The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds

THE CUNY GRADUATE CENTER THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE PROGRAM DRAMATURGICAL ENSEMBLE & THE BRICK THEATER PRESENT

The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds

a sort of symposium

August 11, 7-10pm
August 12, 7-10pm
August 13, 1-4pm, and 6-10pm
August 14, 4-6pm, and 7-10pm

The Brick Theater: 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Brykln, NY
Masks and Vaccinations are required inside the space.
See Accessibility Information below.

Over four days, artists, scholars, and public participants gather through a hybrid devised work/symposium/festival, approaching the concept of “knowledge.” Towers may be torn down in pursuit of epistemic justice as worlds are opened through the sharing of multiplicit (un)knowings. The performativity of thought, social construction of epistemic frameworks, institutional modes of knowledge production, ancestral knowledge, and social epistemology will be addressed through live works of theatre, music, dance, social practice, and performance art.

Audiences/participants/witnesses are invited to come and go throughout the weekend, encountering actions, social processes, score-based structures, papers, scenarios, and other forms of performance.

Tickets are pay-what-you-can $1-100 online or at the door for each of the 6 blocks, Thursday through Sunday. Nothing will be performed/presented more than once. Some work is ongoing throughout the weekend. All parts of the symposium are open to the public.

LINK for advance tickets: https://www.bricktheater.com/event/the-ivory-tower-and-the-open-worlds/2022-08-11/

The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds is organized by PhD students in the Theatre and Performance program at CUNY Graduate Center. Through this project (and at large), we seek praxis, that is, thinking-actions and practice-theories that contest, dismantle, replace, and move across divisions between institutional hegemonies and “othered” and “backgrounded” ways of knowing and seeing. Attentions have also been oriented around economic structures for performance presentation, affective social relations, and modes of discursive communication, expanding “dramaturgies” to consider production schemas, conceptual and creative labor power, and interdisciplinary modes of complex ideation.

CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department dramaturgical ensemble (in alphabetical order): Jess Applebaum, Stephen Cedars, Jasmeene Francois, Esther Neff (project initiator and lead organizer), Philip Wiles.

ARTISTS/PRESENTERS OVER THE COURSE OF THE WEEKEND INCLUDE:

EMILY BIVENS, KIERA BONO, JORDAN DEAL, DIANE DWYER, SHAWN ESCARCIGA, FUTURE DEATH TOLL, RAE GOODWIN, CORY KRAM, DARLANE LITAAY, MILTON LOAYZA, RAKHI MALHOTRA (NADEE ACHAMBA), NOAH ORTEGA, GILIAN RAPPAPORT, MICHAEL REINSCH, LISA SCHONBERG, SYLVAIN SOUKLAYE, ARI WOLFF (+TBA)

A PDF with expanded program materials will be available online as a “dramaturgical packet” during and after the weekend in August.

Acknowledgements: DSGC, Panoply Performance Laboratory (PPL)/PERFORMANCY FORUM.

Accessibility Information:  The Brick Theater is a ground level garage converted into a theater. There is a permanent ramp to the performance area, which is a little less than a foot up from the ground level. The bathroom has a grab bar and an ADA compliant door width, but the ground is somewhat uneven inside of the bathroom. We have a studio space about 3 minutes away with an additional ADA compliant bathroom. The seating is most commonly set up with some chairs on the floor and space for wheelchairs and other mobility devices of different shapes and sizes, and three levels of risers that are a 4-10 inch rise. ASL interpretation will unfortunately not be available for most of this weekend except for Kiera Bono’s work on Saturday. Please feel free to reach out at any time with questions, concerns or requests – theresa@bricktheater.com

SCHEDULE:

THURSDAY, AUGUST 11:

7pm: Sylvain Souklaye

7:30: Lisa Schonberg

8:00: Shawn Escarciga

8:45: Stephen Cedars and Philip Wiles

FRIDAY, AUGUST 12:

7pm-10pm Jordan Deal

10-11pm: Clean up and Community Gathering

SATURDAY, AUGUST 13:

1-2pm: Kiera Bono

2:00-4pm: PUBLIC FORUM

6pm: darLane Litaay

7pm:  Rakhi Malhotra

7:45: Milton Loayza

8:45: Michael Reinsch

9:30: Cory Kram

SUNDAY, AUGUST 14:

4-6pm:

Ari wolf installation

Noah Ortega process work

7pm: Gilian Rappaport

7:30: Rae Goodwin and Emily Bivens culmination

8:15: Noah Ortega culmination

8:45: Diane Dwyer

9:30: Future Death Toll