2001-07 Past Performances

BRICstudio 2007 Season:

BRIClab: THE JAZZ PASSENGERS

The Supremes Project

Thursday, March 15 &
Saturday, March 17
8:00PM

Tickets: $12 General Admission, $10 students/seniors

"At their best, the Jazz Passengers upend the formula of a regular jazz gig... jumbling the soulful cool from the Blue Note records of the early 1960's, Charles Mingus's cantankerous tussle of the same period and the biting ironies and electric violin of Frank Zappa of a decade later."
- The New York Times

Led by the blindingly talented saxophonist and composer Roy Nathanson, the Jazz Passengers emerged from the frenetic explosion of experimentation characterizing New York’s 1980’s downtown jazz scene as one of the city’s most playful and unusual groups. Through a host of albums and extended collaborations (notably with Elvis Costello & Debbie Harry), they have continued to push the creative envelope with projects such as The Fire at Keaton’s Bar & Grille and a live score and dialogue for the Sci-Fi horror classic Creature From the Black Lagoon. The Supremes Project finds them in a typically mischievous and romantic mood, interpreting the music of the beloved and seminal girl group. Workshopped and presented at BRIClab, this piece is commissioned by the Celebrate Brooklyn Performing Arts Festival and will receive its world premiere at the Prospect Park Bandshell in summer 2007.

Creative Advisor: Danny Kahn, Cross Road Management

BRIClab: KATORI HALL

Hurt Village

Thursday, March 22 &
Saturday, March 24
8:00PM

Tickets: $12 General Admission, $10 students/seniors

"A vital voice for the American theatre."
- Lynn Nottage, playwright

The exciting young NYC playwright and actress Katori Hall has become a magnet for awards and accolades in recent years, including a 2006 NYFA Fellowship in Playwrighting, a residency at the Royal Court Theatre in London, a 2006 workshop production of her play Hoodoo Love at the Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor Project and a seat at the Women’s Project Playwrights’ Lab. Premiering at BRIClab, her latest work, Hurt Village, is set in this real-life Memphis housing project, which has become a painful symbol of urban decay. Focusing on a young African-American man who returns from fighting in Iraq to find that his home is being demolished, the piece explores in vivid and sometimes brutal detail a long-lasting legacy of drug abuse, child abuse, crime and self-hatred within a poor, working-class, multi-generational Black family. Directed by Lucie Tiberghien.

Please note: this piece contains graphic language that may not be suitable for some audiences.

Creative Advisor: Lisa Timmel, Artistic Producer, Carole Shorenstein Hays Productions


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DANSPACE PROJECT

Out of Space @ BRICstudio

Friday, April 6 &
Saturday, April 7
8:30PM

Tickets: $12 General Admission, $10 students/seniors

"This series' program is about as eclectic as you can get."
- Jennifer Dunning, The New York Times

Out of Space @ BRICstudio, a co-presentation with Danspace Project, kicks off an electrifying fourth season with a line-up of bold new works curated by Marýa Wethers. Infatuation, choreographed and performed by Kelly Bartnik, is an exploration of self-control in the midst of unfulfilled desires, investigating overwhelming lust for the unattainable. Robbie Cook and Peter Sciscioli's (of Jane Comfort & Company) duet shortcomings / Tall Tales probes the mysterious, often intangible nature of intimacy between men. And Monstah Black presents excerpts from his Afro-punk funk rock opera, Skipping Backwards, treading the line between spectacle and introspection as he explores gender complexity through the eyes of an androgynous, black queer growing up in the dirty south. Monstah Black saunters, sways, swaggers, and rocks out, weaving together vocals, movement, text and fashion.


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BRIClab: BRAVE NEW WORLD REPERTORY THEATRE

Crossing Brooklyn Ferry

Thursday, April 19 &
Saturday, April 21
8:00PM

Tickets: $12 adults, $10 students/seniors

"Brave New World Repertory [is] great theater of the rarest sort, the kind of experience that merges art and artists, artists and audience... This is street theater, people’s theater, of the highest order."
- Jeff Coplon, critic

Brooklyn maverick Brave New World Repertory Theatre transforms Crossing Brooklyn Ferry, the great American poet Walt Whitman’s love song to the borough, into a not-to-be-missed theatrical experience. This latest stage offering follows on the success of Brave New World’s wildly imaginative and unorthodox productions, including the groundbreaking staging of To Kill a Mockingbird on Ditmas Park porches and the concert production of Howard Sackler's Pulitzer Prize-winning Great White Hope at the Prospect Park Bandshell. Developed at BRIClab and commissioned by the Celebrate Brooklyn Performing Arts Festival to premiere at the bandshell in summer 2007, Crossing Brooklyn Ferry weaves together poetry, projections, music, rap and choreography by Freefall(ltd)’s Lynn Brown and Lynn Marie Ruse. Under the Artistic Direction of Claire Beckman, Brave New World draws from Brooklyn's rich artistic community to create dynamic and engaging theatre, emphasizing classical and neglected works, as well as new works by its members.

Creative Advisor: Morgan Jenness, Literary Agent & Dramaturg, Abrams Artists Agency


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BRIClab: ROGER BONAIR-AGARD

MASQUERADE: poems of calypso and home

Thursday, April 26 &
Saturday, April 28
8:00PM

Tickets: $12 adults, $10 students/seniors

"Bonair-Agard is a poet who fixes his experience with memory... Someone whose poetry can be entered and felt and understood."
- Amiri Baraka

Roger Bonair-Agard puts the "amp" in slam poet. A native of Trinidad and Tobago and a Brooklyn resident for seventeen years, his work reflects the struggles of a man in voluntary exile in a conflicted 21st-century America. A two-time National Slam Champion who has stirred audiences from Germany to South Africa to Alaska, he is electrifying in performance, weaving living, breathing tapestries out of politics and the notion of home. This latest work both critiques and celebrates the Trinidadian ethos by examining the influence its seminal music exerts on a poet and the larger world. Masquerade began as a poem cycle (Cypher Books, 2006) and will be developed at BRIClab into a full-scale, solo theatrical presentation.

Creative Advisor: Danny Hoch, Founder, Hip Hop Theater Festival

Presented in association with terraNOVA Collective.


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BRIClab: AYELET ROSE GOTTLIEB

Mayim Rabim/Great Waters

Thursday, May 3 &
Saturday, May 5
8:00PM

Tickets: $12 adults, $10 students/seniors

"Gottlieb powerfully straddles jazz, cantorial and the avant-garde... Mayim Rabim succeeds both musically and conceptually, one of the year’s finest vocal releases."
- All About Jazz-NY

Jerusalem-born jazz vocalist Ayelet Rose Gottlieb radiates a powerfully unique style, reminiscent of diverse influences-she grew up among stacks of vinyl that included Charles Mingus, Laurie Anderson, J.S. Bach, Bob Dylan, Edith Piaf and Egyptian chanteuse Oum Koultum. Mayim Rabim/Great Waters, her ten-piece song cycle based on texts from the erotic biblical love poem Song of Songs, was released in June 2006 (Tzadik Records) to international critical acclaim. An epic story of love and loss in which each line of music, each player on stage is revealed as part of the complexity of a young woman caught in the great waters of love. Through support from BRIClab, Gottlieb develops the piece into a multi-sensory theatrical presentation, layering music with deconstructed English translations, choreography, a cast of vocalists and visuals by the renowned German video-artist Renate Aller. Directed by Franny Silverman.

Creative Advisor: Marcin Ramocki, Media Artist / Founder & Director, vertexList


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DANSPACE PROJECT

Out of Space @ BRICstudio

Friday, June 22 &
Saturday, June 23
8:30PM

Tickets: $12 General Admission, $10 students/seniors

Think Globally, Dance Locally

This popular performance sampler closes BRICstudio’s 2007 season in June with an evening of new solo work. The elegant and thought-provoking, Bessie Award-winning Juliette Mapp performs the new solo After Agnes, inspired by the paintings and writings of Agnes Martin. Joyce S. Lim returns with Woman Plays, a work-in-development based on Japanese Noh plays representing a beautiful woman obsessed by love. And Ivory Coast native Michel Kouakou/Daara Dance (of the Reggie Wilson/Fist and Heel Performance Group) performs the work-in-progress solo Behind Me.


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