Minneapolis, December 9, 2014—Out There brings startling, vital, provocative, and often joyous new forms of theatrical expression to the Twin Cities. Beginning in 1989 as a modest two-weekend series, Out There has grown into a full-fledged monthlong festival featuring new global performances, workshops, dialogue sessions, salons, and other activities throughout January. Out There 2015 opens with the Walker commission/World premiere of The Evening, a new work by playwright/director Richard Maxwell (Thursday–Saturday, January 8–10); the Belgian-Portuguese duo CAMPO / Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido performs Still Standing You, a physically complex look at male friendship (Thursday–Saturday, January 15–17); Argentine writer-director Mariano Pensotti returns to the Walker with Cineastas, a piece that follows the personal stories of four filmmakers in Buenos Aires, and the four movies they film over the course of a year (Thursday–Saturday, January 22–24); and the series wraps up with Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental + Wilhelm Bros. & Co. in RED-EYE to HAVRE de GRACE, an action-opera made in collaboration by theater artist Thaddeus Phillips and the Minneapolis-based musical duo Wilhelm Bros. & Co. (Thursday–Saturday, January 29–31).
Out There 2015 runs Thursdays–Saturdays, January, 8–January 31, at 8 pm in the William and Nadine McGuire Theater.
Inside Out There: Workshops with the Artists
Saturdays, January 10, 17, 24 and 31
William and Nadine McGuire Theater
Each week of Out There includes a unique interactive workshop or educational opportunity on the stage of the William and Nadine McGuire Theater. Inside Out There offers an opportunity to get the inside story from visiting Out There artists and to participate in classes and workshops with them. Advance reservations highly encouraged. To reserve a spot, call 612.375.7600 or click walkerart.org. Admission is $6 ($4 Walker members) for individual events. Purchase the series of four: $20 ($12).
Get More Out There…
Drinks & Discussions in the Balcony Bar
Meet the artists, talk about the show, and enjoy a beer, wine, or a specialty cocktail (featuring Prairie Organic vodka). Open before and after all performances.
Thursdays
Following the performance, meet the artists, talk about the show, and enjoy drinks on the upper balcony of the William and Nadine McGuire Theater.
Fridays
Get the backstory during post-show Q and A’s with the artists, performing arts curators, and special guests.
Saturdays
After the performance, head to the Balcony Bar to join a discussion or just listen in as others hash it out at our popular SpeakEasy conversations. Hosted by local artists and Walker tour guides.
All Month: Free Gallery Admission with Paid Ticket
Enjoy free admission to the Walker galleries with your paid ticket within one week of the performance date.
Single Performance Tickets
$20 ($18) Thursday; $25 ($22) Friday–Saturday
All performances take place in the Walker’s William and Nadine McGuire Theater. Tickets and information: 612.375.7600 or walkerart.org/tickets
Save with a Series Package
Ticket package includes all four Out There shows: $75 ($65 Walker members). Offer not available online; to purchase, visit the Walker box office or call 612.375.7600.
Out There 2015
January 8–31
Richard Maxwell /New York City Players: The Evening
World Premiere/Walker Commission
Thursday–Saturday, January 8–10, 8 pm
“One of the strongest directors out there—an artist committed to making us see the world for what it is.” —New Yorker
Out There 2015 kicks off with the world premiere of a new Walker-commissioned work from award-winning playwright/director Richard Maxwell, known for his minimalist, unaffected direction. Tragic, comic, and unexpected, the elegiac and musical work probes the lives, desires, and dreams of three denizens of a dive bar—a fighter past his prime, his manager, and a bartender. The Evening unfolds with monologue, fiction, and live music as the story itself transforms into a living, breathing, autonomous thing.
Although rich with sublimated humor and magnified nuance, Maxwell’s theater works are noted for their non-emotive acting style coupled with an extreme form of neutrality in direction. Circular conversations, fractured silences, and dead-pan absurdity permeate his works, yet one never suspects lurking parody or satire. Instead, the result is a sophisticated, surprisingly moving rendering of the human condition laid bare.
Richard Maxwell is the recipient of the 2014 Spalding Gray Award from the commissioning consortium of PS 122, the Andy Warhol Museum, On the Boards, and the Walker Art Center. Support provided by the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Producers’ Council members Leni and David Moore, Jr. /The David and Leni Moore Family Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, Kunsten FESTIVAL des Arts, Greene Naftali Gallery, and The Kitchen.
Inside Out There: Richard Maxwell
Saturday, January 10, 11 am–1 pm
Richard Maxwell, Artistic Director of New York City Players, and members of the cast hold an interactive discussion on Maxwell’s unique methodology and style of writing, directing, and composing music for experimental theater. Open to actors, directors, writers, and designers; limited to 20 participants.
CAMPO / Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido: Still Standing You
Thursday–Saturday, January 15–17, 8 pm
“To say that this contemporary dance piece is memorable is an understatement: You can’t forget watching two naked men manipulate each other’s penises in a game of one-upmanship.” —Globe and Mail (Toronto)
Using their bodies as instruments, this Belgian-Portuguese duo explores the lines between play, tenderness, slapstick, and violence in this acclaimed performance art/dance work. Sometimes seeming to be friends or brothers, other times perhaps lovers or even strangers, Pieter Ampe and Guilherme Garrido set in motion rough-and-tumble choreography that travels from masculine movement duets to gymnastics and wrestling to violent strokes of a leather belt and beyond. Yet humor and humanity shine throughout, as the duo achieves a delicate balance between pain and physical joy. Note: Performance contains nudity.
Inside Out There: CAMPO/Guilherme Garrido
Saturday, January 17, 11 am–2 pm
Playfully explore the meaning of togetherness through group movement with performer Guilherme Garrido. How does a group come together? Why and when are we really a group? Build a “collective effervescence” and construct choreographic scenes through actions with a shared movement vocabulary. Minimum age 16, with some dance or movement experience; limited to 16 participants.
Mariano Pensotti: Cineastas
Thursday–Saturday, January 22–24, 8 pm
“A tour de force in which fiction and reality converge.” —British Theatre Guide
Four filmmakers in Buenos Aires each start a new project, not knowing that the creative process will change their lives forever. Mariano Pensotti‘s “filmic drama” is performed by a handful of actors seamlessly switching characters on an elaborate split-screen set that allows for fluid shifting between the characters’ lives and the films being shot. This critically acclaimed conceptual collision of art and life ingeniously adapts cinematic techniques for the stage—flashback, montage, cross-cuts, voice-over—to tell compelling stories of love, loss, joy, and despair. The Walker introduced virtuoso director Pensotti on his first US tour with El Pasado es un Animal Grotesco (The Past is a Grotesque Animal) as part of Out There 2012. In Spanish with English surtitles.
Part of Expanding the Frame
This engagement of Mariano Pensotti is made possible through Southern Exposure: Performing Arts of Latin America, a program of Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation, and by the Gobierno de la Ciudad de Buenos Aires.
Inside Out There: Mariano Pensotti
Saturday, January 24, 10 – 11:30 am
Join Mariano Pensotti for an intensive theory and practice workshop for MFAs and professionals in theater/film writing, directing, visual arts, and performance/dance. This interactive exploration of the artist’s creative process focuses on the collision of fiction and reality. Bring your own story ideas and develop them in collaboration with Pensotti. Limited to 25 participants.
Lucidity Suitcase Intercontinental + Wilhelm Bros. & Co.
RED-EYE to HAVRE de GRACE
Thursday–Saturday, January 29–31, 8 pm
“This exquisite show is among the most original musical theater works I’ve seen in years.” —New York Times
Theater magician Thaddeus Phillips teams up with the Minneapolis-based musical duo Wilhelm Bros. & Co. (Jeremy and David Wilhelm) to create a visually striking and sonically complex action-opera centered on the odd details surrounding Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious last days. Set in September 1849, the playfully humorous yet dark RED-EYE to HAVRE de GRACE follows Poe on his last lecture tour from Virginia to New York, focusing on a stop in Maryland. There a train conductor saw Poe, wearing a stranger’s clothes, headed south just a few days before his death. Using altered perspectives and ingenious stagecraft, this wildly inventive work is informed by 19th-century train routes, historical accounts, and Poe’s letters to his mother-in-law to create a spellbinding sketch of a man you soon realize you know little about. Copresented with the National Performance Network (NPN).
Support provided by Producers’ Council members Nor Hall and Roger Hale and the National Theater Project of the New England Foundation for the Arts.
Inside Out There: Lucidity Suitcase International
Saturday, January 31, 11 am–1 pm
Explore the basic stages of collective theatrical creation with director/designer Thaddeus Phillips. Through improvisation and object excavation, learn how to generate dramatic ideas intuitively and investigate the transformational possibilities of liquid theatrical space. Essential principles of Eastern European “Action Design,” the “R.S.V.P.” creation cycles, and creating theater from the immediate will also be covered. Open to all levels; limited to 20 participants.
Related Event
Miwa Matreyek: This World Made Itself
Thursday, January 29, 6:30 & 8:30 pm
Walker Cinema, Free
Part of Expanding the Frame, Out There 2015
“Matreyek’s work is an enchanting blend of animation and live performance; one of the few digital artists who is able to keep a strong element of human presence in her work.” —Venu
This kaleidoscopic, dreamlike merger of the fanciful and the scientific takes you to a world rich in surrealism and metaphor. Miwa Matreyek’s shadow silhouette interacts with video projections to create a history of the Earth—from its epic beginnings to the complexities introduced by human beings to this universe. Preceded by the short work Myth and Infrastructure.
Acknowledgments
The Walker Art Center’s performing arts programs are made possible by generous support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation through the Doris Duke Performing Arts Fund, the William and Nadine McGuire Commissioning Fund, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts.
Producers’ Council
Performing Arts programs and commissions at the Walker are generously supported by members of the Producers’ Council: Russell Cowles; Nor Hall and Roger Hale; King’s Fountain/Barbara Watson Pillsbury and Henry Pillsbury; Emily Maltz; Dr. William W. and Nadine M. McGuire; Leni and David Moore, Jr.; Josine Peters; Mike and Elizabeth Sweeney; and Frances and Frank Wilkinson.