Richard Schechner directs Lian Amaris' serach for Spalding Gray's "perfect moment."
December 3 - 19 at HERE
More info HERE.
Performance Artist Lián Amaris goes in search of renowned monologist Spalding Gray's "perfect moment" in SWIMMING TO SPALDING. Co-produced by East Coast Artists and The Robert and Ruby Priddy Charitable Trust, it is directed by Richard Schechner (founder of The Performance Group and East Coast Artists). Previews begin December 3rd at HERE with opening night slated for December 6th.
Following the map of experience described in Spalding Gray's masterpiece Swimming to Cambodia nearly a generation ago, SWIMMING TO SPALDING recounts one performer’s pilgrimage to the sites in Thailand evoked by Gray in his account of the filming of the movie The Killing Fields. Combining Gray's signature "table and notebook" story-telling style with her own theatrical approach, performer Lian Amaris details a year of her experiences from Bangkok brothels to Baghdad bombings, from Mardi Gras to mental institutions. Part homage, part commentary, SWIMMING TO SPALDING reflects on how beauty, grace, and art endure amidst the cruelties of war, prostitution, and mental illness.
The production team includes Lucian Ban (sound), Melissa Mizell (lighting), Angrette McClosky (set design), Yasmine M. Jahanmir (stage manager), and Joy Brooke Fairfield (assistant director).
Lián Amaris has performed at a number of internationally recognized spaces for experimental theater including P.S. 122 and Richard Foreman's Ontological-Hysteric Theater. Amaris’s 2007 72-hour performance piece with R. Luke DuBois, Fashionably Late for the Relationship, premiered in Union Square NYC and the film has been shown at the San Jose Museum of Art, The Guggenheim, and several national festivals. Amaris holds Master's degrees from New York University in Performance Studies and Interactive Telecommunications, and a BA in theater from UMass at Amherst.
Richard Schechner directs both new and classical plays around the world. In New York, with The Performance Group Schechner directed Spalding Gray in six productions from 1970 to 1979: Makbeth (after Shakespeare), Commune (group devised), Sam Shepard’s The Tooth of Crime, Bertolt Brecht’s Mother Courage, Terry Curtis Fox’s Cops, and Jean Genet’s The Balcony. With East Coast Artists and in India, China, and South Africa, Schechner directed Chekhov’s Three Sisters and The Cherry Orchard, Aeschylus’s Oresteia, Seneca’s Oedipus, Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Marlowe-Goethe-Schechner’s Faustr/Gastronome, August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, and Saviana Stanescu’s and Schechner’s Yokastas Redux. Schechner is University Professor of Performance Studies at the Tisch School of the Arts, NYU and editor of TDR: The Journal of Performance Studies. He is the author of many books including Environmental Theater, Between Theater and Anthropology, The End of Humanism, Performance Theory, The Future of Ritual, and Performance Studies—An Introduction.
This production is being presented through HERE’s Supported Artist Program, which provides artists with subsidized space and equipment, as well as technical and administrative support. Since 1993, the OBIE-winning HERE Arts Center has been a premier arts organization in NYC and a leader in the field of new, hybrid performance work. Under leadership of Founding Artistic Director Kristin Marting and Producing Director Kim Whitener, HERE has served over 12,000 emerging to mid-career artists developing work that does not fit a conventional programming agenda. Work presented at HERE has garnered 14 OBIE awards, including the 2009 Ross Wetzsteon Award, an OBIE grant for artistic achievement, three Drama Desk nominations, two Berrilla Kerr Awards, three NY Innovative Theatre Awards, an Edwin Booth Award and a Pulitzer Prize nomination. HERE proudly supports artists at all stages in their careers through full productions, artist residency programs, festivals and subsidized performance and rehearsal space. Work at HERE is curated based on the strength and uniqueness of the artist’s vision. HERE’s Artist Residency Program (HARP) provides development, commissions and full production for up to 20 artists over one-to-three years. In 2005, with the support of the FJC, a foundation of donor advised funds, Lower Manhattan Development Corporation and the City of New York, HERE Arts Center purchased its long-time home as part of a five-year “Secure HERE’s Future” campaign. With full-scale renovations to the space concluding in June 2008, thanks to generous support from the City of New York, HERE is poised to continue and expand its role as a downtown haven for the finest emerging art. Offering a comfortable, eclectic setting for artists and audiences alike, HERE features a café and two state-of-the-art performance spaces.
SWIMMING TO SPALDING runs December 3 - 19, with performances Wednesday & Thursday at 8:30pm, Friday at 8:30pm & 10:30pm, Saturday at 4pm & 8:30pm, and Sunday at 4pm. Talkback will follow Sunday December 13 show. HERE is located at 145 6th Avenue between Spring and Broome Streets -- accessible from C/E to Spring St. 1/9 to Houston St. or N/R to Prince St. Tickets are $25, available at 212-352-3101 or www.here.org. Two-for-one student rush tix are available 30 minutes before showtime.