THIS PLACE IS A DESERT adapted and directed by Jay Scheib in collabo - ration with media artist Leah Gelpe, and Produced by Shoshana Polanco scenic and lighting design by Peter Ksander - sound and video design Leah Gelpe - cos - tumes by Oana Botez-Ban – camera operator Daniel Benitez - stage managed by Belina Mizrahi - assistant director Kenneth Roraback and Emilie Slabie - dramaturgy by Zishan Ugurlu and Peter Campbell with performances by Andrea Moro, Caleb Hammond, Joan Jubett,* Thomas Keating,* Aimee Phelan-Deconinck,* Jeff Clarke, Jorge Rubio,* April Sweeney,* Eric Dean Scott,* and Tanya Selvaratnam "She wants to disappear into the land - scape but settles for an affair. It does - n’t help. She feels worse. This play is about wanting to feel worse—a motion- portrait of human loves and human emotion increasingly diminished."
This Place is a Desert, began as a studio project in collaboration with the Kretakor ensemble in Budapest. A production-prototype was made in residence at Massachusetts Institute of Technology under the spon - sorship of MIT Dramashop, with generous support from the MIT Wade
Fund Award, MIT Music and Theater Arts, and MIT Council for the Arts. h t t p
In October of 2005 This Place is a Desert was given an open studio : / / w showing at MIT and previewed to much critical acclaim in the PRELUDE w w . j
FESTIVAL, New York City. World Premier: March 22, 2007 ICA Boston a y s c h e i b
New York Premier: January 9, 2008 . c o New York Public Theater / Under the Radar m
email [email protected] This Place is a Desert makes use of four projection screens mounted side by side above a simply constructed building . The building is alternately a mansion, an office, a hospital designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, a shack by the sea, an apartment, and a factory. The physical space is comprised of a long narrow hallway, a bathroom, an office / living room, a bedroom, and a back-patio. No individual room is visible in its entirety to every mem - ber of the audience during the performance—the action is viewed through windows, through partially opened doors, reflected in a large mirror, seen through half-drawn cur - tains, or viewed on screen. The goal of situating the action within these partial-view rooms is, on the one hand, sim - ply a practical consideration, and on the other hand, one of erotics. I am attempting to approximate the experience of observing real behaviour in the real world and simulta - neously commanding passive control over the gaze of the viewer. The erotics of the Partial-View. The practical aspects of the design depend on the use of cameras and projections—and to a lesser degree on mir - rored surfaces. By using cameras we are able to approxi - mate precise spatial relationships. Emotional reality is forced into an architecturally charged amplitude—we are freed of the theatrical demands of sight-lines. We don’t need to abstract a home in order to make it’s rooms visi - ble, nor do we need to combat this abstraction in the pur - suit of emotional plausibility. Our rooms look like rooms. They need to look like rooms. The goal is naturalism—a 1:1 image of life. Scenes are carefully choreographed against the con - straints of sight—making use of both the frames of cam - From the Press Release: Inspired by the work of Italian modernist one hand, a practical consideration—we use cameras to see up close, eras but also windows, doors, mirrors etc. filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni, Jay Scheib creates theater for a to see around corners, and to mediate our experience of Reality Our combined architectural/media-rich approach to generation raised in the language of cinema. The audience views this amplifying an erotics of the partial view. With the camera we differen - scenography is still very much in development but with This Place is a Desert we have opened a new phase in portrait of human love gone increasingly wrong in fragments—through tiate between Reality and Realistic. I am using an Italian filmmaker to our research. This is our most complex machinery to date. windows, reflected in mirrors, and through partially-drawn curtains. understand something unique about American life. Either we are The approach is driven by own personal interest in taking The action is projected live onto a wide screen above the stage archi - ugly people and we deserve the world that we live in, or something is advantage of audience expectation—especially those tecture. A lone cinematographer moves through the set providing a wrong in us, and the world in which we live is merely symptomatic of expectations that have been established by the cinema, sensually charged, live cinema study of four lovers destroying each a deeper anxiety. This Place is a Desert is a motion-portrait, it’s a tool and by television. Even the most technologically advanced other in an attempt to defy their impenetrable loneliness. Said Scheib, for understanding Reality—and this reality, thanks to technology, is stage machinery is too slow to compete with the average “The goal of situating the action within these partial-view rooms is, on always partially seen and partially screened...” jump cut in the cinema. How then do we accomplish plays with multiple and wildly diverse locations with the same technical prowess (speed and efficiency) as the cin - ema? It is a vocabulary that our audiences understand implicitly. I am interested in turning this into a catalyst for innovation. Must we continue to demand of our theater audience that an entire café be evoked with a prop? Clearly there are creative solutions to these demands. I have undertaken to approach this challenge through the integration of media and communication technologies in live performance. And for the moment we have the life work of filmmaker Michelangelo Antonioni as our point of departure.
—Jay Scheib, 2005 Cambridge The Saarlandisches Staatstheater Saarbruecken presents June 7, 8, 18, 2007 in the GARAGE, Bleichstr. 11 - 15, Saarbruecken KOMMANDER KOBAYASHI Science Fiction opera saga from Novoflot, composed by MORITZ EGGERT, ALEKSANDRA GRYKA, RICARDAS KABELIS, JUHA KOSKINEN, HELMUT OEHRING conducted by Jonathan Kaell , direction and choreography by Jay Scheib h t t p : / / with performances by: Judith Braun, Otto Daubner, Ljiljana Glisic, Malaika Ledig, w w w . j und with: Stage and Costume Designer CONSTANZE FIS- a Elisabeth ‘Cat’ Monzel Michael Müller y s c h e
CHBECK, Assistant Director SEBASTIAN WELKER, Dramaturg Berthold Schneider Sound Design Walter Maurer, i b . c o Light THOMAS and RALPH, VideoDesign JOE and JAY, Assistant Design: Ines Alda, Stage Manager Guido Kraemer m
email [email protected] Either we are racing away from a mission that went very very wrong, and it was definitely our fault——or, we are racing, headlong, into the jaws of a new mis - sion, about which we know almost nothing and which has little or no hope of suc -
cess.. A science fiction opera saga in five parts, conceived by Sebastian Bark h t t p : / / w w w . j and Sven Holm, book by Tobias Dusche, and composed five leading young com - a y s c h e i b . c o posers of the contemporary European music scene.. m
email [email protected] Pont Muhely and the TRAFO house of contem - porary Arts Presents with support from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Theatre Communications Group / International Theatre Institute, ROTOR Productions, and Mu Szinhaz THE POWER OF DARKNESS A sötétség hatalma after the play by Leo Tolstoy, adapted and directed by Jay Scheib munkabemutatója Lev Nyikolajevics Tolsztoj: A sötétség hatalma— A magyar szöveget Németh László fordításának és Jay Scheib szövegváltozatának felhasználásával írta Merényi Anna— Hungarian translation by Anna Merényi, Video Design Leah Gelpe, Stage and Lighting design Jeremy Morris, Original Score Markos Albert, Dramaturgy Szucs Aniko and Merényi Anna, Costumes Sinkovics Judith, assistant director Kenneth Roraback, Featuring: Vicei Zsolt, Isabelle Lê, Keszég László, Pereszlényi Erika, Vajna Balázs, Pogány Judit, Scherer Péter, Urbanovits Krisztina and Antal Marta In the Golden Age of Coca-Cola, Anisya rat-poisons her terminally ill husband for the Love of Nikita, who sleeps with Everyone, and gets Everyone pregnant, including his step-daughter Akulina—but when the conniving mother-in-law steps in to set things right—a whole wave of disasters result... This multimedia re-visioning of Tolstoy’s clas - sic naturalistic drama The Power of Darkness was developed at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in collaboration with MIT Music and Theater Arts, MIT h
Dramashop in Cambridge and Pont Mühely in Budapest. Rehearsed in august of t t p : / /
2004 and presented in the Studio of MU Szinhaz in Budapest. Premier May 13 at w w the TRAFO House of Contemporary Arts in Budapest. Subsequent performances at w . j a y
TRAFO in the 05/06 season. s c h e
Premier: MAY 13-17, 2005 i b .
TRAFO HOUSE OF CONTEMPORARY ART, BUDAPEST c o m
email [email protected] NOTES ON VIDEO IN THE POWER OF DARKNESS Our cinema has much in common with Seneca, but the too near per - In America there is a growing disparity between what is real and what fect verisimilitude, will no longer entirely suffice. Its surfaces are too is perceived as real. The old critical models no longer speak to expe - clear—and the medium now too diversified. Is it fiction? is it news? it rience. Even reality has lost it’s tongue. In recent years I have come to is documentary! no? Is it reality? no? There is an oceanic expanse believe that the task of the theater is the task of contesting Reality between things and their representation, between movement image with Fiction and vice versa. How Reality is set in motion, created, and experience—this tension is what interests me on the stage. modeled, delivered from the space of fiction (representation) to a I see the theatre, with its ability to embed other modes of whole world of experience (life) represents the degree zero of my representation—cinema, live and sampled music, dance, conceptual thinking about The Power of Darkness— how the social situations art, science etc—as the most viable platform for the final showdown which drive this tragedy are ignited by the integration of media, char - between Fiction and Reality. My work over the past five years has been acterizes my approach. My research on the integration of media in live dedicated to this particular contest. performance has come, since 2003, to focus entirely on visual and aural delivery systems as a means of handling (or mishandling) per - With The Power of Darkness, I am concerned with modifying basic tel - ceptions of reality. evision technologies and low impact video processing for the theatre. Arguably our perception of what is Real in armed-conflict has been Video, for me, is a means of seeing around corners, peering through shaped significantly by the existence of embedded journalists. the darkness, or seeing from afar. My project is concerned with limit - Cameras have played enormous roles in all phases of the occupation ing this tool exclusively to its utilitarian function. I propose a use of in Iraq (for example). We have been exposed to death, torture, video in the theater which is as fundamentally unquestionable as the destruction of human values, shows of force, humiliation etc. Images, stage itself. Media, in this paradigm, is neither Content nor Form. The sound, and moving images are delivered to us in real time, in real content may be questioned, but the form aims to be beyond question. stereo and in more-or-less true-to-life colour directly to our homes. Everyone questions the content of television—no one questions the Historiography has had to redefine itself in the face of this validity of the television set. seemingly perfect historical record. Historiography has had to show The Power of Darkness deploys basic television technology that the image does not contain the horizon any longer. They have had to the task of amplifying REAL LIFE. The themes which drive the play to show that there might be more to the picture. The theater has a are best expressed in the overlapping of representational fields. In the very similar challenge at hand. mixture of mediated spaces and real spaces, in positing the artificial - HOW, IN LIGHT OF CURRENT TELEVISION AND CINEMATIC PRAC - ity of artificial realities. The representation of reality—the act itself— TICES, IS IT POSSIBLE TO ADEQUATELY DELIVER A REPRESENTA - becomes the subject about which I speak. Suspension of disbelief as TION OF HUMAN EXPERIENCE TO THE STAGE? Can we ignore avail - the final acknowledgement of what we all know to be fake. While I able models? No. In sports, the camera gives us the perspective of the am not interested in political theater per se, I stubbornly consider this player—the sweat and the grimace, virtuosity at close quarters—and impoverished act—calling to the floor illusion and crushing it under the rush of adrenaline increases with the transparency of the media. foot, to be radically, if consistently, political. The game / war / love story is happening in your living room. We don’t My own artistic process, leading downward, into the possi - see the hand of the camera operator, we empathize, we gasp in joy, bility of shaping an environment whose sole function would be to fear, terror, hope... reflect life! has, for now, been commanded by an obsession with Naturalism. The Power of Darkness was the meteor of Naturalism in These cool distances threshold the experiences they so brutally rep - the theater. This play changed all the rules. In it we watch how one resent—for Euripides it was a matter of putting the disaster in an adja - bad decision caves in upon the next in a terrible spiral WHOSE FINAL cent room and it’s description flowed from the mouth of an eye wit - CONVULSIONS INCLUDE PARALYSIS, MADNESS, APATHY, FUNDA - ness directly into your imagination. Euripides found a way in through MENTALISM, CATASTROPHE, DESTRUCTION, POVERTY AND final - language, through word-pictures. Seneca cut the gap and put the ly, death. Irrevocable. and utterly Unjustifiable. event itself before our eyes—he wanted in through the flesh. Did Seneca’s Medea kill real children? Were they just stage directions?! — Jay Scheib, Budapest, 2005 WOMEN DREAMT HORSES translation by Jean Graham-Jonwers ittaennd bdyir Decteadn bieyl JVaye Srocnhesieb performances by: CALEB HAMMOND, AIMEE PHELAN-DECONINCK, JORGE RUBIO, ERIC DEAN SCOTT, APRIL SWEENEY, and ZISHAN UGURLU in collaboration with: Scenic Designer PETER KSANDER, Light Designer JUSTIN TOWNSEND, Costume Designer OANA BOTEZ-BAN, Dramaturge PETER CAMPBELL,
Assistant Director RACHEL RAYMENT, Creative Producer Shoshana Polanco h t t p : / / w
Performance Space 122, Vallejo Gantner, Artistic Director presents Buenos Aires in w w . j a
Translation (BAiT). BAiT Creative producer Shoshana Polanco paired four leading Argentinian y s c h
dramatists with four New York based directors to rave critical acclaim. e i b . c
November 4 - 18 at Performance Space 122 o m
email [email protected] Nothing appears as it should in a world where nothing is certain. “May we suggest a truly sensational staging of Daniel Veronese’s The only thing certain is the existence of a secret violence that makes everything uncertain. (Lucretius) Women Dreamt Horses? Jay Scheib’s production of this disturbing 75-minute real-time family/relationship drama is electrifying. Is there only one form of violence? There s a new kind of violence in the air. Do you feel it, Ivan? Obviously I m not the kind of per - Actors smack each other, break into wrestling matches, vomit son who would do this, yet nevertheless I did it. (Lucera) water, leap over tables. It has to be seen to be believed.” David Cote - Time Out New York A few notes on the play Roger used to be a boxer but now his head is going to explode. There’s “Jay Scheib, one of the most cutting-edge artists of the moment, a new kind of violence in the air. Lucera pukes on the floor and dreams takes the Argentinean’s lines and pushes them into the physical about buying a gun, she thinks about dying, and runs for the door, Rainer just lost the family business but before we get the cork out of world using a sexy and violent gestural vocabulary… It is rare to the bottle this whole family dinner is going straight down the shitter. see such a tough, passionate, powerful, and beautiful show on Made with an ensemble of regular collaborators, this family NYC scenes.” catastrophe drama fills the stage with no frills. A chair a table a carpet. Savianna Stanescu - nytheatre.com Acting on an edge, or a narrow ledge. No Art. No Sound. No Video. Just three couples killing each other terribly, wishing they could be in love “The noise and lucid brilliance of … Jay Scheib’s superbly per - as though the last thirty odd years of history in Argentina didn’t matter. formed, elemental production is as much a 75-minute dance As though the last five years of history in America never happened. This piece with dialogue–in almost never-ending motion, punctuated by ain’t political science it’s a commedy. And make no mistake, These tense tableaux of powerless desperation…the most physically guys just sort of wake up, and put the gloves on. And that’s how it hap - exciting of the festival so far.” pens. It happens like that.This is a play about acting, and acting out. I George Hunka - Superfluities take my cue from Tarkovsky—that I hope one might stand before this play as one stands before the ocean. You watch the ocean—disgusted by it’s smell and it’s pollution, in awe of it’s blunt violence, and brutal “...a feel for irony, nonchalance, and authenticity reminiscent of the determination You watch the ocean, in silence you stare at it, but your best years of Pollesch, Ostermeier, Castorf, or Gotscheff.. Here, the - looked is turned back. You gaze into the ocean but you think about ater is played out in real-time. Psychology becomes parody as the yourself. I want this play to be a little like looking at the ocean. A little central tenants of American stage naturalism are, with irreverent bit about thinking what you must. lightness kicked to the side. Coolness and biting intelligence...” Theater Heute, Germany JS. nov 1, 2006 From the program. h t t p : / / w w w . j a y s c h e i b . c o m
email [email protected] MARGARETH
HAMLETchoreographic work for solo performer with guitar After the play by Shakespeare, Performed by Margareth Kammerer, Adapted and directed h t t p : / / by Jay Scheib with Objects by Sebastiano Ciurcina w w w . j a
Performances Feb 27 thru März 1., 2003; Schwedter Straße 12, Berlin, Prenzlauerberg: Free adaptation of the play by y s c
Shakespeare, part dance, part performance, and 42 actual minutes in the life of a piece of her. Again and again. Seven Songs from h e i b .
Margareth Kammerer. Site specific performance for solo performer with guitar where the water has lead in it but we drink it anyway. Where c o “‘This is th’impostume of much wealth and peace, that inward breaks, and shows no cause without why the man dies,” m
email [email protected] ich glühe für Wirklichkeit. notes on the performance In search of something really really real, this performance took place in the flat of Margareth Kammerer at Schwedterstr. 12 in Prenzlauerberg Berlin. From the claim that Margareth Kammerer was ultimately more interesting than a character in a play we used a play in order to reveal something integral about Her. We began with her apart - ment and with her songs: The First Love Song , I see my world through your eyes , What a Piece of Art is a Man , Machine to Hamlet Him, Somewhere I’ve never Traveled with trumpet by Axel Dörner, I eat the Air and The Syllable Song . We have focused our attention on the world in which we live. Hamlet became an excuse (for us) to see the world from another point of view; to shift our per - spectives repeatedly; an excuse to see ourselves, seeing ourselves seeing ourselves. We are interested in present - ing the play as well in a theater—constructing a room iden - tical to Margareth’s flat. Exactly the same but different. Or to perform in other flats, in other cities. Of course, it could play in your flat....and then it would also be about you. Such care must be taken to recostruct the particularities of its architecture. Or else it changes. A room with a reality which we handle like an object. Space is not empty. This is part of what we do.
MARGARETHHAMLET IS THE FIRST OF THREE h t t p : /
PARTS. We don’t know anything yet about the second part / w w w
except that it might have to do with the death scenes of . j a y s
Hamlet, in combination with living scenes of FORTINBRAS. c h e i b
The third part will be called ALL GOOD EVERYTHING GOOD . c o after Shakespeare’s All’s Well that Ends Well...... m
email [email protected] h t t p : / / w w w . j a y s c h e i b . c o m email [email protected]
La MaMa ETC Presents the International Theater of New York / Actors without Borders THE MEDEA adapted and directed by JAY SCHEIB after the writings of SENECA EURIPIDES MUELLER GRILL -
PARZER stage design by MICHAEL BYRNES, video by
LEAH GELPE, costumes by OANA BOTEZ-BAN, lighting by LUCRECIA BRICENO, dramaturgy by PETER CAMP -
BELL; assistant director SHIRA MILIKOWSKY; camera operated by JENNIFER BRUNO, production manager
Mercedes Murphy, with original score and arrange - ments performed by MARGARETH KAMMERER
Performed by Dima Dubson, Oleg Dubson, Dan Illian,* Margareth
Kammerer, Jennifer Lim,*Aimee h t t p : / / w
McCormick, and Zishan Ugurlu* w w . j a y s c
Premiere: January 13 at LaMaMa ETC in New York with subsequent performanc - h e i b
es in April of 2005 in Istanbul and at the International Festival of Contemporary . c o
Theater in Adana Turkey m
email [email protected] ON PLAYING MEDEA IN REVERSE nology and a stripped-bare dramatic structure. The perform - from the program notes of the LaMaMa ETC production, ance shifts from music theater to home-movies to a hybrid- Winter 2005, New York City kind-of-dance-theater. Margareth Kammerer performs her own adaptations of well-known Italian love songs, original com - positions based on texts from Heiner Müller, as well as selec - tions from Cherubini's 18th century "Médée" (Medea). What we reveal by reversing the story—by running it in Michael Byrne’s design re-envisions a classical Greek Skene in reverse—is the chain reaction that leads to a string of mur - the shape of an oversize fitting-room at the rear of an aban - ders. Medea slaughters her two sons, her brother, a king and doned retail space—mirrors and television monitors. For the his daughter—and others. 'The Medea' is a story about Greeks it was behind the closed doors of the Skene that the remembering promises and loving forever, a story of passion - unspeakable violence took place. For Seneca, the violence was ate ambition and irreversible decisions. We reverse them. The central and ostensibly on-stage. We split the distance and try murky details of these decisions interest me. They are all the to make it feel like America—partially seen, partially screened. more horrific by our fore-knowledge of their outcome. I take my Leah Gelpe’s video design involves positioning cameras inside cue from the detective story. We experience the presence of of our Skene such that some parts of the play are made as if the end already in the beginning—but we read it anyway. We on a miniature sound stage, with scenes being projected live, all know how Medea ends. We barely remember how it starts. run backwards, and frozen in time. We characterize the role The text of the play (it’s language), is a collision of classical of the camera in terms of DEVOLUTION / NOT EVOLUTION. verse and fragmented prose. I have used Heiner Müller’s apoc - This catch-phrase was to become the organizing principle for alyptic triptych: 'Despoiled Shore, Medeamaterial and the entire play—a potentially fitting description of our times. Landscape with Argonauts' as a frame for a rewritten version We start with the murders and work our way back, back to of the texts of Euripides, Seneca, and Grillparzer—with nods to the good times. Back to when we must have been dancing. the films of Passolini, Carl Dreyer’s unfinished manuscript, Back to the days of milk and honey. Back to when things must Lars Von Trier’s Nordic experiment, and Cherubini’s opera. have been really great. We have sought Naturalism on the stage. Real objects and real behaviour. Real smells and real coffee. Cheap TV tech - —Jay Scheib, New York City, January 2005 In this is the End of Sleeping free After the Platonov fragment of Chekhov adapted and directed by Jay Scheib developed in residence at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Produced by Rotor Productions/Chekhov Now Festival, New York City. Performed in Cambridge at MIT and in NYC at the Connelly Theatre. ...the vodka pours like rain, but when the laughing and sweating and running through the woods gives way to kissing and bathing and shooting guns... featuring video and sound by Leah Gelpe, stage and light by Jeremy Morris, costumes by Jessica Hinel, objects/art by Bara Jichova Kirkpatrick , stage is managed by Belina Mizrahi , assistant h t t p : / /
director Adam Perlman With performances by w w
Eliza Bent, Gaëtan Bonhomme, Vanessa Burke, w . j a y s
John Dewis, Olga Victorovna Fedorishcheva, c h e i Caleb Hammond, Joan Jubett*, Emily Knapp, b . c o Dan Liston, Eric Dean Scott*, Tao Wang m
email [email protected] The people I am afraid of are the ones who look for tendentiousness between asked an eleven-member cast to "physicalize" their the lines and are determined to see me as either liberal or conservative. I am characters, pushing exaggerations to the expressive neither liberal, nor conservative, nor gradualist, nor monk. . . I would like to be a free artist and nothing else and I regret God has not given me the strength to extreme. The result ain't yer father's Anton Chekhov, be one. I hate lies and violence in all of their forms. . . Pharisaism, dullwittedness that's fer sure! and tyranny reign not only in merchant’s homes and police stations. I see them What a bleachers-full of audience was confronted with, in science, in literature, among the younger generation. That is why I cultivate no in the Sala de Puerto Rico, was a square box-set particular predilection for policemen, butchers, scientists, writers, or the younger upstage, and a sofa pressed to what would be the line generation. I look upon tags and labels as prejudices. My holy of holies is the human body, health, intelligence, talent, inspiration, love, and the most absolute of footlights downstage, turned with its back to the freedom imaginable-freedom from violence and lies no matter what form [they]. spectators. To the right the audience could see two . . take. Such is the program I would adhere to if I were a major artist. high-definition t-v projections, one solidly square above —Anton Chekhov, Letter to his publisher. the other, that carried live feed from two hand-held cameras manipulated by black-clad stagehands --- one You are right to demand that an artist should take a conscious [social] attitude to his work, but you are confusing two concepts: answering [social] questions of which also had a focused microphone broadcasting and formulating them correctly. Only the latter is required of an artist. There’s dialogue. The screens often took the audience into that not a single question answered in [the novels] Anna Karenina or Eugene Onegin, cramped box set, and showed close-ups of faces, or but they are fully satisfying, simply because all the questions they raise are for - different perspectives on the action. mulated correctly. It is the duty of the court to formulate the questions correct - ly, but let the jury answer them, each according to his own preference. —Anton Chekhov The matter of the show dealt with the petty affairs and interactions of a near-dozen long-time friends at a For chemists there is nothing unclean on the earth. The writer must be as objec - somewhat drunken house-party. Frustrated love and tive as the chemist. lust and jealousy, desire and contempt broke out con - —Anton Chekhov tinually in the hothouse of a set of friendships rasping against one another for far too long. One of the men expressed himself by throwing himself THE THEATER MIRROR headlong into that couch as though he were Greg http://www.theatermirror.com/twtwtw15.htm Luganis practicing swan-dives. Another carried an uzi and dressed like a terrorist. A pair exhibited their frus - trated attempts at love by throwing themselves face-for - IN THIS IS THE END OF SLEEPING ?? ward onto their chests again and again. Costumes were by Larry Stark 30 October, 2004 changed, even doffed, and from time to time individuals broke into exaggerated dances. At one point everyone Unfortunately, in order to see the M.I.T. production showed the effect of the vodka they drank by geysering called "In This Is The End of Sleeping" you'll have to go it up into the air --- or into each other's faces. much farther ---to The Connelly Theatre, 220 East 4th Street, NY, where it will have performances as part of I know it sounds like a circus --- with two televised side- a CHEKHOV NOW FESTIVAL. shows --- and I couldn't give you a clue as to the plot of Chekhov's original script. It, too, could be well worth the trip. Why? So what? Well, because this group, under the direction of Jay Scheib, is a literal theatrical explosion in action. Sheib I envy the Chekhov-groupies who, this week-end in The made an adaptation of Chekhov's early play --- as the Apple, will get a change to experience this spectacle, program notes "often called "Platonov" --- and then this ... explosion! Produced by the FLEA THEATRE, Jim Simpson, Artistic Director The Vomit Talk of Ghosts play by Kevin Oakes directed by Jay Scheib , video and sound design by LEAH GELPE, scenic and cos - tume design by OANA BOTEZ-BAN, lighting design by BEN TEVELOW, assistant director JUDETH ODEN, dram - aturgy KENNY RORABACK, camera REBECCA ZAHLER, assistant lighting design JAMES TINSLEY, video and light operation JOSE ORTIZ Featuring the Flea's resident ensemble: Meghan Carroll, Katy Downing, Charles Kornegay, Kevin Moore, Sayra Player, and Eric Dean Scott
A pubescent girl spends a night having sex with a talking corpse and being pursued by a police officer dressed in a bear suit. Kevin Oakes's The Vomit Talk of Ghosts may not operate on any conventional narrative level, but neither does
the imagination of its teenage heroine, a mentally unstable h t t p : / / nymph(omaniac) prone to oracular spoutings and paroxysms w w w . j of knife-wielding delirium. […] Aggressively nonsensical... a y s c h e i b
Lovesick duo /The Vomit Talk of Ghosts . c o by David Ng The Village Voice, June 29th, 2004 m
email [email protected] PROGRAM NOTE ON BAD MATH: Some observations of bad math:: >> Physical laws are Math is considered by many to be the key to knowl - not conserved >> Chemical laws are not conserved >> edge and understanding--without it we do not have Biological laws are not conserved >> No absolute sci - physics, biology, chemistry, any quantitative under - entific understanding of anything >> An indefinite world where our current physical laws and understanding standing of our universe. We can't even buy gro - can be warped or broken >> The Vomit Talk of Ghosts. ceries or tell time. Without math there are no barri - ers on what can happen in our world; life becomes Kenny Roraback, production dramaturge indefinite, mystical,and inexplicable. Good math, then, is math as we know it, a lan - guage written to follow the laws of our known universe. Bad math is easy, bad math is In contrast, bad math is a language that intentionally fun. It can’t hurt you. You can hurt breaks the rules of our universe that were set by God other people using his bad math. (as Amber says, bad math is "a special kind of lan - [...] Listen up -- it’s a special kind guage...against God"). So, bad math, as I see it, would of language. It turns it inside out - be another word for 'magic' that defies the rules of - the unspeakable! [...] Say his mathematics (and therefore science) in our world. I special secret name using formu - include the sciences in this because math is the foun - la bad math and you can make dation for scientific understanding. Math is the basis him disappear. Or you can make for physics, physics is the basis for chemistry, and him make you disappear! physics and chemistry are the basis for biology. —Amber, Act 1 FESTIVAL KOLTES New York 2003 Presents a ROTOR Production
WESQTua i POuIeEst R A PLAY BY BERNARD-MARIE KOLTES Directed by JAY SCHEIB in a new American translation by Marion Schoevaert and Theresa Weber
Room / Clothes by Andrew Lieberman Lit by Jeremy Morris Sound and Video design by Leah Gelpe Assistant director / Collaborator April Sweeney Cinematography by Liselle Mei Dramaturgy by Laura Butchy Produced by Vanessa Burke and Jeremy Morris for ROTOR Productions with special support from La MaMa ETC. ...even the beautiful black- eyed virgins are too coked- up on caffeine, too beaten down toward poverty, to grasp what passes for Terror in the age of Dissent... Performances by Vanessa Burke, Tom Day, Marina Garcia-Gelpe, Dan Illian, h t t
Krassin Yordanov, Ryan Justesen, Aimee p : / / w
Phelan, Michael Stumm, Zishan Ugurlu w w . j a y s c h e
MAY 8, 9, 10, 20, 21, 2003 at the i b . c
OHIO Theatre in SoHo, 66 Wooster Street o m
email: [email protected] Program Note from West Pier INCONSEQUENTIAL BREAKS INTO PIECES AND THE WIND BLOWS LIKE HELL. IT’S A HAIL STORM, REALLY REALITY REALLY REAL. WE HAVE ICE CUBES. Reality out of Behaviour. I’m GLOW - ING FOR REALITY [ich glühe für West Pier began as a satire and ends as a satire. A Wirklichkeit] oh oh I just want to be family drama. A lazzi. Irony with its trousers down. Who would have caught up in real Behaviour. Is that a thought. He who dared to think with plays: big deal? What’s the big deal? Can’t we just have BERNARD-MARIE KOLTES, dead of something that’s real enough? Real in a reaction. AIDS, in 1989. So this the dedication: to BERNARD-MARIE KOLTES. Not Realism, but Reality— not a return to natural - “As for me, I merely wish, some day, to relate ism nor a flight into philosophy. Really a portrait of our world through the lens of fiction. Reality under well and in the most casual of words the most the pressure of Personality. Edward Bond argued that important thing that I know and that can be put in his plays the characters needed more from the actors than the actors would need from the charac - into words. A desire, an emotion, a place, some ters. I am waiting around to find out what this means. sort of light or sound, whatever would consti - Naturalism gives way to Behavior. Realism a pursuit of tute a fragment of our world and belong to us situations in reality—in the hour of no light, “...just when we need the light of suns which refuse to set.” Reality all.” Bernard-Marie Koltès (1948-1989) cools. In reality, really funny. A show of physical force, shocking and awe inspiring... SOMETHING ——Jay Scheib, 2003, New York City THE NORWEGIAN THEATER ACADEMY PRESENTS BAMBI -LAND by Elfriede Jelinek scenography by Bernardo Vercelli and performances by Veronika Bökelmann, Filipe Canha, Maria Dommersnes Ramvi, Mariana Ferreira, Hildur Kristinsdottir, Huy Le Vo, Rebekka Maria Nystabakk, Elvira De Muynck, Rudi Jensen directed by h t t p :
JAY SCHEIB / / w w w . j a y s c h e
PREMIERE: 27. MAY 2006 i b . NORWEGIAN THEATER ACADEMY c o Færgeportgaten 77 Gamlebyen Fredrikstad m
email [email protected] From the Program notes to the like two lovers who make war over making toast— Norwegian Theater Academy produc - again and again and again and again UNTIL THE FIGHT REALLY MEANS SOMETHING. UNTIL THE FIGHT tion of Elfriede Jelinek’s Bambiland MEANS REALLY, REALLY NOTHING. There is a sandstorm that is blowing from “We’re shooting a picture” every direction—we have been violently blown off course. In this fog it is impossible to distinguish friend “Great things command us not to talk about them, or from foe—it is impossible to see. It is impossible to else to talk about them in a big way: that is, with inno - know what friendly fire even means. cence,” writes Jelinek. This play is partially about dar - ing to steer discourse directly into the teeth of Great We have tried here to paint a votive picture, memori - Things—namely, WAR. alizing those who have drowned at sea. THOSE WHO Do I have the stamina to claim this performance is a HAVE LIVED REAL CATASTROPHES. In the name of the performance about Iraq? victims, we have tried to be human shields and stand for something but have alas we have stepped aside. No, I do not have the courage (interest?) to say any - thing of any interest about the war in Iraq. I can only BUT THIS IS THE ONLY PLAY ABOUT IRAQ THAT I CAN look and gape and try to point at the endless specula - MAKE. WE ARGUE ABOUT THINGS WE DON’T UNDER - tions of the underinformed arguing passionately with STAND. WHAT’S TO UNDERSTAND? DEATH IS the disinterested and the gravely disinterested. DEATH. AND THERE IS A SANDSTORM THAT IS BLOWING. BUT THROUGH SAND, WE SEE ONLY It makes no difference what men think of war, said the judge. DEATH AND DEATH. THERE WAS A DATE PALM HERE War endures. As well ask men what they think of stone. War AND NOW THERE IS DEATH. IN THE AGE OF DON’T was always here. Before man was, war waited for him. The ASK DON’T TELL I WILL SAY NOTHING AND I WILL ultimate trade awaiting its ultimate practitioner. That is the ASK NOTHING LESS. WELL, LISTEN TO THIS: “I keep way it was and will be. That way and not some other way. trying to talk about the losers, but I end up enthusing —Cormac McCarthy about the winners.” The winners all night long. And so here We are, here we are. attempting to prove, beyond all reasonable doubt, our disastrous inability to directly address Great Things—like WAR— —Jay Scheib Fredrikstad Norway, 2006 The Harvard Radcliffe Dramatic Club (HRDC) in collaboration with the American Repertory Theatre and Harvard’s Office for the Arts Present
Alfred de Musset’s LORENZACCIO DIRECTED BY JAY SCHEIB adaptation/translation by Paul Schmidt with Sound and Video design by LEAH GELPE
Stage Design by ANDREW BOCH Assistant director BEN MARGO, Camera by ALEX BUSCH, BONNIE-KATHLEEN, Dramaturgy by SCOTT WILSON, Clothes by GISLI PALSSON, Produced by JEREMY BLOCKER, JESS MATTHEWS, ANNE PATRONE h t t p : / / w w w . j a y s c h e i b
Loeb Drama Center, . c o November 2003, Cambridge MA m
email [email protected] OPEN LETTER TO THE DESIGN TEAM, john, reads a planned parenthood brochure and talks to OF LORENZACCIO , Re. Modeling the despot- the Pope. The dirt floor of the citadel contrasts to the city: closed-circuit ranch house. TeleVision +/- Duke’s infamously STAINEDSOFAOFCOMPROMISE, and Visioning at the Future... the ubiquitous playa-weight-bench. The play opens in a Medici garden but WE KICK IN THE DOOR OF THE HAPPY CHINESE GARDEN RESTAU - Lorenzaccio (1834) by Alfred de Musset is a historical RANT. (After the Duke’s murder for fear of reprisals we portrait-landscape of 1530s Medici Florence at the change its name with poorly drawn block letters---- height of the Renaissance. Musset's drama tells the THE HAPPY GARDEN CHINESE WE LOVE story of the assassination of the tyrannical Duke AMERICA RESTAURANT .) Alessandro de Medici, by his cousin, the eponymous What better place for revolutionaries to meet than Lorenzo. The Play unfurls in an alternately satiric and under the red lights of the the Happy Garden Chinese tragic series of violent outbursts in telling the story of a Restaurant? Communist? or Republican? Who cares? Republican revolution FAILING to ignite in the wake of Real despots are deep-down, non-denominational. Alessandro’s murder. It might be a play about how we WHAT BETTER PLACE TO CRUSH THE REVOLUTION! give up our powers. How we fork over our rights, how we decline the opportunity to act or to love or affect change. This restaurant, like the ranch house, is based on a real THE PLAY MIGHT BE ABOUT How we waste our democ - model—the real Happy Garden is just down the street racy. BUT WHO’S TO SAY? NOT ME! from Andrew’s house. (that’s right, it’s an imitation of Andrew’s life!) and This is the key to our work. Florence Musset’s drama, in step with the political upheavals of will become our America—even as our NEA announces his time (not to be confused with the political upheavals their planned collaboration with the department of of our time), is a contemporary telling of failed revolu - defense—so too will our citadel be decorated with the tions, degradation of values, and a darkly satirical exam - finest in contemporary art (deep dirt floors). ination of one despot hunted down by another. SINCE The city of florence will be reduced to a single house. All DESPOTISM IS THE REALLY NEW SOVEREIGN I SAY of Florence, the noble families—The Medicis, the LET’S MAKE THIS A REAL COMEDY, ROMANTIC. BUT Strozzis, The Cibo’s, the Soderini’s, the Salviatis, and the AND LAUGHING OUT LOUD—Laughter, as Valèry occupying army in the CITADEL are all forced to carve claims through his Faust, is the last-ditch surrender of out their territory—fighting from room to room to thought. I PROPOSE SURRENDERING OUR NAVIGATION room—DESPOTIC CITY AS SINGLE FAMILY HOME + AN THIS HISTORICAL DRAMA DIRECTLY TO THE CARTOG - OKAY NASTY RESTAURANT . RAPHY OF THE DESPOT. Roaming cameras capture the characters in I hope this clarifies a few things, explodes (compli - close-up—thereby projecting not only the individual AND cates) a few assumptions and generally contributes THE IDIOSYNCRATIC REALITIES OF INDIVIDUAL BEHAV - to the process of developing the design ONE LAST IOUR but also the individual UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF GIANT STEP further. We have still another two weeks HER ENVIRONMENT—small, poorly-lit living quarters or so to finish it. Good night. Good luck. ciaociao.... make revolution seem like luxury. A bubble-bath replaces the confessional and the Cardinal sits on the ——Jay Scheib, Cambridge, 2003 MIT Dramashop, April 2005, Kresge The Demolition Downtown count ten in Arabic and try to run... Play by Tennessee Williams directed by Jay Scheib with MIT Dramashop, April 2005, Cambridge
“…The Demolition Downtown, count ten in Arabic—and try to run, is a multi-lin - gual satire of senseless violence, flirty self-destruction, and everyone-for- themselves survivalism. Well, actually, it’s nine explosions to the end of world, and the caviar has never tasted better...” assistant direction by Giselle Andrejack , scenic design by Bill Fregosi , costumes by Leslie Cocuzzo-Held and Samina Shaikh , lights by Karen Perlow and Maura Cordial , objects by Karin Habermann and Roger Fischer , camera by Nasruddin Nazerali , dramaturgy by Kenneth Roraback , technical direction by Mike Katz , this stage is managed by Susan Wilson with Tom Stammers Produced by Hayden Taylor and MIT DRAMASHOP
with Performances by Ashlie Brown, h t t p : / / Youngsun Cho, Virginia Corless, Masha w w w . j
Kamenetska, Jonas Kubilius, Ryan Low, Ben a y s c h
Margo, Helen McCreery, Constantinos e i b . c o
Tsoucalus, Hui Ying Wen, and Jessica Zaman m
email [email protected] For Immediate Release: MIT Dramashop Presents The Demolition Downtown count ten in arabic—and try to run... by Tennessee Williams directed by Jay Scheib
"… The Demolition Downtown is a multi-lingual satire of senseless violence, flirty self-destruction, and everyone-for-them - selves survivalism. Well, actually, it’s nine explosions to the end of world, and the caviar has never tasted better..."
Replete with the cryptic subtitle Count ten in Arabic—and try to run , Tennessee Williams’ play The Demolition Downtown exposes America’s upper-middle-class deterioration with the abandon of an episode of South Park . Williams reveals the harsh realities of a now white-hot civil rights movement through the haze of America’s increasingly desperate materialism. Two gor - geous young couples in cocktail attire struggle to play out their daily lives with the panache of young executives—in denial to the end—as the explosions grow nearer and nearer until... Perhaps the greatest American dramatist of the 20th century, Tennessee Williams made his career on the amplification of things that eat away at America’s otherwise pristine façade. Written in 1971, just 3 years after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., The Demolition Downtown was composed at a decisive moment in the American civil rights movement. In the years leading up to 1971, a peaceful victory for the civil rights movement was challenged violently on an almost weekly basis across the United States. Organizations like the Black Panthers and the Nation of Islam worked hard to provide neces - sary services and braced themselves to resist violent attacks from the American establishment. Williams predicted a violent revolution—and he predicted that upper-middle-class America would have to lose.
This bleak assessment is the engine that drives The Demolition Downtown … Packed with Williams’ trademark wit and flam - ing humour—it plays like one explosion after another. In collaboration with MIT Dramashop, Director and MIT Professor Jay Scheib brings this long-lost Williams one-act to the stage in a highly physical, multi-lingual production. Staged as a two-part drama, this American problem is slowly revealed to be a global concern which, if not addressed, will lead to the same ruin that Williams predicts for the United States—but on a global scale. The language of the play slowly evolves into Korean, Bengali, Oromo, Russian, Spanish, Lithuanian, and Cantonese. Simultaneously providing a rich testament to MIT’s own diversity and sharp demand that it be embraced. A thrilling ensemble of young performers leaps to the occasion, led by veterans of the MIT stage: Helen McCreery, Virginia Corless, Masha Kamenetska, and Youngsun Cho. It’s a wild ride...and if you sit in the front row, you’ll get wet for sure! Hilarious. The Demolition Downtown will send you home with your bell rung—or your money back.
The Demolition Downtown OPENS: APRIL 21st And runs April 22nd, 23rd, 28th, 29th, and 30th (all shows at 8pm) At Kresge Little Theater, 48 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, MA 02139-430 UNIVERSITÄT MOZARTEUM SCHAUSPIEL Artistic direction Markus Trabusch and Sabine Andreas
PRESENTS Draußen tobt die Dunkelziffer by Kathrin Röggla directed by Jay Scheib with Benjamin Bieber, Samia Chancrin, Anne Grabowski, Andreas Meyer, Nina Mohr, Kirsten Potthoff, Ulrich Rechenbach, Sara Spennemann, Sebastian Winkler ; costume design: Christine Gottschalk; Technical direction: Norbert Kammler und Thomas Hofmüller; Voice and acting coach: Albert Weilguny; produced by Jordan Marijan h t t p : / / w w w . j Premier February, 2006 and Remounted for a a y s c
three week engagement at Central Kino in h e i b
Salzburg, Austria as part of the Young . c o Performers Festival, July/August 2006 m
email [email protected]
MIT Dramashop PRESENTS
Tolstoy’s THE POWER OF DARKNESS directed by Jay Scheib scenic design by Bill Fregosi, costumes by Leslie Cocuzzo- Held and Jessica Hinel, lights by Karen Perlow and Kuuipo Curry, sound by John Head, objects by Helen Tsai and Abigail Swenson, camera by José Oritz, the dramaturgy of Kenny Roraback, publicity by Virginia Corless, technical direction by Mike Katz with Alex French, and this stage is managed by Amanda Frye with Gita Srivastava and Kim Boddy Produced by Dan Liston and MIT DRAMASHOP with Performances by Angelin Baskaran, Ashlie Brown, James Dai, Jocelyn D'Arcy, Tiffany Ellis, Olga Fedorishcheva, Arshan Gailus, Max Goldman, Jessica Hinel, Adrienne Irmer, Helen McCreery, Catherine McCurry, Claudiu Stan, Tao Wang, and Michael Wolf h t t p : / / w
OPENS: APRIL 8, 2004, LITTLE KRESGE AUDITORIUM w w . j CAMBRIDGE MASSACHUSETTS a y s c h e i b .
This production was later redeveloped with the Pont c o Muhely Ensemble in Budapest at the Trafo Theater 2005 m
email [email protected] For Immediate Release MIT Dramashop Presents THE POWER OF DARKNESS After the play by LEO TOLSTOY, directed by Jay Scheib In the Golden Age of Coca-Cola Anisya rat-poisons her terminally ill husband Peter for the love of Nikita, who sleeps with Everyone, and gets Everyone preg - nant, including his step-daughter Akulina—but when the conniving mother-in- law steps in to set things right things go very very wrong... The Power of Darkness. What happens when beautiful people make monumentally bad decisions? Repeatedly? Purveyor of the finest in human disasters, Leo Tolstoy turns his hand to the stage with alarming accuracy, taking us on a joy-ride of repression, depression, love and desire. Well, it's all fun and games until somebody loses an eye for an eye...
Director and MIT Professor, Jay Scheib, stages this classic of the 19th century Russian stage as though it had been written this morning. In this highly physical, multi-media family drama, Scheib offers a por - trait of human beings caught inside the pressure cooker of changing times. A thrilling ensemble of young performers leap to the occasion, led by veterans of the MIT stage Jessica Hinel, James Dai, Helen McCreery, and Max Goldman. Scheib and the ensemble splice humor and horror, tragedy and satire in an eloquent portrayal of our times through the lens of Tolstoy's masterpiece of modern drama:
The Power of Darkness was written in 1886 by Leo Nikolayevitch Tolstoy (1828-1910), after an actual criminal case. Hailed as a "wonderful thing," Tsar Alexander III under pressure from religious and political adversaries banned the play’s per - formance in Russia. The Power of Darkness premiered instead at the Theatre Libre in Paris in 1888 and was met with mas - sive success, becoming a cornerstone of the Naturalistic movement in the theater.
OPENS: APRIL 8TH 2004 And runs April 9th, 10th, 15th, 16th, and 17th (all shows at 8pm) CoCommissioned by Arts at St Ann’s, Susan Feldman, Artistic Director and Brooklyn Academy of Music, Joeseph V. Melillo, Executive Director Falling and Waving a digital opera adapted and directed by Jay Scheib
Art’s at St. Ann’s, Brooklyn New York, March 1999
Composed by David Lang Libretto by Ronald Jones Dramaturgy Rob Dyrenforth, Video Design Leah Gelpe, 3D Modeling / Animation David Sun
Featuring Kristin Linklater, Vito h t t p : / / w
Acconci, Jennifer Bainbridge, w w . j a y
Scott Dixon, Aimee McCormick, s c h e i b . c
Ryan Justeson o m
email [email protected] Production Notes shipwrecked or drowned at sea.” It seems to the contrary that Falling and Waving is an extended collage of found text, includ - images of the disaster are all that we have. They are what we ing autopsy reports (Lee Harvey Oswald, JFK), psychiatric case cling to, and what we depend upon—as a protection against studies, scientific lectures (Werner Heisenberg), philosophical future disasters? lest we forget? And so it is that Cicero’s cri - writings (Francis Bacon), the statements of a paranoid schizo - tique has found its reply within this multiple profusion. But per - phrenic (James Matthew Tilly, Jack Ruby), personal letters and haps, after the image fades, and the shock of its representa - accounts (Jackie Kennedy’’s testimony to the Warren commis - tion gives way to deep consideration, we may ask once again, sion), the poetry of Paradise Lost . But it is also an assembled what has here comed to pass, what has happened, what were collection of prepared film footage, found footage, digital and the agents of its emergence, why. analog video, computer animation, three dimensional modeling, Falling and Waving is testament, but it is also a sort of and photographically manipulated images torn from the twenti - diagram, to the many gestures that map the images of those eth century and here re-combined, here re-examined. But it is who have been ‘drowned at sea:’ The expulsion from the gar - also an assemblage of sampled sounds, digitally manipulated den, the allusions and dissociations of the clinicaly insane, the sonic harmonies