Program Notes
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MEMORY RINGS PHANTOM LIMB COMPANY WORLD PREMIERE JUNE 19-20, 2015 aA MESSAGE FROM OZ ARTS OZ ARTS NASHVILLE SUPPORTS THE CREATION, DEVELOPMENT AND PRESENTATION OF SIGNIFICANT CONTEMPORARY PERFORMING AND VISUAL ART WORKS BY LEADING ARTISTS WHOSE CONTRIBUTION INFLUENCES THE ADVANCEMENT OF THEIR FIELD. ADVISORY BOARD Amy Atkinson Karen Elson Jill Robinson Anne Brown Karen Hayes Patterson Sims Libby Callaway Gavin Ivester Mike Smith Chase Cole Keith Meacham Ronnie Steine Jen Cole Ellen Meyer Joseph Sulkowski Stephanie Conner Dave Pittman Stacy Widelitz Gavin Duke Paul Polycarpou Betsy Wills Kristy Edmunds Anne Pope Mel Ziegler aA MESSAGE FROM OZ ARTS Welcome to OZ Arts Nashville and to the world premiere of Memory Rings by Phantom Limb Company (PLC). These are the first public presentations of this work, and a first world premiere for OZ Arts! We could not be more proud to have been part of this journey. Presenting a theatrical work with such a potent message for humankind is an honor. Witnessing this visionary creative team’s ability to illustrate that message has been extraordinary. PLC co-directors Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko bring their expertise and a rare gift for communicating philosophically through marionette puppetry, set design and ensemble direction to each of their projects. In the case of Memory Rings, they have assembled a veritable who’s who of distinguished artists and institutions to help them bring this project to fruition. Following residencies at Harvard University’s Center for the Environment and the famed Robert Rauschenberg Center, choreographer Ryan Heffington (Chandelier, Elastic Heart) joined dramaturg Janice Paran (Sundance Institute, McCarter Theatre Center) and PLC for a 2-week development period at OZ Arts in July, 2014. Puppeteers Morgan Matens, John McSparran and Tamara Scott of Wishing Chair Productions at Nashville Public Library also joined early rehearsals for Memory Rings last summer, and we are supremely grateful for their support. Further development workshops at The Arts Center at NYU Abu Dhabi and MASS MoCA brought together Darron West (Trisha Brown, Bill T. Jones) and Keith Skretch (Big Dance Theater, Jay Scheib) to devise the layered and mesmerizing sound and video designs, in brilliant harmony with lighting design by Brian Scott (Laurie Anderson, SITI Company, Rude Mechs). Architect Gia Wolf assisted Jessica Grindstaff with set design and famed Danish costume designer and polymath, Henrik Vibskov, conceived the wardrobe for the incredible cast as well as the marionettes. What could possibly inspire all of these renowned artists and institutions to create an ephemeral theatrical performance? I believe it is a collective recognition and belief that an artistic experience will far outlast an intellectual discussion on environmental change. Thank you for supporting this project and OZ Arts. Welcome to Memory Rings. MEMORY RINGS PHANTOM LIMB COMPANY WORLD PREMIERE JUNE 19-20, 2015 CONCEIVED BY JESSICA GRINDSTAFF AND ERIK SANKO DIRECTION AND DESIGN - JESSICA GRINDSTAFF ORIGINAL MUSIC AND PUPPET DESIGN - ERIK SANKO CHOREOGRAPHY - RYAN HEFFINGTON COSTUME DESIGN - HENRIK VIBSKOV LIGHTING DESIGN - BRIAN H. SCOTT SOUND DESIGN - DARRON L. WEST VIDEO DESIGN - KEITH SKRETCH DRAMATURG - JANICE PARAN PRODUCER - MARA ISAACS, OCTOPUS THEATRICALS Phantom Limb Company (PLC), based in New York City, is known for its work with marionette-puppetry and focus on collaborative, multi-media theatrical production and design. Co-founded in 2007 by installation artist, painter and set designer Jessica Grindstaff and composer and puppet maker Erik Sanko, Phantom Limb has been lauded for its unconventional approach to this venerable format. Phantom Limb includes a large rotating cast of friends, collaborators, artists, dancers and puppeteers. In their short career, Phantom Limb has produced The Fortune Teller, Dear Mme., The Devil You Know with Ping Chong, Lemony Snicket’s The Composer Is Dead with Berkeley Repertory Theatre, 69˚S. with The Kronos Quartet, and Peer Gynt with Republique Theatre, Copenhagen, Denmark. Phantom Limb been commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and has received grants and awards from the Jim Henson Foundation, the Jerome Foundation, the Manhattan Cultural Council, the National Science Foundation, New York State Composer’s Grant, MAP Fund, New Music USA and others. www.phantomlimbcompany.com What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man, You cannot say, or guess, for you know only A heap of broken images, where the sun beats, And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief, And the dry stone no sound of water. Only There is shadow under this red rock, (Come in under the shadow of this red rock), And I will show you something different from either Your shadow at morning striding behind you Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; I will show you fear in a handful of dust. T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land, 1922 A NOTE FROM THE DIRECTOR Memory Rings is the second installment of a planned trilogy of original works addressing environmental concerns. The first piece, 69˚S., a poetic examination of Ernest Shackleton’s 1914 Antarctica expedition, looked at questions of adversity, endurance, community, and hubris. Our work on Memory Rings was inspired by the so-called Methuselah Tree, a California bristlecone pine that is almost 5,000 years old. Its longevity made us wonder, how has humankind’s relationship to the natural world changed over the course of Methuselah’s life? We humans pride ourselves on our evolutionary dominance, on our separation from our animal forebears. But that severance comes at a cost. As the waves drew back from the coast in advance of the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia, curious tourists walked out toward the water, though many animals had reportedly sought higher ground days earlier. The sensory abilities we once had, the deep connection to our planet’s signals, have been lost. But even that disconnect is old news. In developing Memory Rings, we looked to our earliest myths and stories of human interaction with nature, and realized that one of the oldest—the epic tale of Gilgamesh—hinges on a deforestation. In the Sumerian version (carved on stone tablets), Gilgamesh, king of Urek, sees dead bodies floating down the Euphrates. He realizes in that moment that he is mortal, and sets off on a quest to achieve eternal renown by slaying the god of the cedar forest. So how has the relationship between humans and the environment changed over the last 5,000 years? Very little, it seems. The difference is that it is becoming unsustainable. Many say that we have reached a tipping point, and that our efforts to restore our planet’s health have come too late. We are becoming digital icons of our very selves, changing faster than we can collectively process, while our actual world fades around us, the next mass extinction looming. But the story of Memory Rings—the story of humans living in an alternately charmed and adversarial relation to the natural world—asks us to stop, look and listen. Told through a series of fanciful, overlapping scenarios in which Gilgamesh, woodland creatures, fairy tale forests, fragments of the flood myth, and some very 21st-century problems vie for our attention, Memory Rings is serious play. We have created a world where human, puppet, and animal slip in and out of each other’s skins, making a tapestry of a fictional biodiversity. In these childlike moments of delight, in the bits of laughter evoked, we hope to awaken a dormant connection to forgotten identities and to nature itself, the source of life, our very first love. After all, we are part of a closed system—we have always been here, and we will always be here, in one form or another. -Jessica Grindstaff COMPANYCOMAPNY CREDITS CREDITS: Memory Rings: Conceived by Jessica Grindstaff and Erik Sanko Direction and Design Jessica Grindstaff Original Music and Puppet Design Erik Sanko Choreography Ryan Heffington Costume Design Henrik Vibskov Lighting Design Brian H. Scott Sound Design Darron L. West Video Design Keith Skretch Dramaturgy Janice Paran Producer Mara Isaacs, Octopus Theatricals Cast: Lucie Baker, Toby Billowitz, Takemi Kitamura, Lisa K. Lock, Rowan Magee, Aaron Mattocks, Daniel Selon, Carlton Cyrus Ward Stage Manager Randi Rivera Production Management Corps Liminis Collaborating Architect Gia Wolff Cello Recording Jeffrey Zeigler Fragrance Design Douglas Little Producing Associate/Company Manager Bryan Hunt Project Consultant Julia Glawe Bramble Costumes and Costume of Light designed by Jessica Grindstaff Costumes fabricated by Henrik Vibskov Studio Bramble costume fabricated by Daniel Selon Additional puppet costumes fabricated by Sarah Lafferty Tree fabrication by Dante Mann Additional Music: Excerpt from THUS SPOKE ZARATHURSTRA by Friedrich Neitzsche Spoken by Jennifer Charles WHO’S AFRAID OF THE BIG BAD WOLF? By Frank Churchill Additional Lyric by Ann Ronell ©Copyright by Bourne Co. Copyright Renewed All Rights Reserved International Copyright Secured ASCAP WILD WORLD Written by Yusuf Islam Published by BMG Gold Songs (ASCAP) o/b/o Salafa Limited Recorded by Cassandra Jenkins Used by permission. All rights reserved. Special Thanks from Phantom Limb Company: Lauren Snelling and the staff at OZ Arts Nashville, Joe Melillo, Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), Kristy Edmunds, CAP UCLA, Western Kentucky University Theater Department, Princeton University’s Lewis Center for the Arts, Oren Bloedow, Bill Bragin, Chris Caiazza, Rachel Chanoff, Danny Elfman, Colin Gee, Sophie Hunter, John Kilgore, Daniel Leeb, Jordan Morley, Ruben Polendo, J Ralph, Julie Robine, Freya Sanko, Sierra Urich, Johan Vorsters, Elizabeth Zhang Memory Rings premieres at OZ Arts Nashville in June 2015 and is commissioned by BAM for the 2016 Next Wave Festival, CAP UCLA, and the New York University Abu Dhabi Arts Center. Development residencies provided by OZ Arts Nashville, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/ Rauschenberg Residency , MASSMoCA, North Adams, MA, and The Hermitage.