A Piece of Work Markov Chains, Or More Precisely Director’S Note N-Gram Models, Are the Basis for This Project

2013 Next Wave Festival Brooklyn Academy of Music Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board William I. Campbell, A Piece Vice Chairman of the Board Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board Karen Brooks Hopkins, of Work President Joseph V. Melillo, A machine-made Hamlet Executive Producer by Annie Dorsen DATES: Dec 18—21 at 7:30pm Dec 21 at 10pm Performed by Scott Shepherd (Dec 18 & 20 at 7:30pm, Dec 21 at 10pm) Joan MacIntosh (Dec 19 & 21 at 7:30pm) LOCATION: BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) RUN TIME: 1hr 10min no intermission BAM 2013 Next Wave Festival sponsor Leadership support for Scandinavian programming provided by The Barbro Osher Pro Suecia Foundation Major support for theater at BAM provided by The Morris and Alma Schapiro Fund #APieceofWork The SHS Foundation The Shubert Foundation, Inc. BAM Fisher 2013 Next Wave Festival A Piece of Work Markov chains, or more precisely Director’s Note N-gram models, are the basis for this project. They are “finite state ma- A Piece In an interview in The Evening Stan- chines.” That is, they don’t grow or A Piece of Work is a co-production dard, Noel Gallagher was asked about learn; they are memory-less. Basi- of BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen), Black the last play he saw: “Hamlet with cally, they analyze sequences of words Box Teater (Oslo), Brooklyn Academy Jude Law. It’s four hours long and there appearing in a given source text and of Work of Music (NYC), brut (Vienna), On the wasn’t one single minute that I knew can generate new text according to Boards (Seattle), and Parc de la Villette what was going on. I was thinking, ‘I the frequency or infrequency of those (Paris). A machine-made Hamlet know they’re speaking English, but it’s patterns. Each time the program runs, just all fucking gibberish.’ I can appreci- it makes new, probabilistic choices, by Annie Dorsen A Piece of Work was developed in ate the acting and the way they learned which can be surprisingly different from part at Live Arts Bard, Bard College’s all those lines, but what the fuck was night to night. But each choice is con- residency and commissioning program CONCEPT & DIRECTION going on?” ditional only upon the current state, not for the performing arts, through a Annie Dorsen ____ upon anything that may have happened Lower Manhattan Council on the Arts before. Space Grant (2011), and while in PERFORMERS “As both Bert States and Herbert Blau residence at 3LD Art & Technology Scott Shepherd/Joan MacIntosh have noted, Hamlet is not only the Markov chains have a wide variety of Center. Production support provided by central dramatic piece in Western applications—from medicine to eco- On the Boards through its Performance SOUND & NETWORK DESIGN cultural consciousness, but it is a play nomics to music to search engines and Production Program. Grégory Beller that is particularly concerned with data compression—but it is this quality ghosts and with haunting. In addition of operating in a continuous present A Piece of Work is a House On Fire SCENOGRAPHY/VIDEO to the profound ways in which these that attracted me. Theater often claims project, receiving support from the Jim Findlay two major theorists have demonstrated to aspire to such a state, but in practice Culture Programme of the European how the image of haunting appears it is a medium made of memory. That’s Union. Additional development support LIGHTING DESIGN & TECHNICAL within this complex and provocative apparent in everything from its fascina- provided by the city of Vienna, Abrons MANAGEMENT drama, however, Hamlet is involved tion with its own history, its reliance on Art Center, and many generous Bruno Pocheron and Ruth Waldeyer with haunting in quite another recognizable action unfolding in time, individuals. dimension: the temporal movement of its mode of production through repeti- SYSTEMS DESIGN & TEXT the work and its accompanying theory tion and the remembering of lines and PROGRAMMING and performance through history. Our moves, and its use of language, which Mark Hansen language is haunted by Shakespeare in the moment of performance recalls in general and Hamlet in particular, past situations and subjectivities and Associate PROGRAMMING so much so that anyone reading the desires and needs. Dylan Fried play for the first time is invariably struck by how many of the play’s lines The algorithms we use in this perfor- ADDITIONAL PROGRAMMING are already known to her. Even more mance are simple—they skip, sort, Scott Shepherd and Paul Calley experienced readers (or viewers) can replace, and sequence. They don’t hardly escape the impression that the know what they say, or what they said SCENOGRAPHY/VIDEO assistant play is really a tissue of quotations. before. They don’t know what grief is, Ryan Holsopple Our iconic memories are haunted by or revenge, or an entrance, or an exit. Hamlet.” They make decision after decision, over MANAGEMENT & PRODUCTION —from The Haunted Stage: and over, generating a non-stop flow Audra Diahann Lang Theatre as a Memory Machine by of effects without causes, and causes ARMATURE projects Marvin Carlson without effects. Photo: Green Text by Annie Dorsen 2013 Next Wave Festival ImPulsTanz Festival Vienna) and with Juren and DD Dorviller on Pièce sans A Piece of Work Paroles (brut Vienna and Rencontres Who’s Choréographiques Internationales We have divided this performance into Seine-St-Denis, Paris). In 2009 she five parts, following the original five acts created two music-theater pieces, Ask of Shakespeare: five passes through Your Mama, a setting of Langston the text, using five distinct principles of Hughes’ 1962 poem composed by algorithmic rewriting. Who Laura Karpman and sung by Jessye Norman and The Roots (Carnegie Hall); 1. Excerpt 5% of the play by length, Annie Dorsen and ETHEL’s Truckstop, seen at BAM’s skipping through the scenes in order. Concept and Direction Next Wave Festival. Her pop-political performance project Democracy in 2. Sort lines of the play by keyword, Director and writer Annie Dorsen America was presented at PS 122 in snaking through the play, finding works in a variety of fields, including spring 2008. Her short film, I Miss, repetitions and echoes. theater, film, dance, and, as of 2010, originally the centerpiece of Democracy digital performance. Most recently, her in America, has screened at American 3. Parse all the soliloquies, looking for participatory performance Spokaoke Film Institute Festival (AFI Fest), SXSW grammatical structures. Replace nouns was presented at Crossing the Line Film Festival, The New York Film Fes- with other nouns and verbs with other Festival (New York), Black Box Theater tival’s “Views From the Avant-Garde,” verbs, group selections of the most- (Oslo), BIT Teatergarasjen (Bergen) and and the Nantucket Film Festival. used grammatical phrases (determiner- Steirischer Herbst’s Truth is Concrete adjective-noun, or preposition- marathon (Graz). Her first algorithmic determiner-verb). theater piece Hello Hi There premiered Scott Shepherd at the Steirischer Herbst in 2010 and Performer 4. Generate new scenes by re-sequencing has toured extensively in both Europe words using Markov chaining. and the US, including Parc de La Scott Shepherd has worked with the Villette (Paris), Noorderzon Festival Wooster Group since 1997, performing 5. Generate a new final scene (Act Five, (Groningen), SommerSzene (Salzburg), in Cry, Trojans! (Troilus & Cressida); Scene Two) by re-sequencing letters Hebbel am Ufer (Berlin), and PS 122 Vieux Carré; La Didone; Hamlet; Poor using Markov chaining. (New York), among many others. She Theater; To You, The Birdie!; North is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway Atlantic; The Emperor Jones; Brace musical Passing Strange which she Up!; and The Hairy Ape. He has also also directed. Spike Lee made a film performed extensively with Elevator of her production of the piece, which Repair Service, performing in Gatz; premiered at the Sundance Film Festi- No Great Society; Total Fictional Lie; val in 2009, subsequently screened at Cab Legs, Shut Up I Tell You (I Said the South by Southwest Film Festival Shut Up I Tell You); and McGurk: A and the Tribeca Film Festival, and Cautionary Tale. Off-Broadway: Blood was released theatrically by IFC in Knot (Signature Theater). Film: Brief 2010 before being broadcast on PBS’ Reunion; Meanwhile; Side Effects; and Great Performances. Also in 2010, And So It Goes. Awards: Obie and Bes- she collaborated with choreographer sie Awards for Poor Theater; Obie and Anne Juren on Magical (premiere at Elliot Norton Awards for Gatz. Photo: Scott Shepherd by Nina Mouritzen 2013 Next Wave Festival a founding member and primary col- Boris Hauf, and Olivier Heinry (SMP). laborator in both the experimentally Bocheron is co-organizing Wiesen55, Joan MacIntosh Grégory Beller ground-breaking Collapsable Giraffe a collective working space under Performer Sound and Network Design and the internationally successful construction in Berlin-Wedding, and music/media performance company Gangplank, a collaborative network Joan MacIntosh has had a distin- A former student of the Normale Accinosco/Cynthia Hopkins, as well focusing on inter-media communica- Who’sguished career as an actress for over School, Grégory Beller holds an aggre- as being an associate artist with The tion, relations between technology and 46 years, performing leading roles on gation in physics, two master’s degrees Wooster Group since 1994, and a fre- art, and crossovers between the fields and off-Broadway, in resident theaters in music, and a PhD in computer quent collaborator with Ridge Theatre, at play in contemporary performance- throughout the US, and in Europe, science. He works as a researcher, Bang on a Can, and Ralph Lemon. making. He develops open-source- Africa, and Asia. She was a founding teacher, and computer designer for Who based interfaces allowing fluid com- member of The Performance Group, digital arts.

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