Gabriel Kahane 8980: Book of Travelers
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CAP UCLA presents Gabriel Kahane 8980: Book of Travelers Sat, Jan 20, 2018 | The Theatre at Ace Hotel Photo by Daniel Fish East Side, Center for the Art of Performance presents West Side, 8980: Book of Travelers All Around LA Composed & Performed by Gabriel Kahane Directed by Daniel Fish Welcome to the Center Set & Video Design: Jim Findlay for the Art of Performance Lighting Design: Mark Barton Videography: Tamara Ober, Jim Findlay, Daniel Fish & The Center for the Art of Performance is not a place. It’s more Julia Frey of a state of mind that embraces experimentation, encourages Sound Engineer: Dave Sinko a culture of the curious, champions disruptors and dreamers and supports the commitment and courage of artists. We promote Nunally Kersh, Producer rigor, craft and excellence in all facets of the performing arts. Mary-Susan Gregson, Stage Manager Jordan Fein, Associate Director Robert Henderson, Lighting Supervisor & Production Manager 2017–18 SEASON VENUES Julia Frey, Associate Video Designer Royce Hall, UCLA Freud Playhouse, UCLA The Theatre at Ace Hotel Little Theater, UCLA Sat, Jan 20 at 8pm Will Rogers State Historic Park The Theatre at Ace Hotel UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) is dedicated to the advancement Running time: Approx. 70 mins. | No intermission of the contemporary performing arts in all disciplines—dance, music, spoken word and theater—as well as emerging digital, collaborative and cross-platforms utilized by Funds provided by the Ginny Mancini Endowment for today’s leading artists. Part of UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture, CAP UCLA Vocal Performance. curates and facilitates direct exposure to contemporary performance from around the globe, supporting artists who are creating extraordinary works of art and fostering a vibrant learning community both on and off the UCLA campus. The organization invests in the creative process by providing artists with financial backing and time to experiment These performances are dedicated to the memory of Michael Friedman and expand their practices through strategic partnerships, residencies and collaborations. (1975 - 2017): friend, mentor, listener, traveler. As an influential voice within the local, national, and global arts community, CAP UCLA —GK serves to connect audiences across generations in order to galvinize a living archive of our culture. cap.ucla.edu #CAPUCLA Commissioned by BAM for the 2017 Next Wave Festival. At the same time, I was also keenly aware—who wasn’t?— Leadership support provided by Linda & Stuart Nelson. of the rupture in our body politic, and decided that I 8980: Book of Travelers was also made possible through the generous support of might kill two birds with one William Cooney & Ruth Eliel, The Jerry & Terri Kohl Family Foundation, The Kend stone by taking a trip that Family Fund, Ted & Mary Jo Shen, the Jim Joseph Foundation, Simon Yates and would wrest me out of my Rudolph & Peekie Schaefer. New York City bubble while offering the narrative frame I Special thanks to Kristy Edmunds and the terrific staff of CAP UCLA. was seeking. So in early October, I bought a series of Profound thanks to Seth Bockley, Henry Stram, Blake Mills, Tony Berg, Joseph Lorge, train tickets and decided that Martha & Jeffrey & Annie Kahane, Emma Tepfer, Roscoe Greebleton Jones III and regardless of the outcome, Marc Atkinson. I would set off the morning after the election. Many thanks to St. Ann’s Warehouse and MASS MoCA for invaluable development support. Meals in the dining car work like so: If you’re in a sleeper car, an attendant walks through midmorning and takes reservations; you’re handed a slip of paper with the time and number of people in your party. At the appointed hour, an announcement HOW THE AMTRAK DINING CAR COULD HEAL THE NATION is made inviting those holding reservations to appear at the threshold of the dining car. If you’re in a party smaller than four, you’ll be placed at the next open table, On Nov. 9, 2016, I boarded the Lake leading to stochastic seating arrangements that create unexpected social and Shore Limited, Amtrak’s overnight cultural adjacencies. service from New York to Chica- go. I had with me a small suitcase In the course of my travels, I chatted with postmasters, real estate agents, nuclear stuffed with a week’s worth of engineers, schoolteachers, farm equipment saleswomen, nurses, long haul truck clothes, half a dozen books, a bright drivers, retirees headed to the Grand Canyon, retirees headed back from the Grand blue Casio wristwatch, and a cheap Canyon, a sea-steading software engineer, a prominent TV personality, a cowboy, a digital camera I’d picked up at Best national park trail crew leader, an aspiring music publicist, a public utility employee Buy on my way to Penn Station. My focused on solar energy who nevertheless professed to be a climate change skeptic, phone remained at home. a flight attendant, an actuary, an air conditioner salesman, two ultramarathoners, and two train enthusiasts who met on an online forum and now maintain a food Over the next 13 days, I would log blog documenting everything that they 8,980 miles aboard six trains, tra- eat during their trips. The list goes on. versing 31 states, subsisting mainly on Three Cheese Tortellini with Where much of the digital world finds Creamy Pesto Sauce and Vegeta- us sorting ourselves neatly into cultural ble Medley. During this time, I had and ideological silos, the train, in my conversations with upward of 80 strangers, almost all of whom I met over meals in experience, does precisely the opposite. the dining car. Aside from what I was told by other passengers, I consumed no news It also acts, by some numinous, unseen in any form during my trip. force, as a kind of industrial-strength social lubricant. To be sure, I encoun- In the months leading up to the presidential election, I’d been working on a passel tered people whose politics I found of new songs for a run of shows at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and, on the abhorrent, dangerous, and destructive, heels of years spent zigzagging the country in a tour bus, I was thinking about but in just about every instance, there travel, and the varied impulses that have given rise to travel throughout history, as was something about the person’s rela- an organizing principle. But I wanted to write something that was at the very least tionship to family, and loyalty to family, framed by a personal journey, if not entirely personal in its content. that I found deeply moving. That ability to connect across an ideological divide seemed predicated on the fact that we were quite literally breaking bread together. Perhaps it also had something to do with the pace at which we traveled. Limping along obsolescent track at speeds averaging 55 m.p.h., the American train is tremendously inefficient; it takes almost four full days to cross the continental United LAKESHORE LIMITED New York, NY • Croton-Harmon, NY • Poughkeepsie, States via rail. But that inefficiency is precisely what made this train trip revelatory. Rail NY • Rhinecliff, NY • Albany-Rensselaer, NY • Schenectady, NY • Utica, NY culture, in contrast to the digital, proposes a fundamentally different relationship to • Rochester, NY • Buffalo-Depew, NY • Erie, PA • Cleveland, OH • Elyria, time, and to time’s modern bedfellow, efficiency. OH • Sandusky, OH • Toledo, OH • Bryan, OH • Waterloo, IN • Elkhart, IN • Southbend, IN • Chicago, IL EMPIRE BUILDER Glenview, IL • Milwaukee, WI There are categories of experience and thought threatened by our devotion to efficien- • Columbus, WI • Portage, WI • Wisconsin Dells, WI • Tomah, WI • La Crosse, cy, and in our fast-paced lives, we may be blinded to the loss of those ways of thinking. WI • Winona, MN • Red Wing, MN • St. Paul-Minneapolis, MN • St. Cloud, MN I mourn the decline of complex truth, the ability to hold two sides of an argument in • Staples, MN • Detroit Lakes, MN • Fargo, ND • Grand Forks, ND • Devils mind, the desire to understand rather than simply to be right. We have, for the most Lake, ND • Rugby, ND • Minot, ND • Stanley, ND • Williston, ND • Wolfpoint, part, retreated into pure binary thinking. MT • Glasgow, MT • Malta, MT • Havre, MT • Shelby, MT • Cut Bank, MT • Browning, MT • East Glacier Park, MT • Whitefish, MT • Libby, MT • Sandpoint, Our inability to think dialectically, and ID • Spokane, WA • Pasco, WA • Wishram, WA • Bingen-White Salmon, WA • by extension, empathetically, stems Vancouver, WA • Portland, OR COAST STARLIGHT Salem, OR • Albany, OR • both from our shortened attention Eugene- Springfield, OR • Chemut, OR • Klamath Falls, OR • Dunsmuir, CA spans and the flattening of public dis- • Redding, CA • Chico, CA • Sacramento, CA • Davis, CA • Martinez, CA • course, but also from our fear of being Emeryville, CA • Oakland, CA • San Jose, CA • Salinas, CA • Paso Robles, CA • shamed—in an ideologically divided San Luis Obispo, CA • Santa Barbara, CA • Oxnard, CA • Simi Valley, CA • Van society — for acknowledging any iota Nuys, CA • Burbank-Bob Hope Airport, CA • Los Angeles, CA SOUTHWEST of truth to the grievance of the other CHIEF Fullerton, CA • Riverside, CA • San Bernardino, CA • Victorville, CA side. After a few days of the dining • Barstow, CA • Needles, CA • Klingman, AZ • Winslow, AZ • Gallup, NM • car routine I began to wonder if the Albuquerque, NM • Lamy, NM • Las Vegas, NM • Raton, NM • Trinidad, CO • La train might be a salve for our nation- Junta, CO • Garden City, KS • Dodge City, KS • Hutchinson, KS • Newton, KS al wound, bringing us into intimate • Topeka, KS • Lawrence, KS • Kansas City, MO • La Plata, MO • Fort Madison, conversation with unlikely interlocutors, IA • Galesburg, IL • Princeton, IL • Mendota, IL • Naperville, IL • Chicago, IL and allowing us to see each other as CITY OF NEW ORLEANS Homewood, IL • Kankakee, IL • Gilman, IL • Rantoul, human rather than as mere containers IL • Champaign-Urbana, IL • Ma oon, IL • Effingham, IL • Centralia, IL • Du for ideology.