Polybe + Seats Presents The Charlotte Salomon Project
November 01, 2006 — November 19, 2006
They Are My Whole Life
The Charlotte Salomon Project: Life? Or Theater? is inspired by the life’s work of a woman artist killed at Auschwitz in 1944
Polybe & Seats presents their new play The Charlotte Salomon Project, created through an ongoing discovery process that examines the life of a relatively unknown and extraordinary young woman living in very difficult times. The texts, visuals, and actions of the play are drawn from the collection of over 1,300 paintings created by the artist Charlotte Salmon during World War II and collected by the artist in a volume called Life? Or Theater? The paintings illustrate her complex family history and her relationships with her mother, father, step-mother, and an operatic voice teacher who became her obsession. Polybe + Seats, who have been working on The Charlotte Salomon Project since the winter of 2005, are experimenting with performance styles and techniques to animate the chronology of events and characters from Salomon’s paintings. The Charlotte Salomon Project will run from November 1st through 19th at Brooklyn Fire Proof in Brooklyn, NY.
Polybe + Seats Artistic Director Jessica Brater led the cast and creative team through the creation of The Charlotte Salomon Project, a two-year development process in which they worked with texts and visual elements to devise new methods of bringing the paintings to life.
“We asked ourselves, ‘Why do this play now?’ and the answer was clear. We wanted to work on a project that explores the entire cycle of a woman artist’s life and experience, a person who did something monumental in a terrible and terrifying climate. We are women artists of the same age as Charlotte when she created the paintings, and we wanted to adapt her important work into something significant for ourselves and our audiences.”
-Artistic Director Jessica Brater
The Charlotte Salomon Project is divided into three sections; The Prelude, which references a section of paintings dealing with Salomon’s childhood and family history, is a performance installation in a gallery space that will incorporate painting-inspired exhibits, live action, projection, miniatures, and replicas of the paintings. Audiences will make their way through Salomon’s childhood memories before entering into the performance space for the Main Section, in which we meet Amadeus Daberlohn, who later becomes the focus of the young artist’s obsession. The final section of the piece, the Epilogue, takes place after Salomon’s escape from Berlin and uses movement and design suggestive of the abstract style of Salomon’s final paintings to reveal her inspiration for creating the vast Life? Or Theater?.
“(Polybe + Seats is) a promising young company bravely taking on the impossible Stein challenge.”
-Charles McNulty, The Village Voice
“Born out of a love of Gertrude Stein, Polybe + Seats is the coolest new ensemble company in town. “
- Shawn-Marie Garrett, Contributing Editor, Theater Magazine
The Charlotte Salomon Project will be performed from November 1st through 19th at Brooklyn Fire Proof in Brooklyn, NY (101 Richardson St, 2nd Floor). To purchase tickets please call Smarttix at 212 868 4444, or visit www.smarttix.com. All tickets are $15.00. For more information visit www.polybeandseats.org
Polybe + Seats is:
Jessica Brater, Miriam Felton-Dansky, Stacey Cooper McMath, Katya Schapiro, and Catherine Wallach
Polybe + Seats produces plays and projects that experiment with language and structure toward the development of a new poetics for the theater. We challenge the artists in our company to create new ways of speaking and acting, and we invite our audiences to find new, complex ways of listening and interpreting. Our name is taken from one of Gertrude Stein’s plays and her writing for and about the theater inspires our work.
Jessica Brater is the founding Artistic Director of Polybe + Seats. Her directing work for the company includes Gertrude Stein’s Counting Her Dresses as part of Speakeasy at the Flea Theater, The Ladies’ Auxiliary Telephone Bee at the Tank and as part of The Brick’s Moral Values Festival, Careful of Eights: Four (Five) short plays by Gertrude Stein in the Dixon Place New Musical Festival, the HERE American Living Room Festival, and at the American Theatre of Actors, Sally Oswald’s Two Spent Swimmers at the Brown University New Plays Festival and at the Abingdon Theatre, and Oswald’s Desmond or Abraham and Frances at the New York International Fringe Festival. Other recent directing credits include readings of Elizabeth Emmons’ Siobhan and the Ice Age featuring Sharon Fogarty and a work-in-progress by Margot Newkirk featuring Ruth Maleczech, both at the Voice and Vision Envision Retreat 2006. Brater teaches and works in the Barnard College Department of Theatre and is a student in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Ph.D. program in Theater Studies.
The Charlotte Salomon Project was developed in part thanks to the New Play Commission from the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, participation in the Mabou Mines/Suite, and as the result of a residence at Brooklyn Fire Proof. Polybe + Seats will present two developmental showings at Mabou Mines in October, 2006 and a three-week run of the piece at Brooklyn Fire Proof, in Williamsburg, Starting November 1, 2006.
Credits:
Directed by Jessica Brater
Dramaturgy by Miriam Felton-Dansky
Produced by Stacey Cooper McMath And Catherine Wallach
Stage Manager: Elizabeth Emmons
Text by Charlotte Salomon, Avi Glickstein, and Jacob Burstein-Stern
Cast includes: Samantha Debicki, Molly Parker-Myers, Katya Schapiro, Jacob Burstein-Stern, Lisette Marie, Silva, Avi Glickstein, Ari Vagoda and Andy Gilchrist.
Lighting Design: Marnie Cumings and Natalie Robin
Set Design: Kanae Heike
Costume Design: Karen Flood
Original Music: Jason Binnick
For more information contact Stacey McMath at info@polybeandseats.org or visit: http://www.polybeandseats.org