If you saw NTUSA’s Chautauqua open the Out There series back in January (was it really that long ago?), you know that the show included a number of guest performers and “lecturers” from the Twin Cities’ talent pool. Now the troupe is staging Chautauqua back on its home turf in New York, at Performance Space 122 in the East Village. At a performance the other night, PS122’s artistic director Vallejo Gantner stepped in to deliver a “lecture” that was really an announcement of the recipient of the Third Spalding Gray Award:the Brooklyn-based four-member collective Radiohole.
Ganter joined the Walker’s Philip Bither, Ben Harrison of the Andy Warhol Museum, and Gray’s family, including his widow Kathy Russo, in awarding Radiohole (fittingly, NTUSA was bestowed with the award the second time around). In explaining the selection, he noted that the collective “embodies a kind of constant kinetic chaos – dragging from source materials as varied as fried chicken, Greek and Norse myth, the music of Finding Nemo, and now Douglas Sirk and John Milton. In making their work and creating their space in Williamsburg they defined the genre on their terms, as they saw it or at least as they wished it to be sawn. [sic]”
As the award’s newest recipient, Radiohole will create a full production in Spalding Gray’s honor, which will be a part of the 2009-10 seasons at the Walker, at P.S. 122, and at the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh. Details are still sketchy. As Radiohole members note on their website, “At the moment our attorney has advised us shut up and have another drink but we can’t keep our mouth shut for long. Check back soon for more WICKED EXCITING NEWS and to learn all our dirty little secrets.”
For now, just to give you an idea of where Radiohole is coming from, Gothamist’s John Del Signore
recommended of its latest production, Anger/Nation (referring in part to experimental filmmaker Kenneth and temperance movement leader Carrie A.): “If you drop acid at just one Off Broadway show this year, make it this one.” Get your own taste here:
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4t7JujhxFZk[/youtube]
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