The Heiner Müller/Robert Wilson Quartett,
coming to the Brooklyn Academy of Music this fall (Photo: Pascal
Victor)
Beginning at Performance Space
122 this weekend, younger experimental artists take both stages
through
26 July in the undergroundzero festival. The festival, curated by
Paul Bargetto and produced by
East River Commedia in association with Collective:Unconscious, offers
fifteen full productions and five staged readings, including new work from
Blessed Unrest (an adaptation of Chekhov's Ivanov) and Thinking
Person's Theater (She of the Voice, adapted by Eliza Bent from a
short story by Hari Kunzru, directed by José Zayas). Tickets for
each production are $15, little more than the price of a movie. Full
information on the festival and ticketing information is here; come out and support the next generation of
theatre's innovators.
Casting an eye over contemporary New York theatre, a look
back at the last generation of theatre's innovators would also
be a good idea. Tracing Grotowski's Path: Year of Grotowski in New
York, the
year-long celebration of the Polish director's career, concludes in
July with On Grotowski and His Legacy, a three-day event at
the 2009 Lincoln Center Festival that includes a panel discussion with
Grotowski's artistic heir Thomas Richards and NYU's Richard Schechner as
well as two films at the Walter Reade Theater. Tracing
Grotowski's Path is co-sponsored by the
Polish Cultural Institute and NYU's Performance Studies Department.
Information on 13 July's panel discussion (which is free) here, more on the 11-12 July film program here.
Finally, a save-the-date for Robert Wilson's production of
Heiner Müller's Quartett, starring Isabelle Huppert, which
comes from France's Odéon-Théâtre de l'Europe to BAM's Next
Wave Festival this November. This will be a rare opportunity to see an
example of this work (one of Müller's most remarkable plays, based on
Les Liaisons dangereuses) from two notorious theatre artists;
individual tickets go on sale on 8 September. More information here, and
below is a sample of the production from its French premiere:
