Performances

On the Immaculate Conception of the Flower

Biography

Angeles Romero

Virgin Cabaret

This cabaret offers artists and participants a chance to "come as their favorite virgin". A play on religion, sexuality, and the prevailing believe in miracles.  Carmelita Tropicana performs and is the Emcee for the evening. 
The cabaret included  Semon of Seven or More Words by Susana Cook,  On the Immaculate Conception of a Flower by Angeles Romero, The Virgin of Perpetual Security by Roberto and Lian Sifuentes, and presentations by Edmundo Torres and Marga Gómez. 

Biographies

Internationally renowned performance artist, Carmelita Tropicana (Alina Troyano) won the 1999 Obie award for Sustained Achievement in New York's downtown theatre scene. She is famous for her sparkling wit, her bilingual and bicultural cultural crossings, and her campy performance style. Carmelita is the author of the Lambda Award nominated book I, Carmelita Tropicana, Performing Between Cultures, which includes her plays Milk of Amnesia, Chicas 2000, and The Conquest of Mexico as Seen Through The Eyes of Hernan Cotez's Horse (Beacon Press in 2000). Her film I, Carmelita Tropicana, Your Kunst is Your Waffen (directed by Ela Troyano) was awarded Best Short at the Berlin Film Festival and won the Stolichnaya and Audience award at the 18th International San Francisco Lesbian and Gay Film Festival.

Marga Gomez has been writer/performer of five previous theater solos, "A Line Around The Block," (Public, 1996) "Memory Tricks," (Public 1993), "Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay," (Whitney Museum & PS 122, 1994) "Jaywalker" (PS122, 1999) and "The Twelve Days of Cochina" (which worked-in-progress at Dixon Place, as well as out of town in San Francisco and Boston during 2001). She received Theatre LA's Ovation Award for "Carpa Clash," a collaboration with Culture Clash at the Mark Taper Forum, and the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for "Memory Tricks." Selections from Gomez' work have been published in several anthologies including "Extreme Exposure" (TCG Books), "Out, Loud & Laughing" (Anchor Books), "Contemporary Plays by American Women of Color" (Routledge) and "Out of Character" (Bantam Books).

Roberto Sifuentes is an interdisciplinary artist from Los Angeles and now living in New York City. His work combines live performance with interactive technologies and video as a presentation medium. As a member of La Pocha Nostra from 1994 - 2000, Sifuentes collaborated with performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, presenting performance and installation work at over 200 venues throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Recent performance projects by Sifuentes include: performance installations "Undermining the Machine" 2001, and "14 Unnatural Acts" which will begin touring in late 2003. Sifuentes is currently the Artistic Director of the Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program NYC

Lian Amaris Sifuentes is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Massachusetts. She has been collaborating with Roberto Sifuentes in performance projects including Certain Dark Things/Ciertas Cosas Oscuras and 14 Unnatural Things. She is currently an MA student in Performance Studies at New York University.

Edmundo Torres Tresierra was born in Puno, Peru. Since his childhood, he has danced the traditional dances of his region. He received part of his educational background in the Fine Art Schools of Puno and Lima, and then moved into the theatre arts, graduating in acting in the National Conservatory in Lima. He worked with Yuyachkani in Allpa Rayku, Los músicos ambulantes and Contraelviento. He learned mask making techniques in Italy, in Milan's Cívica Scuola di Arte Drammatica.  His work has been exhibited in Peru, Italy, Spain, Germany and Hungary. Edmundo Torres has developed his own performance work with his characters, "Ekeko", "Frida Kahlo", "Calaca Catrina", and "Agapito".

Calendar of Stone

This solo piece written, directed and performed by Denise Stoklos, presents a character in confrontation with time.  Borrowing its structure from Gertrude Stein's A Birthday Book, in which the poet writes about each and every day of a year, our character goes through 365 days during which all sorts of things happen.  Simple, daily events coexist with profound, existential questions.  It is not relevant whether the character is male or female, rich or poor, young or old, only that her basic necessities have been met.  It could be anyone in the audience or the performer herself. Inside the endless repetition of one day after another, we eventually find cracks though which we encounter places where chronology is no longer relevant.

No documentation of this performance was permitted by the artist.

Biography

Denise Stoklos began her career in 1968 as a playwright, director and actress in Brasil. In 1987, while visiting New York for four months on a Fullbright, she created "Denise Stoklos in Mary Stuart" for La Mama Theatre. Since then she has world premiered plays in New York each year. These include "Hamlet in Irati" and "Casa". In 1992 she created "500 years - a fax from Denise Stoklos to Christopher Columbus," in 1993, the romance "Tomorrow will be late and the day after tomorrow doesn't even exist," in 1994, her version of the Greek myth "Un-Medea," in 1995 "Elegy," (with the participation of her two children Piata and Thais), and in 1996 "Heavier than the air/Santos Dumont." In October 1997 "Civil Disobedience" based on Henry Thoreau's text premiered in Parana and Rio. In 1999 she created "Dissonant Voices" for the 500 year anniversary of the discovery of Brasil, which was perforformed in many cities. In 2000 Ms. Stoklos created and performed "Louise Bourgeois: I do, I undo, I redo" in New York city, with scenography exclusively created and built by the great sculptor Louise Bourgeois. In the first semester of the year 2000 Ms. Stoklos was a professor at New York University, invited to teach her "Essential Theatre" for Masters and Ph.D. students at the Department of Performance Studies. She has published seven books of plays. Denise Stoklos' theatrical proposition is outlined in "The Essential Theatre", a theatre made with only the actor's instruments: body, voice and mind/intuition. Ms. Stoklos performs her plays in Portuguese, Spanish, English, French, Russian, Ukrainian and German. Since 1986 Ms. Stoklos has performed frequently in important international events in thirty-one different countries.

YokastaS

YokastaS, a play written by Staviana Stanescu and Richard Schechner and directed by Schechner explores the central figure of Yokasta--Oedipus's Queen-Mother-Wife by presenting theatregoers with four Yokastas, each representing distinct parts of her life and different approaches to her experiences. Audiences see Yokasta as a pre-teen, a young woman, a happily married woman, and an older woman who intelligently recollects all aspects of her life.

Authors: Saviana Stanescu & Richard Schechner
Director: Richard Schechner
Lights: E.D. Intemann.
Costumes: Oana
Set: the company
Musical direction: Meg Leary
Dramaturg: Kilbane Porter
Assistant stage manager: Elizabeth Pink
Players: Yokasta: Tracey Huffman; Yoko: Suzi Takahashi; Yoyo: Kilbane Porter; Yono: Rachel Bowditch; Media, Laius, Oedipus: Chris Healy; Opera Singer: Meg Leary
Publicity: Theresa Smalec
Managing director: Jeremy Allen Thompson
Anthropologist-observer: Regina Müller

Biography

East Coast Artists is a professional theatre company performing new plays and classics in new interpretations. ECA also conducts training workshops. Founded in 1991 by Richard Schechner, ECA has produced Faust/gastronome, Amerika (after Kafka), Chekhov's Three Sisters, and YokastaS. The first is combines original writing by Schechner with texts of Marlowe and Goethe (performed in German and English) with elements of Gounod's Faust. Amerika is Maria Vail's adaptation of Kafka's. Three Sisters is a brand new translation by ECA member Michelle Minnick. YokastaS is co-authored by Schechner and Saviana Stanescu. ECA emphasizes a long developmental workshop and rehearsal process, open rehearsals, and continuous revision throughout the life of a production. The goal of ECA is to tell stories in an emotionally full and intellectually challenging way; to engage the historical and political forces operating in our epoch; to serve as a model of humanistic, small-scale interaction and social process; to train young and developing artists; and to entertain and, in the broadest sense, educate audiences.

Richard Schechner, Artistic Director and Founder
Jeremy Thompson, Managing Director
Michelle Minnick, Head of Training
Saviana Stanescu, Resident Playwright

Video

Edmundo Torres and Susana Baca

Biography

Edmundo Torres Tresierra was born in Puno, Peru' s most varied dance culture area. Since his childhood, he has danced the traditional dances of his region. He received part of his educational background in the Fine Art Schools of Puno and Lima, and then moved into the theatre arts, graduating in acting in the National Conservatory in Lima. He has participated in several theatre companies as a performer and costume designer. Torres' most enriching experience was working with Yuyachkani in Allpa Rayku, Los músicos ambulantes and Contraelviento. He learnt mask making techniques in Italy, in Milan's Cívica Scuola di Arte Drammatica. He has taught workshops on this matter in Peru, Cuba, Spain, Italy, France and Germany. His masks, objects and sculptures have been exhibited in Peru, Italy, Spain, Germany and Hungary. Besides his work with masks, Edmundo Torres has developed extensive performance work "Ekeko", "Frida Kahlo", "Calaca Catrina", "Agapito" are some of his characters. He currently resides in Berlín, where he participates with the cultural collective "La Calaca", which periodically organizes the Mexican feast "Los días de Muertos". He also collaborates as a mask maker in Theaters such as Berlin' s "Renaissance-Theater", Postdam' s "Hans-Otto-Theater", and the "Bremer-Shakespeare-Company".

The Virgin Caberet

Biography

Marga Gomez has been writer/performer of five previous theater solos, "A Line Around The Block," (Public, 1996) "Memory Tricks," (Public 1993), "Marga Gomez is Pretty, Witty & Gay," (Whitney Museum & PS 122, 1994) "Jaywalker" (PS122, 1999) and "The Twelve Days of Cochina" (which worked-in-progress at Dixon Place, as well as out of town in San Francisco and Boston during 2001). She received Theatre LA's Ovation Award for "Carpa Clash," a collaboration with Culture Clash at the Mark Taper Forum, and the Bay Area Theater Critics Circle Award for "Memory Tricks." She was called "gut busting hilarious" and given "Best Comic Performance of 2002" for "Single Wet Female" by the New York Blade. Theatrically, she has appeared in three engagements of "The Vagina Monologues" (Twice in SF; once in NY in November, 2002).

Gomez started doing solo theater after building her stand-up career in the '80s, motivated by wanting to write something about her parents. Her father had been a comedian and founder of the Teatro Latino variety house during an earlier time (which fought a losing battle against television), so it was in her blood. She tested the waters in a theater festival in 1991 and subsequently wrote her first extended work, "Memory Tricks," about her mom. Now she lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn when in NY ("Life on the L train"), and divides her work between standuyp comedy and theater gigs.

Selections from Gomez' work have been published in several anthologies including "Extreme Exposure" (TCG Books), "Out, Loud & Laughing" (Anchor Books), "Contemporary Plays by American Women of Color" (Routledge) and "Out of Character" (Bantam Books). Currently she is collaborating on an erotic thriller with Carmelita Tropicana.

Biography

Marianela Boán graduated from the National School of Dance in 1971 and Hispanic Literature and Language from Havana University in 1981. For 15 years she worked as a dancer and choreographer for the dance company, Contemporary Dance of Cuba, which toured internationally. In 1988, she founded DanzAbierta where she has created a signature style mixing visual arts, theater, singing and music with dance. Her other choreography works have included the Cuban National Ballet, Venezia Balleto, and film works in Cuba, Canada, and Spain.

Sans Gravity

Water can symbolize many things, but often it is associated with knowledge and emotion; both of which are difficult to define in logical terms. In the installation/performance space of Sans Gravity, Bustamante explores the metaphors associated with water in the physical realm by burdening her body. The weight and the movement of the water develop into extensions of the gesture and another layer of the distorted self. The audience becomes a mechanism of relief.

Biography

Nao Bustamante is an internationally known performance art pioneer originating from the San Joaquin Valley of California. She received her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute in the field of New Genres. Her work encompasses performance art, installation, video, pop music and experimental rips in time. Some of Her collaborators include Coco Fusco, D.L. Alvarez, and Chico MacMurtrie. Bustamante's work has been presented, among other sites at, the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Arts, and the Kiasma Museum of Helsinki. She has performed in Galleries, Museums, Universities and underground sites throughout Asia, Africa, Europe, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Mexico and of course the United States. Most recently she received the prestigious Anonymous Was a Woman fellowship and a residency to develop an interactive web site through the Franklin Furnace in New York. Using the body as a source of image, narrative and emotion, Nao's performances communicate on the level of subconscious language taking the spectator on a bizarre journey, with haunting images, cracking stereotypes by embodying them. America, the beautiful originated at the improvisational festival, Engaging the Imagination (San Francisco). America... now a fully developed exploration, finds it's nature to be flux and evolutionary.

Video

Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Gospel Choir

This project is an interactive play, an evening-length church service that seems to evolve from comedy to some sort of secular spirituality that downtown New York hipsters embrace. Working in 300-seat theaters with large gospel choirs that sing anti-consumerist lyrics ("Stop Shoppping! Now we can leave the Shopping Malls!"), the Reverend usually works, like a normal church, with a theme at each service.  These range from anti-sweatshop concerns, to the neighborhood defense against the economy of tourism, to animal rights. 

Biography

Reverend Billy is a character inhabited by the author/actor Bill Talen. An invention that resists titles like Performance Artist, Man of God, or Anarchist -- Reverend Billy and his Church of Stop Shopping have become popular as none of the above or as all three. Reverend Billy is best known for his Disney and Starbucks store invasions, which also combine the elements of drama, religion and politics. Early on, the Disney store in Times Square was elected as a "charged stage," and Talen has taken some 500 people into the store for "transgressive performances," where actors pose as shoppers and throw "articulate fits" in response to the sweatshop Goofies on the shelves. Starbucks management has become so concerned about the Reverend Billy phenomenon that they have sent out a memo to all NYC cafe managers, educating the hapless employees with a kind of primer, "What Should I Do If Reverend Billy Comes Into My Store?" The memo, turned over to Talen by an employee fired from the "bean cult," is posted on the Church of Stop Shopping website.

Video

The Virgin of Perpetual Security

Biography

Roberto Sifuentes is an interdisciplinary artist from Los Angeles and now living in New York City. His work combines live performance with interactive technologies and video as a presentation medium. As a member of La Pocha Nostra from 1994 - 2000, Sifuentes collaborated with performance artist Guillermo Gómez-Peña, presenting performance and installation work at over 200 venues throughout the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Recent performance projects by Sifuentes include: performance installations "Undermining the Machine" 2001, and "14 Unnatural Acts" which will begin touring in late 2003. Sifuentes is currently the Artistic Director of the Trinity/La MaMa Performing Arts Program NYC

Lian Amaris Sifuentes is an interdisciplinary artist and writer from Massachusetts. She has been collaborating with Roberto Sifuentes in performance projects including Certain Dark Things/Ciertas Cosas Oscuras and 14 Unnatural Things. She is currently an MA student in Performance Studies at New York University.

Sermon of Seven or More Words

Overlooked - Overworked - Immigrant Soldier - Her blood, sweat and tears are the backbone of our nation - She cleans your toilets - She makes your sandwiches - She walks your dogs - She fucks your wife

Biography

Born in Argentina, Susana Cook is a New York based performance artist who has been writing and producing original work for over 16 years. Some of her most recent shows are Dykenstein, Hamletango, Prince of Butches, Gross National Product, Hot Tamale, Conga Guerrilla Forest, The Fraud, Butch Fashion Show in the Femme Auto Body Shop, Rats:The Fantasy of Extermination . She performed and taught workshops at Columbia University, Oberlin College, Yale University, Barnard College, The Kitchen, PS122, WOW Cafe Theater, Dixon Place and The Bronx Museum of The Arts. She created and Directed Tango Lesbiango, a monthly series at Manhattan Neighborhood Network in Public Access Cable Television.