Actually, this time around we’re only doing 35 of the 64 plays, so the whole show clocks in at under an hour. I will be performing live sound on stage while Tim Braun’s insane one-page plays, based on the paintings of Jennilie Brewster, are performed. Some of my sketches for this piece can be heard here. This is experimental performance at its experimentiest. Full details after this gorgeous poster by Ashleigh Nankivell.
Surf Reality Presents
“64 Paintings 64 Plays”
Saturday June 11th, 8 p.m.
Saturday June 18th, 6 p.m.
and Tuesday June 21st, 7 p.m.
@The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery (F train to Second Ave. or 6 Train to Bleecker)
$8
Produced by Rob Prichard
Plays by Timothy Braun
Paintings by Jennilie Brewster
Directed by Faceboy
Soundscapes by Tom Tenney
Video Animation by Ashleigh Nankivell
Featuring performance by;
A Brief View of the Hudson (Ann Enzminger & Nick Nace)
Diane O’Debra
Jeff Grow
Sean T. Hanratty
Milton Katz
Jim Melloan
Stephanie Sabelli
Last summer Brooklyn artist Jennilie Brewster finished a series of 64 16” x 20” paintings called “The Newspaper Series” using photographs from the NY Times as starting points. While at the Djerrasi Resident Artist Program in California Jennilie met Timothy Braun, a former Artist-In-Residence at the HERE Arts Center in Soho. He was inspired to write 64 one page plays. One for each painting.
The paintings are landscapes, still lifes and abstracts. But also mindscapes; they are snapshots of the subconscious. The original NY Times image is in some cases clear and in others transformed, obliterated. Likewise, the connection between the plays and the paintings—and from one play to the next—is non-linear. Characters, images, sounds, themes and ideas shift and reappear as in a dream. The performances too will bend expectation and perception so that some are staged theatrically others as; song, poetry, magic act, video animation, soundscapes and performance art—with the view
toward connecting with the audience and the paintings intuitively.
Surf Reality will be presenting 36 of the plays at the Bowery Poetry Club on June 11th, 18th and 21st. Many of the corresponding paintings will be on view there from June 11th-24th. The full presentation of all 64 plays will premier at the RE/Mixed Media Festival in Brooklyn in the Fall 2011.
Surf Reality was a prominent downtown performance space on Manhattan’s LES from 1993-2003. Founded by Robert Prichard the space was marketed to producers, writers and performing artists as a place to workshop and develope new work. Today Surf Reality is an independent production company dedicated to the downtown performance vanguard with a long running reoccurring show called “Radical Vaudeville”.
We are pleased and honored that the June performances will also be featured as part of the Underground HOWL! Festival.
