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Since 1993, HERE has been one of New York's most prolific producing organizations and today stands at the forefront of the city's presenters of daring new multidisciplinary work.
The New York Times calls HERE: "One of the most unusual arts spaces in New York... the model for the cutting edge arts space of tomorrow"
PRESS AGENT
the karpel group.
For more information, visit Lisa's resident artist page: STANLEY (2006) - Lisa and Todd D'Amour
"Lisa and Todd D’Amour have reconsidered A Streetcar Named Desire... What if Stanley actually longed for Blanche (“She turned my house absolutely upside down. ... It was fantastic.”) and finally went in search of her? This is the deliciously thought-provoking premise of Stanley (2006) ... Mr. D’Amour’s message is about wanting and grabbing and getting. To convey it he plays both ends of the spectrum, from the surprisingly analytic to the refreshingly silly."
"Arguably the most accomplished theatrical event of the Off-Broadway season... Stanley (2006) is a nonstop thrill-ride on one man’s tragic emotional rollercoaster... the show is a chilling reminder that theater is, in fact, a live event. Less chilling is the reminder of how wildly ambitious and successfully experimental a show can be... If Stanley (2006) isn’t a tour-de-force, I don’t know what is."
Flavorpill:
"Todd D'Amour evokes not only Stanley Kowalski, but also the spirit of the late Marlon Brando in this latest collaboration with sister Lisa D'Amour, a multimedia work based on the character from A Streetcar Named Desire. Their offering is simply called Stanley (2006), but the depth of the material goes beyond the deceptively elementary title. D'Amour's physical prowess consumes the stage as his Stanley seeks to define his territory and searches for a final showdown with Blanche. Live camerawork focuses on the performer's nuanced portrayal of the troubled character, as he escapes Tennessee Williams' world to find his own true destiny."
"In the capable hands of co-creators Lisa D'Amour (text and direction) and Todd D'Amour (performer), multiplicity becomes a virtue... Todd D'Amour delivers a performance of driving physicality, and his dangerously brooding masculinity is crucial to the role and precisely conveyed... live video feed provides a visual intimacy with the performer's body and facial expressions. The audience's attention is drawn to the larger-than-life video images, only to find it pulled back, again and again, to D'Amour's often literally in-your-face performance... an entertaining and intelligent work of theater."
Lighting & Sound America:
"Stanley (2006) offers us an exciting actor, Todd D'Amour... this young actor has stage presence and technique to spare. His Stanley is a constantly morphing character-at times he's a totally original creation, at other times he's a wicked parody of Marlon Brando mannerisms... his willingness to take physical risks, flinging himself on the floor and making long leaps into the air, constitutes a show in itself."
"Todd d’Amour provides dramatic insight into a world of obsession and yearning. His words are persuasive and realistic. The audience seems to feel his emotions lingering in the air like the heavy perfume of Blanche that drives Kowalski... An entrancing character analysis, showing the raw emotion and humanity in a man enclosed by desire."
Gay City News:
"D'Amour's in-your-face delivery is electrifying... Toward play's end, perhaps to evoke Brando's much-imitated Method acting techniques, Stanley begged three audience members (including me) to each douse him with a bucket of water. We got ourselves wet in the process, but it felt dangerously exhilarating. Far from being watered down, the brooding, sexy beast seemed to burn even hotter."
NYTheatre.com:
"Todd D'Amour... has sensitivity, charisma, intensity, authoritative command of his body and voice, a sense of humor, and fearless unpredictability -- Mr. D'Amour's strong technique and empathetic rapport with the audience keep him grounded and give him a convincing fullness."
above photo: Carl Skutsch
For additional project information, visit Erik's resident artist page: The Fortune Teller - Erik Sanko
The Village Voice: "...a repulsively refulgent marionette show featuring the seven deadly sins... [Sanko] and erstwhile Oingo Boingo frontman Danny Elfman offer a delightfully eerie score that tickles and alarms. Irish songster Gavin Friday lends his gravelly tones to the narration. The design team has built costumes and sets with any number of sinister trims and frills. Indeed, for those souls with a taste for the elegantly macabre, attendance is highly advised. To miss it—now that would be a sin."
The New York Times: "A morality fable for grown-ups, evoking the familiar idioms of Edward Gorey and Tim Burton in a style you might term Victorian ghastly... the set, a regular wunderkammer, keeps opening up to reveal new sets and images, little Victorian dioramas... macabre and engaging."
The New York Times: "Mr. Sanko's figures are the grim spawn of Edward Gorey and David Lynch, with papier-mache faces more grizzled and world-weary than those of most character actors. 'Very few puppet theaters take advantage of their creepy factor,' Mr. Sanko said... The set underscores why The Fortune Teller is an anomaly in the sphere of marionette theater, or any theater: a level of intricacy most commonly seen in fine art."
Backstage:
“Erik Sanko’s marvelously creepy marionette play... [is] a perfect pre-Halloween morality play with a twist ending worthy of The Twilight Zone. Even as the play induces tingles and bemused smiles, the craftsmanship of the entire production astounds... [a] grandly satisfying piece of theatre in minature.”
Backstage Review Fortune Teller
"I was enraptured by what I saw taking place on stage. The design of the puppets is magnificent, each of them embodying their character as easily as a live person. The puppets' costumes are precise but not overstated, resulting in the puppets settling into the world created for them perfectly. ... The Fortune Teller is easily more interesting, entertaining, and enjoyable than anything I've seen in a movie theater all year."
Fortune Teller: NY Times Feature Article
The Gothamist:
"The Fortune Teller is, in part, an allegory about the seven deadly sins, but that's not at all what makes so spellbinding; it's the eerie atmosphere conjured up by Sanko's brilliant ensemble. The puppeteers charge the marionettes with an enchanting liveliness. (At certain moments you may swear you see them breathing.) The narration, intoned by a gravelly-voiced Gavin Friday, immediately mesmerizes. And Elfman invokes the perfect mood with a score that is as creaky and haunting as youíd expect..."
The Sentimentalist:
"You’ll kick yourself if you missed The Fortune Teller, the darkly comedic marionette play that rises to high art in the hands of writer/director/musician/marionette maker Erik Sanko, composer Danny Elfman, vocalist/composer/musician/narrator Gavin Friday and the rest of the production’s behind-the-scenes talented crew... The Fortune Teller exists on a similar plane to the most gripping, exquisitely morbid works by playwright Martin McDonagh (The Pillowman), Edward Gorey or Tim Burton (Nightmare Before Christmas)."
"played for ten days… though it should have been ten weeks" –artsjournal.com
"captures those threshold moments" –artsjournal.com
"exhilarating" –artsjournal.com
"Kudos to Sara Walsh for the ingenious set" –artsjournal.com
"To keep being somebody, you're always giving someone up. 837 Venice Boulevard doesn't just depict that wrenching routine, the dance performs it. Driscoll proves master at the emotional distances (in painting, you'd call it perspective) at the heart of live theater. Beaming a light on theatrical self-fashioning, she let's you feel the scraps of being fluttering in the dark" –artsjournal.com
"In the shadows of the dance that Celia, Michael, and Nikki create between themselves is the haunted, shivery dance they do with us." –artsjournal.com
"Ms. Driscoll [is] one of the most original talents on the contemporary dance scene." –New York Times
"evoking the raw intensity of childhood experience by way of showbiz razzle-dazzle" –New York Times
"Ms. Driscoll is a startlingly original talent, capable of creating work that slyly blurs the real and the theatrical, memory and fantasy, the past and the present." —New York Times
"The chanteuses who play Madison Square Garden and football stadiums have never experienced the imaginative heights of spectacle with which Basil Twist surrounds Joey Arias in 'Arias With a Twist.'" - New York Times
"In just 65 minutes, the piece manages to be a pansexual fantasia, a cheesy divertissement, a fashion show (costumes by Thierry Mugler), a parody of alien-abduction theories and a cabaret tonic with both original songs (by Andrew Gifford of The Propellerheads) and multiple covers (including a heartbreaking take on Eric Carmen’s “All By Myself”)." - New York Press
"It's all gleeful, anarchic fun of the decidedly downtown variety, the impact of which is enhanced by the intimacy of the performance space in the newly renovated HERE Arts Center." - New York Post
"As show-business survivors go, few are as graceful or as funny as the drag artist and singer Joey Arias."- The New Yorker
"What Arias and Twist have fashioned is no less then an eye-popping, delightfully transgressive lysergic fantasia."
"Thesp still has a punk rock-style vibe, relying more on energy and audacity than on technical skill to sell every number. His throaty wail, archetypal drag queen fierceness and willingness to thrust his crotch against any surface make him impossible to ignore."
- Variety
"The somewhat bigger risks that HERE takes can really pay off when the show is good." –The L Magazine
"I saw a chunk of Dargel's show when it was still in progress last year and can promise that you'll be entertained." –The L Magazine
"orgy of multidisciplinary cross-pollination" –Time Out Magazine
"darkly enchanting musical theater…silly, but also desperately sad and layered" –New York Times (on Removable Parts)
"eclectic annual festival" – New York Times
"works that blur the lines between dance, theater, music, new media, puppetry and visual art." –NYC Official City Guide
"cross-disciplinary presentations embrace and illuminate our modern experience by integrating many forms of media and content into exciting new works." –NYC Official City Guide
above photo: James Scruggs
"A wildly inventive treat... [an] aural and visual circus... it's amazing what sick, outrageous connections O'Harra and Co. inspire." - Time Out New York
"Equal parts Sid Vicious and Akira Kurosawa, Drum of the Waves of Horikawa is a brilliant mashup of two seemingly disparate art forms -- traditional Japanese kabuki theatre and '70s punk rock. The wildly imaginative downtown group Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf has woven the common threads of violent energy, extreme posturing, and destructive attitude into its production of a Japanese play that dates from 1705. Featuring a live band, adultery, revenge, full-frontal nudity, murder, and inventive punk-samurai costumes and makeup, the show is one of the most original and entertaining Off-Off-Broadway productions of the year." -- Flavorpill
"Drum of the Waves of Horikawa incorporates a kinetic punk rock score that swings and sizzles... Executed with inventive, rigorous precision by an indefatigable ensemble in a 12’ playing space, [it] is at turns lively, startling, funny ... The cast is uniformly excellent, throwing themselves completely into O’Harra’s elaborately choreographed staging with a physicality that, for all its precision, still exudes an exhilarating air of recklessness." - The Gothamist
"Wild and energetic... this new production from the Theatre of the Two-Headed Calf blends traditional Kabuki with '70s punk rock to create an experience that is entertaining and unforgettable."- Washington Square News
"Riveting ... incredible imagery...raw emotional territory"
-Back Stage
“A brilliant exploration of suspension…So much so that walking out of the theatre last Thursday night I was rendered…silent.” - Obscene Jester
"Extraordinary, astonishing, near-perfect masterpiece... You MUST GO SEE THIS SHOW!" - Culturebot
" One of the most stunning and poignant pieces of theatre playing on a New York stage right now. Do not miss this show, and once you see it, tell everyone you know." - nytheatre.com
"The strange, feral dances the schoolgirls engage in…the playwright and the producers, riotously alive and bursting with their own stories and concerns…make for great theater." - New York Times
"Darkly enchanting... perversely pleasurable... Amputation, especially when it’s self-imposed, is a loaded and problematic metaphor. Mr. Dargel and company handle it with an intelligent grace that is as moving as it is impressive." -- The New York Times
Read the full rave review in the New York Times!
"Corey Dargel is a baroquely unclassifiable artist whose songs fall between classical art song and indie pop... his texts zigzagging between raw confession and cerebral absurdity... [Removable Parts] is at once uproarious and harrowing." -- The New Yorker
"Bizarre, complex, and strangely moving, Removable Parts is lyrically brilliant and truly original." -- Flavorpill
"Dargel's gorgeous experimental score is the perfect method with which to address the fascinating, creepy topic of voluntary amputation." -- NewYorkCool.com
"The type of fierce art I'll always happily sit through..." -- NYTheatre.com
For more information on this project, visit Young Jean's resident artist page: Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven - Young Jean Lee
PRAISE FOR Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven:
The New York Times “Young Jean Lee’s hysterically funny Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven, now at the Here Arts Center, is perfect... politically incorrect... shockingly racist... directed brilliantly.”
New York Magazine - 2006 Culture Awards
"It says something for Young Jean Lee that she still manages to save her play’s weirdest, funniest stroke for near the end. In unison, four Asian-American actresses deliver a speech in the author’s voice that rampages through race and gender sensitivities, mocking patriarchal white men, hypocritical white women, angry minorities, and Lee herself... Downtown saw some fine work in 2006, but Lee’s gutsy, taboo-busting speech was the clearest indication that the avant-garde isn’t dead, and has never been funnier."
The Village Voice: “A perverse, provocative, and very funny festival of racism... subsumed by a relationship drama featuring two white people and Lee's relentless self-inquiry... Songs offers not only chauvinistic monologues and ass-slapping Korean dances, but also a rigorous exploration of art-making and its associated terrors.”
Time Out New York: "A sweet-and-sour parade of Asian minstrelsy and race-baiting that culminates in a soul-baring love scene between two Caucasians."
Theatermania “Using vaudeville, multimedia, stand-up comedy, dance, and drama, this eclectic and highly entertaining show ... is funny... Insightful... Lee's often-enigmatic approach to racial identity belies a simple and salient point -- that such issues are complicated and inescapable.”
Off-Off-Online "It surprises and shocks at every moment. The juxtaposition of culture and identity is so vivid that audiences can't help but laugh. Unique, sophisticated, and profound, Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven is exactly the sort of downtown gem of a play you hope to discover."
American Theatre Web “Playwright and director Young Jean Lee... delivers an emotional wallop... [the actors] throw themselves full-force into the absurdity of Lee's work... Songs bursts with energy that decries injustices that people inflict on one another, both large and small.”
The Brooklyn Rail "As in Shakespeare's Illyria, the heaven of Young Jean Lee's Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven...is a perplexing place where nothing is what it seems, and its people are not who they appear to be." --Richard Fulco
The Korea Daily In Korean.
above photo: Carl Skutsch
"I look forward each year to my trips to The American Living Room because I know that I will see theatre that I won't see anywhere else—work that will surprise, startle, challenge, and usually delight, because it's provocative, smart, genre-defying, and barrier-breaking." --Martin Denton, nytheatre.com
-> More from this article, along with reviews of past performances.
->Executive Director, Kristin Marting, discusses The American Living Room with Backstage.
->Listen to a podcast on with Martin Denton of nytheatre.com and HERE's Executive Director Kristin Marting and Living Room artists Soomi Kim and Rania Khalil.
->Check out New York Magazine's Top Picks for the Living Room festival.
->Read more about the longest running New York summer theater festival in:
Americantheaterweb.com
Flavorpill
GoNYC
PaperMag.com
Theatermania
The Home News Tribune
Want to learn more about the festival? Click HERE for information on performances and showtimes.
The Aquarian Weekly: "These works proudly emerge from the unconventional side of the artistic world and can be expected to intrigue and inspire with art forms that are both familiar and esoteric, often at the same time."
New York Magazine: "Sofas and lounge chairs replace those painful theatre seats at the American Living Room festival."
Show Business Weekly: "Twenty-five projects, 300 artists: all taking bold risks and provoking audiences."
Flavorpill: "As its name implies, the American Living Room festival is all about homey comfort. Cozy couches and easy chairs create a laidback setting for the eclectic roster of 25 curated new works by a diverse bunch of theatre, dance, puppetry, music, and film artists."
NYTheatre.com:
“The show ended… Maybe the couches were just too comfortable and no one wanted to leave. I didn't want to leave and I was sitting in a regular chair. Finally in the lobby, we all gathered, chatted, had another beer or two and basked in the warm, friendly atmosphere that is The American Living Room festival.”
"That's what's so refreshing about The American Living Room. The works you see there invite you to think and make your own connections and conclusions. So if you have a chance to get to this eclectic series, I highly recommend it."
click here for the full review on In the Company of Trees, Absolute Brightness, Sun Sheets and Small Shows, Reading the Water, Free and Compulsory: my year ineducation, Trigger Happy Jack and "65."
New York Press: "Interesting and experimental work in a comfortable setting."
The Village Voice: "With its comfy chairs and amiable atmosphere, Here's American Living Room festival aims to invest cutting-edge theater with the cozy familiarity of a night in front of the TV."
Paper Magazine: "Couches, easy chairs, cool ones in the fridge and experimental work done by seasoned performers."
"The Young Ladies Of... attacks the familiar with such brash originality that the show dazzles... [Mac's] tools include a ukulele [and] a nutty slide show... Mr. Mac weaves these threads into a sublime tapestry." -- The New York Times
"Outrageous solo performer Taylor Mac has always been fierce... but his stunning new solo piece — a pastiche of autobiography, allegory and social analysis — proves that the gender-bending artist can be in control and still be utterly fabulous."-- Time Out New York
"[Mac's] work exudes the sort of unadulterated authenticity and old-school artistic expression that defined our city's glittering past." -- Flavorpill
"At once heartbreaking and hilarious... a thoughtful discourse on the nature of masculinity verses femininity... profoundly entertaining." -- Next Magazine
"In The Young Ladies Of, his engaging solo show at HERE Arts Center, [Mac] grapples with questions of gender while making an attempt to understand his relationship to his father... Mac has a commanding stage presence... puppets by Basil Twist add to the fun, particularly a fabulous creation used for the terrific finale."-- Theatermania
“Deeply inspiring... we cannot help but embrace his kind, child-like aura, his courageous disowning of gender, his variation on themes that are entirely his own.” -- New York Press Review
"Mac is a spectacularly accomplished performer... [The Young Ladies Of] is a grand showcase for this brave and constantly morphing/evolving pastiche artist." -- NYTheatre.com
"Mac's magnetic stage presence—a toned-down riff on Bette Davis in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?—turns strumming a ukulele or playing with a puppet into highly theatrical moments... brilliant." -- New York Magazine
For more information, visit Alexandra's resident artist page:
us - Alexandra Beller
"In Alexandra Beller's new solo show, directed by Kristin Marting, the former Bill T. Jones standout dresses herself in the American flag, uses it as a jump rope, breast-feeds it. A sound score assaults her with conservative rhetoric, circa 2004, and she enlists the audience in pointing out contradictions in Leviticus. Beller's powerful physicality conveys distress but also a rich sensuality, as she partners a blow-up doll and then a mop."
"Loving your country, especially this one at this time, can be a pathological condition. It doesn't love you back. Her attempt to orchestrate her confused and confusing emotions contains some arresting visual imagery, and she herself is a force to be reckoned with."
"Beller is revealed in all her confrontational glory. Alternately sweet and brutal, she makes rough use of a collection of inflatable sex dolls, seizes items out of a trash can with her mouth and turns that flag into a noose, a burka and a baby."
“HERE Artistic Director Kristin Marting concludes the OBIE-winning art center’s season by directing performer/dancer Alexandra Beller in us... Just another reason why we love New York.”
"Beller—a bright young force on the experimental scene—dreamed up the idea and the choreography. And her voluptuous, no-nonsense presence socks almost every point imaginatively home."
"Alexandra Beller, a bold dance artist pushing the limits of identity and patriotism in a successful political work/love story appropriately titled us."
