THE GENERIC ENSEMBLE COMPANY
PRESENTS THE WORLD PREMIERE OF
UNA CORDA (A RITUAL)
WRITTEN AND PERFORMED BY KT SHORB
DIRECTED BY YVAN GREENBERG
SEPTEMBER 10–12
Friday, September 10 at 8pm
Saturday September 11 at 2pm and 8pm
Sunday September 12 at 2pm
Tickets are $15, $12 for students, seniors, and starving artists. Cash or check accepted at the door. Tickets can be reserved online at http://www.genericensemblecompany.blogspot.com.
Una Corda is a ritual meditation on the spiritual and emotional effects of cancer and the experience of witnessing the destruction and loss caused by the disease. This solo show is an original rite, using rigorous physicality and stream-of-consciousness text based on shorb’s experience nursing three women undergoing cancer treatment. Blurring the line between ceremony, happening, and autobiography, Una Corda asks the question: How do we not lose sight of ourselves when surrounded by loss itself?
Created by performer/writer kt shorb in collaboration with director Yvan Greenberg, Una Corda uses Greenberg’s signature layering of choreography, text, imitation and indeterminacy alongside shorb’s explorations of intimacy, failure, and frenetic action to create visceral movements, objects, and atmospheres. Drawing influences from Noh theatre, Bugaku, and Japanese Buddhist ceremonies, the ritual takes place in the liminal spaces between life and death, presence and oblivion, redemption and loss.
The piece also includes scenic painting by Sarah Sage, costuming by Irene Roderick and poetry by Kimberly Alidio.
Una Corda was made possible by the Alma de Mujer Artist in Residence Program, Co-Lab, The University of Chicago Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, and is funded and supported in part by the City of Austin through the Cultural Arts Division.
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What people are saying about the artists’ work:
shorb:
“I love what kt shorb does and how she does it, both onstage and off. Whatever she is up to is not to be missed.” –Anne Bogart, Artistic Director of the SITI Company
“…entertaining, controversial, memorable…”–Emily Ascolese, The Oberlin Review
Greenberg:
“…ironic, weird, experimental, anti-dramatic, and compelling…” –Alisa Solomon, The Village Voice
“Inane, insane, mundane…esthetic purity under the guise of the absurd.” –Amanda MacBlaine, NY Press
“Yvan Greenberg’s choreography [is] a strange brew of awkward gestures and simple but evocative movement phrases.” –Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times
Bios:
kt shorb is a director, performer, writer and founder of the Generic Ensemble Company. She has trained in Suzuki Actor Training and Viewpoints with the SITI Company and Zen Zen Zo. She was a founding member of Stamp Lab, winner of the 2008 ArtSpark Festival and the 2009 FronteraFest “Best of Fest.” Acting credits include: “Sadako” in Relativity, “Nina” in T.A.G., “Claude/Ventriloquist” in HUSH, “Reverend” in Why Koreans Don’t Hug, and in the solo show of chicks, dicks, and chinks. Directing credits include: Eagle Woman Poems, Stuck on Gee-Dot, Drawn and Quartered, Piri!, and by a quiet sea. shorb has presented her work on multiple college campuses, including Oberlin College, University of Chicago, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of Texas at Austin.
Yvan Greenberg founded Laboratory Theater in 2001 and has since directed the ensemble in eleven original pieces. His work has been presented in New York by PS 122, HERE Arts Center, The Brick Theater, Dixon Place, The Tank, chashama, TIXE, New Dramatists, The Performing Garage, The Knitting Factory, and Movement Research, among others. In February 2007, Laboratory Theater was the first Artist-in-Residence at Dixon Place, helping them establish an on-going residency program. Greenberg was awarded a MacDowell Fellowship in 2006. In addition to his work with Laboratory Theater, he directs Murphy, an experimental music-theater piece by composer Corey Dargel and playwright Honor Molloy, which was awarded the New Dramatists’ 2007 Frederick Loewe Award in Musical Theater. Laboratory Theater will premiere their newest piece, GIT ALONG LIL DOGGIES, October 14–30 at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn, NY. Greenberg is also an associate of The Wooster Group. http://www.laboratorytheater.org/
The Generic Ensemble Company (GenEnCo) makes the invisible visible through bold, socially relevant, body-centered theatre. http://www.genericensemblecompany.blogspot.com/