Join us for a panel discussion and snacks at Bryant-Lake Bowl as we consider approaches to engaging audiences through immersive and interactive performance.
On the last day of her residency for Thank You For Coming: Attendance, Faye Driscoll will join Twin Cities artists Pramila Vasudevan, Marcus Young, and Fire Drill (Emily Gastineau and Billy Mullaney) for a discussion about ways that contemporary performance often reconfigures the traditional dynamic with the audience.
About the Artists
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Bessie Award–winning choreographer and director Faye Driscoll has been hailed as a “startlingly original talent” (New York Times). Her work is rooted in an obsession with the problem of being “somebody” in a world of other “somebodies,” and all of the conflicts and comedy born in our interactions with others. Works include: Wow Mom, Wow, a postmodern/pop musical/ death metal fantasy (2007); 837 Venice Boulevard (2008; Bessie Award), an autobiographical work taking place in a theater within a home; There is so much mad in me (2010), an exploration of ecstatic states; You’re Me (2012), a duet distorted by props, paint, and manic costume shifts. Driscoll is currently at work on the series Thank You For Coming that implicates the audience in the work and invites the sensation of co-creation.
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Experimental artist Pramila Vasudevan creates immersive performance environments using an interdisciplinary voice of movement and electronic media. She is the artistic director of Aniccha Arts (2004–present), a company of designers and movement collaborators who construct immersive performance environments that question individual agency inside the systems we live in. Her background includes classical and contemporary Indian dance (more than 30 years), visual media design, and political science, which are reflected in her socially conscious performance practice. Through years of researching audience methods and ways that technology supports the integration of artistic disciplines, Vasudevan is committed to the creation of site-specific performances, acknowledging the hybridity of knowledge in our bodies as performers. Major influences and teachers include Dr. Bala Nandakumar, Roshan Vajifdar Ghosh, Ranee Ramaswamy, Nirmala Rajasekar, Dr. Ananya Chatterjea, Piotr Szyhalski, Steve Dietz, Dr. Ali Momeni, and BodyCartography.
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Behavioral and social-practice artist Marcus Young makes work for the concert stage, museums, and the public realm. His work expands the repertoire of human contemplative behavior and the expressivity of the city. Ongoing work includes Don’t You Feel It Too?—a participatory street dance practice of public protest and inner-life liberation. From 2006 to 2015, as city artist in St. Paul, Young redefined the role of artist working within city government. He is collaborating director with Ananya Dance Theater, and a recipient of awards from the McKnight, Bush, and Jerome Foundations as well as Franklin Furnace and the Drama League.
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Based in Minneapolis, Fire Drill, a collaboration by Emily Gastineau and Billy Mullaney, creates performance works that challenge contemporary modes of spectatorship and engagement. The duo conducts experiments to track the effects of capitalism on the body and ways of viewing art. Fire Drill’s work has been presented at the Walker, Red Eye Theater, Bryant-Lake Bowl, the Ritz Theater, and other Twin Cities venues as well as at Panoply Performance Laboratory (Brooklyn), Special Effects Festival/The Wild Project (New York), the Chocolate Factory/THROW (Queens), SALTA Is (Oakland), the Garage (San Francisco), Multiplex Gallery (Portland), FringeArts/Scratch Night (Philadelphia), E.M.P. Collective (Baltimore), and the Performance Philosophy Conference/University of Chicago. As part of an emerging artist-driven touring network for contemporary performance, they have curated evenings of work at the White Page, Bedlam Theater, and their own space Fresh Oysters Performance Research, featuring artists from across the country.
