14-15 Season
Dolly Wilde's Picture Show
Script by Rebecca Nesvet
Incorporating images from Oscaria/Oscar (1994)
© SPIR Conceptual Photography
Combining live performance, multimedia, and the photographic series Oscaria/Oscar (1994), by SPIR Conceptual Photography (María DeGuzmán and Jill Casid), Dolly Wilde’s Picture Show tells the story of Oscar Wilde’s supposedly identical niece, one of the First World War’s first female “motor-drivers.”
Dolly Wilde’s notorious heritage and the outbreak of war give her unprecedented purpose and freedom, but also burden her with demanding ghosts. Traversing the no-man’s-land between
Dates
Thursday, August 21, 2014 at 8:00pm
Friday, August 22, 2014 at 8:00pm
Location
Studio 6
Swain Hall
memory and photography, the nineteenth century and the twentieth, Dolly struggles to build a revolutionary life in the ruins of history—as did her postwar generation.
Photo above:
Oscaria / Oscar
Photo: #3 in a sequence of 6
with the collaboration of Camille Norton and Jane Picard
Copyright © 1994 by Jill Casid & María DeGuzmán
The New Generation Project
Contemporizing the African American Art Song and Arranged Negro Spiritual
By Louise Toppin and Marquita Lister
In an effort to preserve America’s arranged Negro spiritual and introduce unknown African American poets through art songs, internationally known sopranos Louise Toppin and Marquita Lister are pioneering The New Generation Project.
Through the project, they are commissioning new work from dozens of composers and poets to create a new songbook that confirms the contemporary relevancy of the art song and spiritual
Dates
Thursday, September 4, 2014 at 8:00pm
Friday September 5, 2014 at 8:00pm
Saturday, September 6, 2014 at 8:00pm
Location
Rehearsal Room
Kenan Music Building
traditions. The Process Series showcase will provide listeners with an opportunity to experience the breadth of musical and textural expression of the composers while providing feedback on the creation of select songs.
Note: a Thursday invited dress rehearsal was added. The Saturday performance went on as scheduled despite the UNC football game.
Ice Music
Produced and photographed by Brooks de Wetter-Smith
Composed by Lowell Libermann
Choreographed by Carey McKinley
Ice Music is a multimedia work for chamber music ensemble, video, and dance. It creatively explores various aspects of ice — its structure, power, fragility, and interaction with animal life and human presence.
Brooks de Wetter-Smith, flutist, photographer, videographer, and video editor, is active internationally as a recitalist, concerto soloist, and masterclass teacher. In addition to his music accomplishments, he is a published photographer whose photographic and videographic exploits have taken him around the world. www.dewetter-smith.com
Dates
Friday, September 12, 2014 at 8:00pm
Saturday, September 13, 2014 at 8:00pm
Location
Mandela Auditorium
FedEx Global Education Center
Lowell Liebermann is one of America’s most frequently performed and recorded living composers. Called by the New York Times “as much of a traditionalist as an innovator,” Mr. Liebermann’s music is known for its technical command and audience appeal. www.lowellliebermann.com
Carey McKinley, MFA, is a dance artist based in Boston, MA. As an avid collaborator and connector, her artwork and productions meld dance, visual art, theatre and experience. www.careyworks.com
Part of the 10×10 series of commissions by Carolina Performing Arts
Above: an image from Ice Music, photographed by UNC Professor Brooks de Wetter-Smith
Over The Top
By Vanessa Gilbert and David Higgins
Over the Top takes on the Great War with levity and gravity as a performed scaled history of World War I with a game for the audience.
Hosted by the last living WWI veteran, Over the Top presents a garden party whose guests, personifications of the nation states involved in World War I, play out their changing relationships and allegiances. After Austria-Hungary throws the first lawn dart, the audience become mobilized as participants so they too can play War. Our host leads the audience Over the Top, at once releasing himself from his memories and charging us to remember.
Dates
Friday, October 10, 2014 at 8:00pm
Saturday, October 11, 2014 at 8:00pm
Location
Studio 6
Swain Hall
King of the Yees
By Lauren Yee
Take any Chinese last name, and there exists a corresponding “family association” with branches in each major American city: Chinese men’s clubs formed over a hundred years ago after the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. The Wongs, the Chans, and–most importantly–the Yees.
For nearly twenty years, playwright Lauren Yee’s father Larry has been a driving force in the Yee Family Association. And now Lauren is writing a play. Or trying to. About legacy, about obsolescence, about the great and powerful house of Yee! Or something like that.
Dates
Thursday, November 6, 2014 at 8:00pm
Friday, November 7, 2014 at 8:00pm
Location
Studio 6
Swain Hall
Amid a backdrop of crumbling Chinatowns and all-too-lifelike museums, Lauren races through history, space, and the fourth wall to find her father’s story and chronicle this disappearing piece of American culture.King of the Yees is a new play about the communities we choose and the communities we inherit.
About the Playwright:
Lauren Yee is a playwright born and raised in San Francisco. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University, and her MFA in playwriting from UCSD, where she studied under Naomi Iizuka.
She was a Dramatists Guild fellow, a MacDowell fellow, a MAP Fund grantee, and a member of The Public Theater’s Emerging Writers Group. She has been a finalist for the Jerome Fellowship, the PONY Fellowship, the Princess Grace Award, the Sundance Theatre Lab, and the Wasserstein Prize. Her play Samsara has been a nominee for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the L. Arnold Weissberger Award. Her work has been published by Samuel French.
Her play The Hatmaker’s Wife was an Outer Critics Circle nominee for the John Gassner Award for best play by a new American playwright. Ching Chong Chinaman was picked as a top 10 play of the year by City Pages and the East Bay Express, and Crevice was a Bay Area Theatre Critics Circle nominee for Best Play. Other honors include three Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival playwriting awards, Kumu Kahua Theatre’s Pacific Rim Prize, and writing fellowships from the American Antiquarian Society, the Byrdcliffe Artist Colony, the Edward F. Albee Foundation, the El Gouna Writers’ Residency, the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers, and the New York Mills Cultural Center. She has also received funding from the Ludwig Vogelstein Foundation, Theatre Bay Area, and UCSD’s Institute for International, Comparative, and Area Studies, as well as an award from PlayGround’s New Play Production Fund.
Learn more at www.laurenyee.com.
Geomancy:
Divination by Geography
By Elizabeth T. Grey, Jr. and Elisabeth Lewis Corley
Soldiers on the Western Front spent months or years in small geographical areas; they lived in the earth, and knew every tree and rubbled farm. Their survival depended on their ability to read the land, and then on their ability to take precise actions to eliminate any threat.
Using texts from a poem cycle by contemporary poet Elizabeth T. Gray, Jr. and World War I period texts ranging from poetry to trench songs to military instruction manuals and field maps, Geomancy: Divination by Geography, a performance piece for poetry, dance, and
Dates
Friday, February 13, 2015 at 8:00pm
Saturday, February, 2015 at 8:00pm
Location
Studio 6
Swain Hall
multimedia, explores how those actions morph into ritual, how our sense of safety depends on our deepest connections.
ARTVSM in Performance
By Pierce Freelon (Co-Founder, Beat Making Lab) with Herrison Chicas, Saul Flores, and Gustavo and Jairo Esquina de la Espada
Since 2008, musician/educator/activist Pierce Freelon has used hip hop as a tool to build community through the arts, internationally. His most recent project, Beat Making Lab, is an international music and cultural exchange that promotes innovative collaboration and social/entrepreneurial impact.
Through the Process Series, this exceptional artist will work with US-based artists Herrison Chicas and Saul Flores and Panama-based artists Gustavo and Jairo Esquina de la Espada to
Dates
Friday, March 20, 2015 at 8:00pm
Saturday, March 21, 2015 at 8:00pm
Location
Studio 6
Swain Hall
develop a new performance fused with audience participation that demonstrates the impact of music, art and activism.
Learn more about the artists at www.beatmakinglab.com.