Red Eye Theater presents NEW WORKS 4 WEEKS festival
Coming in June Red Eye Theater in downtown Minneapolis will be hosting a month long performing arts festival. This festival provides emerging artists with a platform to bring new ideas to light.
The festival begins with WORKS-IN-PROGRESS, where each featured artist has been given time in the theater to develop their pieces. This process concludes with four performances that feature a 15-minute excerpt from each artist’s work. June 3rd-6th
I Like You by Laura Holway
To create her piece, Holway invited four strangers to embark on a “6-month date.” As they share through dance, video and song what was discovered through this series of structured encounters, the audience becomes privy to the surprising connections, humorous revelations and unexpected intimacy that developed as a result.
A Butterfly Net by Jessica Huang
A young girl deals with her grief and loneliness by living in a fantasy world where her father is a tree and her mother a princess. When confronted – first by a young man for whom she has feelings and then by her blind neighbor – she is brought back to reality, finding comfort and beauty in her actual surroundings.
Down: A Fable by Kevin Anthony Kautzman
This 15 minutes excerpt is from Kautzman’s full length play about an insomniac named Sue in search of just one perfectly meaningless poem, her agoraphobic brother Jim, their weirdly out of touch mother, and the kinds of secrets and memories that just scream to be remembered.
The Keys Experiment by Sheila Regan
Regan’s solo performance centers on 36 conscientious objectors who volunteered to starve themselves as part of a University of Minnesota experiment during World War II. Dealing with the issues of hunger, altruism, isolation and war, this piece brings light to the psychological realm of the men who took part in the historic study.
Awaken Absurdity by Taja Will
Will’s dance journeys into a dreamland, exploring what lies between waking and deep sleep. Invoking the subconscious by recreating a trance like state that employs an original sound score and an ensemble of skilled dancers, this piece delivers the audience to an unexpected, yet vaguely familiar place.
The festival continues through the rest of June with the ISOLATED ACTS section of New Works 4 Weeks. These artists are given an entire evening to present their most recent work.
Week Two: ISOLATED ACTS, June 10-13
Paula Mann/Timetrack Productions
THIRTY YEARS IN THIRTY MINUTES
with new works by quest artists Jessica Briggs & Stephen Peabody
Choreographer Paula Mann masterfully translates the literary form of memoir into a movement-based structure integrating video, animation and dance. Five performers careen from giddy optimism to unsettling intensity, charting the seismic changes that occur over thirty years of dance-making. Also featured, excerpts from Light Body, along with Jessica Briggs’ Clean Slate, & Stephen Peabody’s La Peaboheme No. 1.
Week Three: ISOLATED ACTS, June 18-20
Rebecca Abas & Gerry Girouard/BodyTalk
SLEEPERS
Over the course of the moon’s rising and setting, the dreams of an extended family unfold on stage in a series of movement vignettes that reveal the concerns, curiosities and casual whimsies of the dreamers. As BodyTalk, co-creators Rebecca Abas and Gerry Girouard explore the nuances of relationships in this evening-length work by combining the inherent lyricism and lead/follow concepts of the Argentinian tango with the spontaneity of contact improvisation.
Week Four: ISOLATED ACTS, June 24-26
Tamara Ober’s
PIPA and Other New Work
Through movement, text, video and music PIPA tells the story of an accident-prone girl who never seems to take the direct route to anywhere, risking it all in attempt to capture the things that interest her most. Initially developed in last year’s Works-In-Progress at Red Eye and then presented at Fringe Festivals across the continent, PIPA garnered its creator a Minneapolis Sage Award for Outstanding Performer for the work ‘Pipa’ and Zenon’s Spring Performance, as well as selection as Twin Cities Best Artist 2009 in City Pages.
Admission to the Works-In-Progress performances is $8.00. Tickets for the Isolated Acts series are $15 ($8 students) on Friday and Saturdays, $12 ($8 students) on Thursdays and Sundays. Reservations are recommended and tickets are available for purchase online at www.redeyetheater.org or by calling Red Eye’s voicemail box office at 612-870-0309.
Red Eye is located just south of downtown Minneapolis at 15 West 14th Street, between Nicollet and LaSalle. Limited free parking is available on a first come first serve basis, as well as at the Emerson School lot which is located one block west of the theater on 14th between LaSalle and Spruce. The theater’s auditorium is wheelchair accessible.
