Winter Season 2021–2022
December 21–22: Compagnie Libertivore’s Phasmes and Hêtre
Phasmes and Hêtre, two signature works of Compagnie Libertivore, gave their U.S. Premiere at PS21 on December 21–22, 2021. Written and choreographed by Fanny Soriano with her trademark merging of dance and acrobatics, Phasmes is a duet that explores the intimate encounter between human beings and the natural world. It is a companion piece to the earlier Hêtre, a solo work that dramatizes a young woman’s retreat from the world into a mysterious, dreamlike forest. Together they form a diptych, displays of aerial and earthbound movement both delicate and poetic, acrobatic and muscular. A meeting of dance and circus arts, the works induce a slow metamorphosis of humans and organic matter, as performers confront nature, accompany it, dodge it, collide, and merge with it.
Brain Seibert discussed Soriano’s choreographic depth and range of emotion extensively in a New York Times feature.
Hêtre
A solo dance and acrobatic performance born of the vital need for solitude in a world where we are assailed by an endless flood of external stimuli clamoring for our attention, Hêtre—a play on the homophones “hêtre” (beech tree) and “être” (being)—traces the metamorphosis of a young woman, lithe and expressive, who, weaving and gliding, appears to melt into the gnarled limb of a beech tree that is the only other visible onstage presence during her reverie. Hêtre’s power stems from its cross-fertilization of dance and circus arts, its tenderness and simplicity, and the virtuosic grace of its representation of a young woman discovering a more intimate world.
Phasmes
In Phasmes (phasmids, or stick insects), a mysterious figure on the dimly lit stage alters in appearance from a galloping headless creature, to a delicate insect, to a creeping mass that resembles alien architecture. Then the figure reveals itself as two bodies behaving as one, unfolding and recoiling, assuming abstract and evocative forms. The performers, enthralled by the multiplicity of possibilities, continually shift their weight and balance, searching for a common center of gravity. Their movements, at times in harmony, at others in opposition, invent a new acrobatic language, sensuous yet disturbing, fragile yet brutal, questioning humans’ place in nature. In counterpoint to the contemplative Hêtre, the choreography of Phasmes is more spirited, acrobatic, and playful. Mathieu Dochtermann, writing in Toute la Culture, praised the dancers’ “pure, untamed animality, their effortless grace and stunning technique.”
Left and middle: Compagnie Libertivore performer Nina Harper in Hêtre, PS21’s Black Box Theater, December 21, 2021. Right: Choreographer Fanny Soriano poses with the sculpted beach tree limb in the Black Box Theater
PDF: The New York Times: A Spinning Acrobat Learn to Love Change, December 15, 2021
December 6–11; January 5–14: Residency of Pascal Rambert, with Actors Jim Fletcher and Ismaïl ibn Conner
Celebrated French playwright and director Pascal Rambert was in residence at PS21 from December 6–11, 2021, adapting and rehearsing two plays: The Art of Theater, performed by Jim Fletcher, and With My Own Hands, featuring Ismaïl ibn Conner. Nicholas Elliott, who has translated numerous Rambert works as well as theater pieces by Olivier Py and others, assisted with the English versions. Jim Fletcher, in The Art of Theater, was joined on stage by Delia the dog, who rehearsed with Fletcher throughout the residency, taking up the role of the recipient of the protagonists ruminations.
Left to right: Fletcher with Delia the dog; Rambert in rehearsal in PS21’s Black Box Theater; Ismaïl ibn Conner and Jim Fletcher
January 14–15, 22–23: The Art of Theater and With My Own Hands
Following their residency at PS21, Pascal Rambert and the actors returned to PS21’s Black Box Theater for four public performances of The Art of Theater and With My Own Hands. The plays were performed at PS21’s Black Box Theater on January 14—15, and 22—23, copresented with The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival.
Read Chief Theater Critic Jesse Green’s review in The New York Times
The Art of Theater
Fletcher and Delia the dog in the performance of “The Art of Theater” in PS21’s Black Box Theater. January 14, 2022
The Art of Theater, composed in 2007, is a manifesto about the nature of dramatic acting, spoken by a single actor (Fletcher) who addresses, not the audience, but his dog, who patiently attends to his master’s voice. The audience, in effect, eavesdrops on the monologue. Fletcher, who co-starred with Kate Moran in Rambert’s two-character Love’s End (Clôture de l’Amour), previously appeared at PS21 in 2019, in the title role of Compagnie l’héliotrope’s Pollock.
With My Own Hands
Ismaïl ibn Conner performing “With My Own Hands” in PS21’s Black Box Theater, January 14, 2022
Rambert wrote the original version of With My Own Hands for Eric Doye in 1993; it premiered on a rooftop at the Université de Dijon. Since then, he has adapted this protean meditation on the human condition, a soliloquy uttered by a wounded psyche on the brink of suicide, for a series of settings and performers, including the American actor Kate Moran in 2007. At the time, he said, “I wrote this text to be played by both men and women, young and old.” At PS21, Conner, who has performed widely in Centre Dramatique National Orléans’ production of Jean Genet’s Splendid’s and many other theatrical works, will embody the role of the protagonist of this searing, enigmatic monologue. A continuous torrent of unrelenting phrases and sentences, without punctuation or defined endings, audience members are coaxed into creating their own meaning from the discernible language. With characters and places being added and alluded to, the work is a puzzle of dark ideas on the nature of the human condition, performed with a somber humor.
PDF: The New York Times: In A Double Bill, the Avant Garde Meets A Very Good Girl, January 17, 2022
December 11—17: Katiana Rangel and Jim Fletcher Residency, Blasted, by Sarah Kane
Jim Fletcher and Katiana Rangel, “Blasted” in PS21’s Black Box Theater, December 16, 2021
Actor/Director Katiana Rangel, longtime collaborator Jim Fletcher, and cellist and composer Lori Goldston were in residence from December 11–17, refining and developing their two-person version of Sarah Kane’s Blasted, a play that shocked and outraged audiences and critics when it premiered in London in 1995. The trio first joined forces in 2018, when Goldston played the cello accompaniment to a staged reading by Rangel and Fletcher of Ama (The Pearl Diver). The residency culminated with a work-in-progress performance on December 16.
A post-performance discussion took place in the Black Box Theater, where Fletcher and Rangel offered insight into the work and the residency process at PS21