innova excerpt 3

INNOVA

Abrons Arts Center
May 13-14, 19-21 | 7:30 pm
May 15, 22 | 6 pm

TICKETS: $20, $15 students




Innova is an ecstatically urban opera for the 21st century by the members of Object Collection. With text collaged from gangster films, political manifestos, and plagiarized performance art, five vocalists sift through a baroque landscape of objects and tools triggering a barrage of action, images and sound. Based in Brooklyn, Object Collection deftly operates within the intersecting practices of performance, experimental music and theater, giving audiences unconventional viewing experiences through a merging of theatricality and pedestrian activity.

Dissolving the boundary between the innovative and the residual, the five performers of Innova maintain an extensive live/work space that becomes an urban grotto of revised and invented topographies. The performers engage in a range of pastimes, intricate sequences of action, diagrammatic displays, projects, and unconventional vocal techniques such as notated speech and rhythmic whispering, while live projected video refracts their activity across the greater room.

The score is influenced by a range of music subcultures, from hip-hop/dancehall's booming sub-bass to updated musique concrète, noise-rock and experimental improvised music. In addition to the five vocalists, Innova is performed by three musicians on cello, guitar, bass, woodwinds, percussion, piano, samples, field recordings, computer, and objects. Texts are appropriated from sources as varied as Michelangelo Antonioni, Jello Biafra, Claes Oldenburg, and William Shatner.

Performed in English, Turkish, German, French, Spanish, Mandarin, and Hebrew, with English supertitles.

Presented with Incubator Arts Project.

Kara Feely: Writer/Director
Travis Just: Composer
Peter Ksander: Set Designer
Miranda k. Hardy: Lighting Designer
Stacey Berman: Costume Designer
Jamie McElhinney: Sound Designer
Daniel Kötter: Video Designer
Casey Llewellyn: Assistant Director
Nate Lemoine: Production Manager
Liz Nielsen: Stage Manager

Performers: Doug Barrett, Avi Glickstein, Eric Magnus, Fulya Peker, Deborah Wallace

Musicians: Travis Just, Kevin Farrell, Jessie Marino

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