The Blue Hour
April 11, 2022 @ Dixon Place
The Blue Hour is a performance about the darkest part of the night and the ability to emerge from it. Using Dorothea Tanning’s painting Insomnia as mise-en-scene inspiration, the ethereality and fogginess of the painting haunt the mood of The Blue Hour. Mosaicing sound collage, video, fabric manipulation, movement and light, Kym and the audience travel through the liminal space of the theater to face 4 AM, like Persephone emerging from the underworld. As we travel through the veil, inhabiting the space between inhale and exhale, in between the seconds, we pass through The Blue Hour so that we can be found in the darkness once again.
Death and The Act of Living
a collaboration with William Cook
Death and The Act of Living is a two-person mulit-media play using direct address The piece creates a space that will allows for a safe exploration and commentary on the topic of death and how we confront and cope with it and its aftermath. This project is an attempt to bring a new awareness around death, like a PSA for coming to terms with death and mortality. The project provides an experience of how end of life issues can be met with sober reflection, but with elements of joyful illumination. Performers and audience will interact in parts as the exploration unfolds. Video, movement, music/sound and text fill the space. The show ends with the audience being tucked under a giant blanket together
It provides an open space that allows actual conversation between performers and audience, with the audience participating both in their seats and on stage. LIghting will be a tool to include as needed, particularly to delineate spaces for action. We have done a single public workshop performance at Dixon Place in March 2017. This was after a year of research in text, music, sounds and movement and was an early shaping of the language and staging.SInce then, we keep thinking about how the pandemic has brought this material into a new context for us and the world at large. We would like to revive our initial workshop with the chance to expand the storytelling with video and sound as well as revisit the themes of death awareness and life living. We expect it to evolve into fresh material. What new perspectives has the pandemic given us about the span of a human life? How can we inhabit time and temporality in front of an audience? How can we disturb time using physical theater, storytelling, montage, video, text?
About William Cook:
William Cook is a theatre artist with a long history as a stage actor. He has worked in many local and regional theaters across the nation from North Carolina to California to the District of Columbia, before arriving in New York. Roles from those years included Emcee (Cabaret); Demetrius (Midsummer); Lucky (Godot); Paul (Chorus Line); Dr. Cais (Merry Wives); Prior Walter (Angels: Millennium) and Feste (Twelfth Night) to name a few of his favorite roles. When he moved to NYC in 2008, William began training with SITI Company in Suzuki/Viewpoints. Since that time he has focused exclusively on creating devised theater works with individual artists or companies in the city. He has most often developed work with Superhero Clubhouse, a eco-theater collective, since 2013, and with Kym Bernazky, who he has worked with for over a decade. He brings training in various schools of theatre from Stanislavsky and Growtowski to Ute Hagan and William Esper. William has done a vast amount of bodywork training in dance and yoga, as well as over a decade of training in the Suzuki practice of SITI Company/Tadashi Suzuki. He also runs marathons.
William’s Artist Statement:
My artistic vision seeks to create connection with myself and others.
To achieve this vision, I engage with text, sound and environment. I collaborate with other artists, creating work speaking to current issues, and through connection, I create communities that better understand themselves.
I pursue this vision utilizing my training in acting, voice and movement. I explore text, or character, with my physical instrument and mental capacities. This allows for an immediate and visceral connection with my audience, freeing them to experience the performance in whatever way they choose.
I incorporate two practice modalities, Suzuki and Viewpoints, to support building these vital connections. By grounding my body and mind through the Suzuki Acting Method, I find more spontaneity and playfulness. My groundedness opens me to the unexpected, and I connect in a fluid, galvanizing exchange with my fellow performers and the audience.
I use the Viewpoints practice to facilitate collaboration when working with others while developing projects. The Viewpoints, as founded by Mary Overlie and taught to me by SITI Company, establish a mutual language of creation, assisting me and my co-artists in fine-tuning our communication. I have practiced viewpoints in my work with Superhero Clubhouse, an eco-theater collective, and with Kym Bernazky. I have found that the Viewpoints practice is flexible and does not require others to know the exact language. Using viewpoints, I easily collaborate with any number of artists, establishing strong, creative connections as we work.
To summarize, using these things I have learned, I create connections that are dynamic, adventurous and entertaining.
Medea Blitz!
a collaboration with William Cook