**this page, like all of us, is currently under construction**
Uncreativity Festival
Proposals Towards Contemporary Appropriative Performance
2014, Bryant-Lake Bowl
From Mr. Rogers to Brokeback Mountain, Sasquatch to Quantum Mechanics, Uncreativity Festival highlights various approaches to and efficacies of appropriated text in new performance and film by choreographers, poets, and theater artists from across the country--promoting Uncreativity at a time when Creativity is Indexed.
An evening of new performance, writing, and video made using intertextual practices: transcribing, cutting, rearranging, pasting, and recontextualizing. Uncreativity Festival brings a national roster of artists to the Bryant-Lake Bowl, introducing Minneapolis to a dynamic and challenging range of appropriation-based practices.
Artists Featured:
Tom Comitta (CA)
Kenneth Goldsmith (NY)
Sam Hertz (CA)
Sybil Kempson (NY)
Billy Mullaney (MN)
Erin Pike (WA)
Brett Weiner (NY)
Max Wirsing (MN)
Press Preview
Press Review
Press Review
***
2015, Open Eye Figure Theater
Whereas 2014 consisted of a single evening of excerpts, 2015's installment featured full-length extensions of the previous year's Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood (Billy Mullaney, MN) and That'swhatshesaid (Erin Pike, WA) running in rep at the Open Eye Figure Theater.
Curatorial program note: In episode #1718: “Be Yourself, That’s the Best”, Mr. Rogers says “...when you like someone, you want to share the things you like with that person. I guess that’s why I want to share so much with you”. Fred Rogers hasn’t been with us for almost a decade now, to see the rise of the ubiquity of the Share not only as a way to indicate items of interest to others, but as a contemporary mode of self-representation, particularly via social media. I’m not sure what he’d think of the transformation of sharing to Sharing (I’ve tried very hard not to put words into his mouth) but I remain preoccupied with the politics and poetics of appropriated text: How do these words, taken from their original contexts, hit our ears here, now? These two pieces (both excerpted among many other examples in my Uncreativity Festival last year) deploy this tactic in very different ways, to very different ends: I struggle to perform Rogers’ anachronistic kindness as anything other than caricature, while Erin Pike’s potpourri of women’s dialogue indicates the caricature that modern women’s representation onstage has become. I’m very excited to show these pieces side-by-side, and to share them with a special community here that I like very much indeed.
Uncreativity Festival
Proposals Towards Contemporary Appropriative Performance
2014, Bryant-Lake Bowl
From Mr. Rogers to Brokeback Mountain, Sasquatch to Quantum Mechanics, Uncreativity Festival highlights various approaches to and efficacies of appropriated text in new performance and film by choreographers, poets, and theater artists from across the country--promoting Uncreativity at a time when Creativity is Indexed.
An evening of new performance, writing, and video made using intertextual practices: transcribing, cutting, rearranging, pasting, and recontextualizing. Uncreativity Festival brings a national roster of artists to the Bryant-Lake Bowl, introducing Minneapolis to a dynamic and challenging range of appropriation-based practices.
Artists Featured:
Tom Comitta (CA)
Kenneth Goldsmith (NY)
Sam Hertz (CA)
Sybil Kempson (NY)
Billy Mullaney (MN)
Erin Pike (WA)
Brett Weiner (NY)
Max Wirsing (MN)
Press Preview
Press Review
Press Review
***
2015, Open Eye Figure Theater
Whereas 2014 consisted of a single evening of excerpts, 2015's installment featured full-length extensions of the previous year's Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood (Billy Mullaney, MN) and That'swhatshesaid (Erin Pike, WA) running in rep at the Open Eye Figure Theater.
Curatorial program note: In episode #1718: “Be Yourself, That’s the Best”, Mr. Rogers says “...when you like someone, you want to share the things you like with that person. I guess that’s why I want to share so much with you”. Fred Rogers hasn’t been with us for almost a decade now, to see the rise of the ubiquity of the Share not only as a way to indicate items of interest to others, but as a contemporary mode of self-representation, particularly via social media. I’m not sure what he’d think of the transformation of sharing to Sharing (I’ve tried very hard not to put words into his mouth) but I remain preoccupied with the politics and poetics of appropriated text: How do these words, taken from their original contexts, hit our ears here, now? These two pieces (both excerpted among many other examples in my Uncreativity Festival last year) deploy this tactic in very different ways, to very different ends: I struggle to perform Rogers’ anachronistic kindness as anything other than caricature, while Erin Pike’s potpourri of women’s dialogue indicates the caricature that modern women’s representation onstage has become. I’m very excited to show these pieces side-by-side, and to share them with a special community here that I like very much indeed.