Past Events

  • Under Construction Series

    Ulysses Owens Jr.

    April 8, 2015

    Ulysses Owens, Jr. blends the movement of the under-celebrated choreographer Ulysses Dove, selections from the James Joyce novel Ulysses, and his own compositions in a multi-disciplinary project that explores the melding of art forms inspired by the name “Ulysses.”

    Multi-Grammy Award Winning drummer Ulysses Owens Jr. has performed with world-class musicians, including Patti Austin, Terence Blanchard, Russell Malone, Wynton Marsalis, Mulgrew Miller, Maceo Parker, and Dianne Reeves. In 2010 Owens received his first Grammy Award for his performance on Kurt Elling’s Dedicated To You, and in 2012 his second Grammy Award for Christian McBride’s Big Band Album The Good Feeling. His 2009 debut recording It’s Time For U featured several original compositions and arrangements. His second album,Unanimous, released in 2012 on European jazz label Criss Cross, features Christian McBride, Nicholas Payton, Jaleel Shaw, Mike Dease and Christian Sands, and has been hailed by critics and audiences alike as “...the best jazz album of 2012.” This year, Owens will produce three albums, one of which with the Alicia Olatuja, who was the featured Vocalist at the Re-Inauguration of President Barack Obama. Owens is the Co- Founding Artistic Director of Don’t Miss A Beat, his family’s non-profit organization. Don’t Miss A Beat’s core mission is to blend music and art with focus on academic achievement, civic engagement and to inspire and empower inner city students to strive for their dreams.

  • Under Construction Series

    Taylor Mac / Machine Dazzle

    August 6, 2015 - August 9, 2015

    Taylor Mac presents new material and musical arrangements from his on-going durational concert called A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, which includes performances of songs from the last 24 decades of popular music. Each decade has a different costume designed by Machine Dazzle; those created during the residency will also be on display during the Under Construction showing. Ultimately all 24 decades will be stitched together, culminating in a 24-hour long extravaganza (in 2016), which will feature Taylor Mac, a 24-piece orchestra, dancing beauties, special guests, and the audience.

    Taylor Mac is a theater artist (who uses the gender pronoun “judy”)—a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, cabaret performer, performance artist, director and producer. judy’s work has been performed at New York City’s Lincoln Center and The Public Theater, the Sydney Opera House, American Repertory Theater, Stockholm’s Sodra Theatern, the Spoleto Festival, Dublin’s Project Arts Centre, and London’s Soho Theatre, among other theatres, museums, music halls, cabarets and festivals around the globe. judy is the author of sixteen full-length plays and performance pieces including Hir (recently premiered at San Francisco’s Magic Theater), The Lily’s Revenge (Obie Award), The Walk Across America for Mother Earth (named One of the Best Plays of 2011 by The New York Times), The Young Ladies Of (Chicago’s Jeff Award nomination for Best Solo), Red Tide Blooming (Ethyl Eichelberger Award), The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac (Edinburgh Festival’s Herald Angel Award). In collaboration with Mandy Patinkin, Susan Stroman and Paul Ford, Mac created The Last Two People On Earth: An Apocalyptic Vaudeville, in which judy is currently performing/touring with Mr. Patinkin. judy is the recipient of a Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, two Sundance Theater Lab residencies, three Map Grants, The Creative Capital Grant, The James Hammerstein Award for playwriting, three GLAAD Media Award Nomination, two New York State Council on the Arts Grants, a Massachusetts Council of the Arts Grant, an Edward Albee Foundation Residency, The Franklin Furnace Grant, a Peter S. Reed Grant and The Ensemble Studio Theatre’s New Voices Fellowship in playwriting. Mac is a proud alum of the HERE Arts Center Resident Artists program and is currently a New Dramatists fellow and a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect.

    Machine Dazzle (né Matthew Flower) is a performance artist, who moved to New York City in 1994 after attending The University of Colorado Boulder. Mixing odd jobs by day with art and dance clubs by night erupted in a unique lifestyle grounded in costume and performance art. Dazzle’s DIY and transgressive nature comes face to face with his conceptualist-as-artist identity; the results can be seen on stages all over the world. Machine has worked with Taylor Mac, Justin Vivian Bond, Joey Arias, Julie Atlas Muz, Big Art Group, The Crystal Ark, The Dazzle Dancers, Stanley Love Performance Group and The Pixie Harlots, to name a few. 

  • Under Construction Series

    Andew Ondrejcak

    September 2, 2015

    Writer/director/designer Andrew Ondrejcak continues work on ELIJAH GREEN, his adaptation of August Strindberg’s A Dream Play, which follows the journey of a divine spirit as it wanders on earth, delving into the contemporary tedium of the everyday human. For Under Construction, Ondrejcak will open his studio to show his work in progress, including large-scale drawings and prototypes of the scenery and costume elements.

    Born and raised in Mississippi, Andrew studied architecture and painting at Savannah College of Art and Design then playwriting at Brooklyn College. While making experimental theater in New York, Andrew was asked to conceptualize a fashion show; he quickly became one of New York’s most sought-after production designers in the fashion industry, known for large-scale environmental installations. He works with Vogue, Bazaar, Italian Vogue, Wallpaper*, W, V, among others. He is currently the art director for Vivienne Westwood’s upcoming retrospective.

    Ondrejcak’s performances have been presented at Guggenheim Museum’s Works in Process curated by Robert Wilson, the Under The Radar Festival at The Public Theater (2014) and the upcoming BAM Next Wave Festival (2015). Outside of New York, his original performances have been produced at Holland Festival (Amsterdam), SCAD Museum of Art (Savannah), deSingel (Antwerp), and Kampnagel (Hamburg). He reperformed the work of Marina Abramovic at MoMA (2010). In 2013, Ondrejcak was Artist in Residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council on Governor’s Island.

    As an arts educator, Ondrejcak taught workshops on performance and design at Domaine de Boisbuchet in Lessac, France (2013-2014) and, since 2002, has been a lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art, New York.

    Currently, Ondrejcak is Artist in Residence at the Park Avenue Armory in New York City where he is working on a new performance, Elijah Green, which will premiere at The Kitchen in March 2016, for which he received a MAP Grant and a National Theater Project grant through the New England Foundation for the Arts, generously provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

    In 2016, Ondrejcak will begin creating a new performance while in residence at The Watermill Center.

  • Under Construction Series

    600 Highwaymen

    September 26, 2015

    600 Highwaymen begin with the infamous Rite of Spring as inspiration for their new theater piece, The Fever.  Involving a large group of people, the work explores human beings inside systems of organization – who we are together and who we are alone.

    Obie Award-winning company 600 Highwaymen construct theater pieces that illuminate the inherent poignancy and theatricality of people together.  Formed in 2009 by directors Abigail Browde and Michael Silverstone and based in Brooklyn, NY, 600 HIGHWAYMEN’s performances have been awarded distinctions by The New Yorker, New York Times, Village Voice, Flavorpill, and Time Out New York. Productions include The Record (Invisible Dog Arts Center, Under The Radar/The Public Theater; Noorderzon Festival, The Netherlands; Parc de la Villette and Centre Pompidou, Paris; Theaterformen, Germany),  Employee of the Year (Mt. Tremper Arts; Crossing the Line; upcoming: Wexner Center for the Arts, International Festival of Arts and Ideas, New Haven; Theaterformen, Germany; Noorderzon Festival, The Netherlands), This Time Tomorrow (“Best Of”; L Magazine), This Great Country (Fusebox Festival and River to River), Empire City (Editors Pick: Village Voice, Time Out New York), Everyone Was Chanting Your Name (Abrons Arts Center). Browde and Silverstone have received fellowships and residencies from the Drama League, Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab,  Theater Masters, New York State maximum-security prisons, A.R.T./NY, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and numerous colleges and universities.

  • Under Construction Series

    Brent Green

    October 17, 2015

    Brent Green presents his animated films accompanied by a live performance featuring his sound sculptures, live Foley sound effects, and a thirteen-piece band. The performance will be followed by a studio visit to further examine his creative process. During his residency Green will continue to work on his film, EE, about his grandfather and the ways in which people influence others around them. Simultaneously, Green is creating a series of new sound sculptures, including a 16’ tall accordion filled with pipe-organ reeds – which he will add to his portfolio of similar works.

    Working in the Appalachian hills of rural Pennsylvania, Brent Green is a self-taught visual artist and filmmaker. Green’s films have screened, often with live musical accompaniment, in film and art settings alike at venues such as MoMA, The J. Paul Getty Museum, The Walker Art Center, The Hammer Museum, The Boston MFA, The Wexner Center for the Arts, The Indianapolis Museum of Art, The Rotterdam Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival and even extending to rooftops, warehouses and galleries throughout the globe. Often, his sculptural work and large-scale installation are displayed alongside his animated films, most recently with solo exhibitions at the ASU Art Museum, Site Santa Fe, 21c/Art Without Walls, Diverseworks Houston and the Berkeley Art Museum. Green has received grants from Creative Capital and the MAPfund. His work is in some fine permanent collections including the Progressive Collection, the Hammer Museum and MoMA. He serves on the Board of Directors for Rooftop Films and the Susan J. Weiler Foundation.

  • Under Construction Series

    Imani Uzuri

    October 25, 2015

    Imani Uzuri presents a new exploratory work-in-progress inspired by Sister Gertrude Morgan’s “all white” prayer room. A visual, performative, and sonic installation entitled Prayer Request, the piece explores the intersection of spirituality, ritual, spectacle and sound and their impact on our perceptions of what is our “salvation” and what makes us “feel”.

    Vocalist, composer and cultural worker Imani Uzuri creates music that reflects her rural North Carolina roots where she grew up singing Spirituals and line-singing hymns with her grandmother and extended family in their small rural church. Her compositions for bands, choral ensembles, chamber orchestra, musical theater and solo voice also include influences from her travels around the world to places like Hungary, Morocco, Ethiopia, Russia, Kazakhstan and Japan where she shared these foundational American musical sounds with international audiences and communities while also learning about their musical traditions. Uzuri’s new album, The Gypsy Diaries, draws on her roots as well as influences ranging from Sufi devotionals to Romany laments. Uzuri creates and performs concerts, experimental theater, performance art, theater compositions and sound installations in international venues/festivals including Lincoln Center Out of Doors Festival, New York’s Central Park SummerStage, Joe’s Pub, Performa Biennial, France’s Festival Sons d’hiver, London’s ICA, and MoMA. Uzuri has also collaborated with a wide range of noted artists across various artistic disciplines including musicians Herbie Hancock, John Legend, Vijay Iyer; visual artists Wangechi Mutu, Carrie Mae Weems, Sanford Biggers; choreographer Trajal Harrell and composer Robert Ashley.