Best known through its use by Radiohead and in films like Ghostbusters and Amelie, the ondes martenot is a rare but important electronic instrument.  It has a keyboard, a ribbon controller, and a touch-sensitive button that controls the instrument’s dynamics.  It looks like this:

ELCO composers Alan Tormey and David Gerard Matthews create all new music for the Hazlett CSA, featuring Grenier and the ondes martenot.  The program will highlight the Francophone heritage of the instrument and include selections from Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and works by French-Canadian composer Claude Vivier and the Czech-French composer Bohuslav Martinu.

But, in the ELCO tradition of erasing genre distinctions, the concert will also incorporate songs by the likes of Air, Stereolab, and Radiohead.

Learn more about the ELCO on their website.

There’s still time to become a shareholder in the New Hazlett CSA performance series.  Help us reach our goal of 150 shareholders, and we’ll give every single shareholder an extra ticket to one of the CSA performances.

Dan Wilcox is an artist, engineer, performer, and musician who combines live musical performance techniques with experimental electronics and software for exploration into themes of science fiction, space travel, cyborgification, and far futurism.  Dan’s engineering background is tempered by a punk rock craving for raw energy of expression, risk, and humor and leads to work that is robustly made yet spontaneously executed: a technological caveman beating a drum with an iPad.

Onward to Mars is a live, audio/visual astronaut rock opera which explores this question through a figurative journey to Mars in order to discover the music of the Red Planet:

In 2030, scientists discovered the fundamental frequency of the universe and that all living things are attuned to the specific harmonics of the celestial bodies they call home. Humans, accustomed to Earth’s frequencies, must know the music of another planet upon reaching a new world, otherwise face cellular collapse as dissonant vibrations collide. With the first manned mission to Mars already on its way, a crash course astronaut musician is sent on a one way trip to reach the Red Planet first and learn the “song of Mars” before he literally shakes apart. The fate of humanity’s future in space rests on his shoulders …

As research for Onward to Mars, artist Dan Wilcox spent 2 weeks on a simulated mission at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah wearing a spacesuit, living a tin-can existence, and experiencing the hardship and excitement of extra-planetary exploration.

Learn more about Dan and see some of his work on his website.

Become a CSA shareholder today.  We only have a few weeks left to sell the rest of our 150 shares.  If you help put us over the top, then we’ll give every CSA shareholder an additional ticket to one of the CSA performances.  Become a part of the community today.

Continuum Dance Theater’s artistic process is a bit unusual compared to most dance companies out there. In order to create their piece for the New Hazlett CSA, Continuum spent a year researching our city, touring Pittsburgh neighborhoods, and interviewing the people in our neighborhoods. Then they took all of that work back to the studio where they incorporated their findings into countless hours of discussion and movement work. At the end of it all, Continuum’s five member, all female cast takes on a character whose story unfolds through the fusion of dance and theater performance art.

Objects of Desire is the culmination of all that hard work and effort. Spearheaded and choreographed by Continuum’s founder and artistic director, Sarah Parker, Objects of Desire takes the audience on a journey through the spectacle that has become the American Dream.

Parker describes her creative process like constructing a piece of architecture: “I begin with the framework and concept, envisioning the platform for the greater vision. Then the finer details, fleshing it out until it starts to move and breathe on its own, becoming alive.

Diving into the human psyche and deconstructing social archetypes, Continuum explores what makes us all tick, how we are motivated as individuals and as a society and ultimately what addictions can take hold when the line is crossed from striving towards a goal to allowing your objectives to take hold of your life.

Questioning existing social standards and finding balance within personal dynamics takes Objects of Desire full circle as the audience is pulled by the dancers through acts of honest humor, human exposure, and the beauty and conflict that drives the creation of who and what we are.

You can learn more about Continuum Dance Theater on their website, continuumdancetheater.blogspot.com.

The New Hazlett Theater Community Supported Art Performance Series is based on the farm share model of community supported agriculture.  For only $100, each New Hazlett CSA shareholder receives six fresh productions, delivered every other month to the New Hazlett Theater.  Become a shareholder today.

Photo by Frank Walsh c.2013

Beth Corning and Dominique Serrand come together for Pittsburgh’s 4 annual Glue Factory Project to bring us REMAINS – a one woman show.  The show confronts personal end-time issues of loss — loss of memory, of mortality.

We sat down with Beth for a quick talk about the project, her connections with Tony award-winning directory Serrand, and what happens after dinner.

NHT: For those unfamiliar with the Glue Factory Project, can you tell us a little bit about it and why it’s important?

Beth: The Glue Factory is about recognizing the fact that aging artists still have something very important to say.  We live in a society that tends to value youth.  Dance, especially, puts an emphasis on it.  But someone like Mikhail Baryshnikov is doing work right now that no 20 or 30 year old could ever do.  It’s a very important landscape to traverse.

How did you meet Dominique Serrand?

We’ve known each other for 20-something years.  Dominique does brilliant work, obviously.  So when I decided that I needed to grow and change — not just learn a few new steps but to change on a cellular level — I called him up and said, “I want to work with you.”  And he said, “Let’s do it!”

How much of your personal life — your own experiences — goes into the creation of a piece like REMAINS?

Well, everything that I make is personal.  That being said, I work very hard to make the personal universal.  I don’t see this as a cathartic work.  I’m not up there to work my personal problems out on stage.  And of course Dominique [Serrand] has made REMAINS partly his as well.  So even though it’s my story — it comes from me — it’s been opened up because of him.  REMAINS isn’t a diary, but there are seeds from my life in there.

REMAINS runs from Wednesday, June 5th through Sunday, June 9th.

 

Zach Dorn and Murphi Cook — the whimsically idiosyncratic duo that make up Miniature Curiosa — explore the underbelly of childhood nostalgia with, as Zach and Murphi put it, “The disappointed eyes of adulthood.”  Miniature Curiosa uses a combination of real-time camera work, hand-crafted miniature set pieces, and live performance to create a fast-moving, fast-talking (sometimes malfunctioning) live action comic book.

“This is not theatre,” they say.  “This is the living room of an overzealous magician who doesn’t know any tricks.”

Currently on the road touring their most recent spectacle, Tonight A Clown Will Travel Time, Zach and Murphi will be stopping in 15 different cities this summer, but they’ll be back in Pittsburgh come October for the New Hazlett’s CSA Series.

In Birds of AmericaZach and Murphi’s cameras soar through miniature scenery, doll houses, and frightful dreamscapes to create a kind of Hitchcockian nightmare of Rosemary’s Baby proportions.

Check out Miniature Curiosa’s website for tour dates and information, and explore their Facebook page for updates and the occasional live-streaming puppet show like this one:

By Robert Isenberg
Wednesday, May 22, 2013 POPCity

Pittsburgh is packed with theaters—large and small, amateur and Equity, and each is a little bit different from all the others. Some fans try to see everything, and they bounce from Public to City to Quantum with aplomb, signing up for every season subscription they can find. Others gravitate to their neighborhood stage, like South Park and Little Lake, happy to support their friends and neighbors.

But some companies really stand out, not just because they produce excellent shows, but because they’re full of surprises. They don’t fit the usual categories; you can’t quite pin them down, and they seem to like it that way. Through shrewd leadership and visionary staging (often with limited resources) these artistic directors have won over critics and audiences.

If you’ve never seen a production (or heard of them, period) this critic fervently recommends the following five companies. If Penn Avenue is Pittsburgh’s Times Square, then consider this the Off-Broadway crowd—eccentric, cutting-edge, and guaranteed to show you something you’ve never seen before…

Read the full article here

 

“Watching Kelli perform is an intimate experience. There is a spiritual, kind of mystical element…her words are so powerful and her presence is magnetic–almost otherworldly.”

-Amanda Gilby, Fiction Contest Winner, Hip Mama Magazine

Poet, playwright, and oral historian, Kelli Stevens Kane unearths surprises at the crossroads of human vulnerability and possibility.  Always on the go with a project in hand, Kane has performed her work across the country while managing to write three manuscripts and serving as the program director for Poetic Side, an online poetry radio show.

As the inaugural artist of our CSA Performance Series, Kane weaves a performance-portrait of her grandmother, Georgetta Holmes Stevens, or “Big George” to her family and friends.  A tiny woman with a colossal personality, Big George used to take her family to visit funeral homes, whether or not she knew the deceased.  She was funny, frank, and always spoke her mind, and her contagious authenticity made everyone she met just a little more bold.

The characters Kane summons up in her one-woman performance remind us that we’re all connected, and Big George’s story becomes that of a community, celebrating the legacy of Pittsburgh’s historic Hill District, African American culture, and the enormous potential for memory to shape our daily lives.

Kelli Stevens Kane will be teaching a free Cave Canem poetry workshop for African American poets later this month.  You can find more information on the Cave Canem website.

If you’d like to read a sample of Kane’s poetry, you can find a wide variety on kellistevenskane.com.

Kane’s performance happens on August 10.  Learn more and become a CSA shareholder on our event page.

This Saturday Sanctuary of Praise presents an evening of music including a combination of lyrical dance, Christian rap, spoken word, contemporary gospel, and praise and worship. Performing artists include Bloodsent, Jordan Welch, Adrienne Butler Leonard & The Sanctuary of Praise Choir, Spirit-Lead, and Michaela and Jordan.

Support from the evening helps fund Set Free, a Pittsburgh movie project filmed in the East End.

Tickets are available through brownpapertickets.com and Sanctuary of Praise.  $20 in advance or $25 at the door.

Theaters and farm shares are, at their core, very similar.  How?  The answer is simple; we’re both in the business of cultivation.

Local farm shares cultivate crops, yes, but they also cultivate the community that springs up around the farm.  As they provide sustenance to their neighbors, so too does the neighborhood support the farm.  Likewise, we here at the New Hazlett Theater cultivate art by providing the space and resources for performers to create, and just like a traditional CSA, we look for ways to nurture our community of artists and arts patrons.

It’s this idea of community building that sparked our interest in an exciting way for patrons to contribute directly to their local artists, nurturing the creation new performances.  That’s why we’re pleased to announce a brand new way of experiencing local art: the first ever CSA performance series.  (Our version stands for Community Supported Art.)

Here’s how it works: for a $100 subscription, each CSA “shareholder” receives admission to six performances created over the course of one year.  Each work is fresh from Pittsburgh artists and delivered to you at the New Hazlett Theater starting this August.

We’ve just finished a lengthy application process, and we’ve hand-pick the best of the best, the cream of the crop.  What will you find in your New Hazlett Theater CSA “box?”

Learn more at www.newhazletttheater.org/#CSA.  Go there to find out how you can support homegrown entertainment and become a part of the New Hazlett CSA community.

And be sure to catch a free preview of our CSA at the Gallery Crawl on April 26.  See our event page for more information.

Faith, trust, and pixie dust, all of the ingredients for a little Disney magic.

From April 11-14, the Pittsburgh Musical Theater presents Sleeping Beauty KIDS, an updated stage adaption of the classic fairytale immortalized by Walt Disney Animation Studios. Some of the most talented young actors in Pittsburgh perform fan favorites like “Once Upon A Dream,” with brand new material like “Maleficent!” and “A Little Magic Now.”

Disney’s Sleeping Beauty KIDS follows Aurora on her sixteenth birthday. In order to combat the malevolent sorceress Maleficent, fairy godmothers Flora, Fauna, and Merryweather use their good magic and try to stop the deadly curse that threatens Aurora’s life. A full kingdom of subjects, forest animals, and goons join the cast.

This is a show for people of all ages. For tickets, call 412.539.0900 x232. Group rates are available. Sleeping Beauty has a run time of approximately one magical and fun filled hour.

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