Chris Cochrane / Dennis Cooper / Ishmael Houston-Jones
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CHRIS COCHRANE / DENNIS COOPER / ISHMAEL HOUSTON-JONES THEM *2011 New York Dance and Performance “Bessie” Award Winning Production THEM is currently available for national and international touring. Please contact Ben Pryor for more information. Conceived by Chris Cochrane, Dennis Cooper and Ishmael Houston-Jones Directed by Ishmael Houston-Jones Choreography improvised by the performers after a score by Houston-Jones Music by Chris Cochrane Text by Dennis Cooper Lighting by Joe Levasseur Advisor to the Production Jonathan Walker Performed by Joey Cannizzaro, Felix Cruz, Niall Noel, Jeremy Pheiffer, Jacob Slominski, Arturo Vidich and Enrico D. Wey Management: Ben Pryor / tbspMGMT !! ABOUT THE WORK THEM is an intensely physical interdisciplinary work that presents an unblinking look into the lives of young (gay) men. Conceived and directed by Ishmael Houston-Jones THEM features early texts by famed writer/provocateur Dennis Cooper, and a cacophonous live electric guitar sound score by Chris Cochrane. Houston-Jones’ choreography, while rooted in improvisation develops the themes of connections that never quite happen, grappling and wrestling that seem inconsequential and ineffective, and support that disappears. PRESS “poetic and disturbing, backed by the full force of its history without being diminished by it.” - Claudia La Rocco for THE NEW YORK TIMES “The re-creation of “THEM” is, among other things, a beautiful and powerful act of cultural transmission. Three older gay male artists look back at a creatively turbulent era of embattled sexuality, while a freshly energized band of younger men attest to the vitality of these images. And both pay tribute, silently, to the men who didn’t survive.“ - Don Shewey for CULTUREVULTURE.NET UPCOMING PERFORMANCES TanzImAugust, Berlin, Germany August 15 & 16, 2012 TAP-Poitiers, Poitiers, France April 10 & 11, 2013 PAST PERFORMANCES Centre Pompidou, Paris, France February 27 & 29, 2012 Springdance, Utrecht, The Netherlands April 22 & 23, 2011 AMERICAN REALNESS, New York, USA January 8-10, 2011 Performance Space 122, New York, USA October 20-30, 2010 FUNDING CREDITS The creation of THEM was supported in part by Performance Space 122’s TestPerformanceTest and developed through the RE:NEW RE:PLAY residency series at the New Museum with additional residency support from the Abrons Arts Center. Additional support for THEM has been provided by Tides Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. Photo: Ian Douglas 13 Oliver Street # 3 New York, NY 10038 [email protected] www.tbspMGMT.com F>EJE=H7F>I8O ;H?9C9D7JJ J >;C" ' / . , 0 J ;NJ %CKI ?9I9H ? FJ 7 BBCKI ?9"9 E C FEI; : 7D:F; H<EHC;: 8 O 9>H?I9E9 > H 7 D ; 1 7BBJ;NJ"MH? JJ; D 7D:H; 7 : 8 O :;DD?I9EEF;H" ;N9;FJ<?D7B; D?7BBDE;B @;H;COF>;?<<;H :;DD?I9 EEF;H <;B?N9 HKP (Overture)* – Chris fining whatever it was they were doing is all I can do now. To sit here and see them again, no matter how cold that looks. It wasn’t. ?I7MJ>;CED9;$ I don’t know when or who they were Opening Duet* - Chris because they were too far away. But I remember certain things, like what they wore, which wasn’t anything special – pants, shirts, regular colors – Dead Friends* – Dennis (Chris plays under) stuff I’ve seen thousands of times since. I wanted them to know something. I cupped my hands around my Cass Romanski, 23, and his fiancée made dinner at his family home mouth and thought about yelling out. But they wouldn’t have heard me. in Arcadia. After his parents had gone to bed, they argued over the date Besides, I didn’t belong there. So I sat on a rock and watched them. For of their forthcoming marriage. He became hysterical, went into the next some reason it still matters years later. room, locked the door, and shot himself in the head. I thought about love. I think I confused what they did with it. But my belief made the day great. I think I decided to make that my goal – to be Mervyn Fox, 56, spent the night in the pool house at his estranged like them. I put such incredible faith in the future that I sobbed a little I wife’s home in Altadena. He’d looked ill for several weeks. He read part of think. Aldous Huxley’s The Devils, swallowed a bottle of sleeping pills, and lay I can’t believe I once felt what I’m talking about. Those tangled guys down on his bed. have become an abstraction, a gesture, a recreation. I wish I had taken Bunker Spreckles, 28, was at a party. He thought he’d come down off a photo of them. Then I could rip it up, because I’m tired of dreaming the heroin he’d shot earlier that evening. He excused himself from his of what they implied every night f my life, or whenever I close my eyes, friends, walked out to his car and shot up twice as much. whichever comes first. I thought it mattered. It does and it doesn’t. Robert Benton, 45, was having trouble with his lover, John Koenig. They’re very beautiful back there, but put all that feeling in motion now, They argued and Koenig left. Benton’s oldest friend, Annetta Fox, came then try to get it to explode in your face. It can’t. It’s not built to do that. by and tried to comfort him. They drank a bottle of champagne together, 7KJ KHEL?: ? 9 > But they’re still there, no matter how I misremember them. And rede- then she went home. Soon after she left, he shot himself in the chest. An- ? I > 7 C ; B >EKIJ ED#@ED;I @79 E8I?EC?DIA? 9 >H?I9 E 9 >H7D; @E;O9 7DD?PP7HE netta said at that moment her car jerked sharply to the left. I met Craig Steinman, 14, on Napili Beach on the island of Maui, He came to my house in Monrovia one evening and we watched television. Mattress Bash* John Wells, 25, was loading his surfboard into his van alongside Pacific Hawaii. We started hanging out together and taking acid. One afternoon He said he had to be back at his parents’ house by 11 PM; it was 9:15. Coast Highway in Huntington Beach. It was a clear spring day. A speeding we were at his house when he got a letter from a girl he was in love with I said, “I guess we should get busy then.” He said, “I’ve never had sex “A Knock At My Bedroom Door Wakes Me Up”* – Dennis car struck him, throwing him thirty feet in the air. who had moved to Oregon. He started looking at me strangely and said, before, I’m afraid.” I said, “Don’t worry about it.” He put his arms around Annetta Fox, 55, entered the hospital for bronchitis. It was discovered “Dennis, hug me like you hug your girlfriends.” I said, “Forget it.” He my waist and lay his head on my shoulder like we were slow dancing. A knock at my bedroom door woke me up. Honey, your father and I she had lung cancer. They removed one lung. A month later at home, she said “I’m going to sit on your lap.” I didn’t say anything so he did, felt my I met Joe Hardy, 15, in a glitter rock club on the Sunset Strip in 1974. are going to Church; I wish you’d join us. She knocked twice more then I stood up from a chair to go to the bathroom and her legs gave out. She hard-on underneath, closed his eyes, and kissed me. We talked about music, first there, then in his bedroom. We knelt on the heard her high heels click-clack-click down the hall. It was music to my was rushed to the hospital, where it was discovered the cancer had spread I met Robert Douglas, 18, at Arcadia High School in gym class. floor smoking grass and looking through pictures of him as a child. “You ears and far more evocative than a light patter of rain is supposed to be. throughout her body. We were both reading David Harris’ ‘Goliath’. I became obsessed with were always a knockout,” I said. He looked surprised. “Are you gay?” he I wish I was that young again. There’s a particular photo I’m thinking of. David Sellers, 17, met an older man at a bar and went home with him. him, and we grew to be close friends. Two years later in his bedroom in said. I nodded. “What a coincidence,” he said. After a few moments of I look 7 or something. I think it was my birthday. I’m posed with blurred, They had sex. The man gave him some money. Afterwards he walked to Monterey Park he asked me if I was in love with him. I said “Yeah, no grinning at one another I leaned over and kissed him, “Take that,” I said. suntanned boys on 3 sides of a card tabled so piled with gifts it looked a nearby phone booth and called his roommate to ask for a ride home. surprise, right?” He said, “No.” So I said, “And?” He said, “Come here.” I met John, ?, on Santa Monica Blvd in West Hollywood when a friend like an aerial view of Disneyland. The future was bright and my face Midway through the conversation, a blood vessel in his brain burst. I met David Sellers, 15, through my friend Julian Andes. We 3 drank a and I decided to split the cost of a hustler.