Performance Space 122, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Theater Communications Group, and a Princess Grace George C. Wolfe Award. Her work with The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Claude Wampler, and Dean Moss has brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, The Whitney Museum, and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Cornell Alston (Jack) is a long time member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts, a not-for-profit that uses the arts as a springboard to teach life skills to individuals both inside and outside of state correctional facilities. He initiated the Youth Empowerment Through the Arts initiative that launched in Queens, New York, and he continues to work as an arts-in-education advocate. Alston performed and collaborated with Kaneza Schaal on PLEASE, BURY ME at Baryshnikov Arts Center and GO FORTH during a Performance Space 122, RAMP residency. Other performance highlights include: One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, 12 Angry Men, and the title role in Ma Rainey's Black Bottom.
JACK&JILL is produced as part of the BRIClab Residency. 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.
JACK&JILL will have its New York premiere in the 2018 BAM Next Wave Festival.
JACK&JILL is a project of Creative Capital, the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project, and The Map Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation Fund Project co-commissioned by the Contemporary Arts Center (Cincinnati) in partnership with On The Boards (Seattle), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Walker Art Center (Minneapolis), REDCAT (Los Angeles), and NPN; and a commission by Hartford Stage through the Aetna New Voices Fellowship. Additional production incubator residency support provided by LUMBERYARD Contemporary Performing Arts working in collaboration with BAM.
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