Minneapolis, November 19, 2015— Intent on flipping expectations and blurring lines, this beloved annual blowout of some of the world’s most intriguing experimental theater and performance works offers an invitation to open your mind, brave the cold, and get Out There with us this January. Beginning 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.
“The Walker’s 27th edition of Out There, our much anticipated month of untethered theatrical adventure, brings four distinct directorial visions – from Paris, Beirut, and New York City – to the Twin Cities, offering our community a diverse, wide-ranging portrait of what theater can be today and where it might be going into the future” said Philip Bither, the Walker’s Director and McGuire Senior Curator of Performing Arts. “Using joy, heartbreak, absurdity, surprise, expanded cinema, collage and conceptual techniques and densely inspired literary text, the works of this year’s Out There offer us great hope for the future of new theater and performance. From the Lebanese Civil Wars of the 80s to an invented landscape of the future, from the Badlands to ridiculously luxurious cruise ship vacations, these five productions take us on unforgettable, deep humanistic journeys that promise to enthrall, provoke, entertain and question what it means to be human in the 21st Century.”
OUT THERE 2016
A Festival of Performance Alternatives
January 7–30, 8 pm
Thursday, $20 ($18); Friday–Saturday, $25 ($22)
See all four shows for $75 ($65 Walker members).
Unless noted, all events take place in the Walker’s McGuire Theater
The TEAM
RoosevElvis
Thursday–Saturday, January 7–9
“More buoyant than theatrical material has any right to be…. The audience laughs—not with recognition or self-satisfaction, but with the purest kind of astonished delight.” —Time Out New York
On a hallucinatory road trip from the Badlands to Graceland, the spirits of Elvis Presley and Theodore Roosevelt battle over the soul of Ann, a painfully shy meat-processing plant worker, and what kind of man or woman Ann should become. Set against the boundless blue skies of the Great Plains and endless American highway, RoosevElvis is a playfully pointed new work about icons, gender, and nobodies and somebodies all blended into “a spirited and insightful commentary on two archetypes of American masculinity” (New York Times). Created by Rachel Chavkin, Jake Margolin, Libby King, and Kristen Sieh, with Matt Hubbs, Andrew Schneider, and Nick Vaughan; directed by Rachel Chavkin.
Support provided by Producers’ Council members Nor Hall and Roger Hale.
Daniel Fish
A (radically condensed and expanded) Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again After David Foster Wallace
Thursday–Saturday, January 14–16
“Part séance, part theatrical eulogy, and part eerie karaoke show.”
—Village Voice
Tennis balls fly as five actors grapple with random bursts of calisthenics and a relentless rush of words streaming from their headphones. This fresh, funny, and ultimately moving tribute to David Foster Wallace, one of the most radical and entertaining American writers of recent times, draws exclusively from his writings and recordings, all mixed live during the performance. Based on works from A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, Consider the Lobster, and Brief Interviews with Hideous Men by David Foster Wallace.
Produced with permission of the David Foster Wallace Literary Trust.
Special Event
Daniel Fish
Eternal
Saturday, January 16, 1 pm
Walker Cinema
FREE tickets available at the Bazinet Garden Lobby desk from 12 noon
“Intellectual pleasure … and emotionally resonant.” —New York Times
Two actors (Christina Rouner and Thomas Jay Ryan) re-create the final four-minute scene of Michel Gondry’s film Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind on a double-screen projection, each taking one screen. They are faithful only to the script, and their repeated improvisations of Daniel Fish’s direction plays with pacing, body language, and tone—culminating in an epic new love story. 2013, video, 120 minutes.
Presented in conjunction with the Expanding the Frame series, made possible by generous support from Elizabeth Redleaf.
Rabih Mroué
Riding on a Cloud
Thursday–Saturday, January 21–23
“Riding on a Cloud is an accomplished piece of theater, at once emotionally moving and bristling with intelligence, its story both intensely personal and utterly universal. —The Daily Star, Lebanon.
Based on his brother Yasser’s personal experiences during the Lebanese civil war, Rabih Mroué presents an idiosyncratic and moving performance combining prerecorded video, images, and text. Yasser himself is the primary performer; at age 23 he was shot in the head by a sniper. The impairments to his mental and physical functions prompted this engrossing meditation on the complex relationship between memory, fiction, and political reality. In Arabic with English surtitles.
Support provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort
Germinal
Thursday–Saturday, January 28–30
“A refreshing, exuberant, and clever exploration of human consciousness.” —Seattle Vanguard
Both absurdly charming and deeply philosophical in approach, Germinal asks how we would start the world from scratch if we had the opportunity. And with that, four intrepid individuals begin with a blank stage and gleefully rebuild life as we know it. Their tools include mind-melds, pickaxes, microphones, electric guitars, and four-part harmony. French artists Halory Goerger and Antoine Defoort move freely between theater, performance, and visual art and create one of the most internationally talked-about recent works in contemporary theater. In French with English surtitles.
Support provided by Producers’ Council members Leni and David Moore, Jr./The David and Leni Moore Family Foundation. Additional support provided by the FACE Foundation through the FACE Contemporary Theater Fund, and the French Embassy in the United States.
Tickets
Tickets to Out There: Thursday, $20 ($18); Friday–Saturday, $25 ($22).
See all four shows for $75 ($65 Walker members). Available at walkerart.org/tickets or by calling 612.375.7600
Inside Out There
Saturdays, 11 am–1 pm
$6 ($4)
Get the inside scoop from visiting Out There artists as they share their creative processes with demonstrations, improvisations, works-in-progress, and more. Advance reservations encouraged. Check walkerart.org in December for Inside Out There details
GET MORE OUT THERE
Don’t miss your chance to talk with the artists and each other throughout the four-week festival. The Balcony Bar is open one hour before and after all shows.
Thursdays:
Meet the artists at a postshow reception in the Balcony Bar.
Fridays:
Stay after the show for a Q&A with the artists.
Saturday evenings:
Join a postshow Join a SpeakEasy conversation, led by local artists and
tour guides.
Free Gallery Admission
Walker gallery admission is free with a paid event ticket within one week of every performance.
Accessibility
The Walker is accessible to all visitors. Assistive listening devices, audio description, and ASL interpretation are available for performing arts events. For more information, call 612.253.3556 or e-mail access@walkerart.org.
Walker Art Center Performing Arts Program History
A catalyst for the creative expression of artists and the active engagement of audiences, the Walker Art Center examines the questions that shape and inspire us as individuals, cultures, and communities. Established in 1927 as the Walker Art Gallery, in 1940 it adopted a new name and focused on modern and contemporary art exhibitions as well as screenings, performances and public programs. The Performing Arts program grew dramatically during the 1960s, presenting over 100 events a year and transitioning into a formal Walker programmatic department in 1970. Following a 1971 expansion and its 1988 opening of the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden, in 2005 the Walker opened a $100 million expansion which housed dedicated venues for all its disciplines including the 385-seat McGuire Theater. Today the Walker is one of the top-five most visited modern and contemporary art centers in the U.S. Multidisciplinary in focus, it is equally committed to advancing artistic innovation and interdisciplinary scholarship as it is with increasing access to lifelong learning in the arts. Approximately 1,600 artistic presentations engage 600,000 people per year through up to eight exhibitions; 170 film screenings; 85 performance events; the Minneapolis Sculpture Garden; and hundreds of residency, education, and community program events. Its 16-acre campus includes the highly acclaimed Herzog & de Meuron designed 385-seat McGuire Theater – home to one of the nation’s largest contemporary performance programs. The Walker is respected nationally and internationally as a groundbreaking leader in contemporary performing art presentations, residencies, and commissions. Led by Senior Curator Philip Bither since 1997, the Walker’s Performing Arts program under his tenure has been defined by its commitment to the increasingly blurred lines between artistic disciplines, including contemporary dance, new music-theatre, performance art, experimental theatre, avant-jazz, contemporary classical music, new global sounds and alternative rock and pop. In addition to animating its outstanding McGuire Theater, the Walker has also greatly expanded its placement of dance into gallery settings, in its sculpture garden, and beyond, to further encourage a conversation between forms. It has also continued it long-standing tradition of mounting work together with presenters, venues, community-based collaborators, and unique sites across the Twin Cities. Through its endeavors, the Walker has earned an international reputation as “one of America’s foremost experimental art spaces” (UK’s The Guardian).
Commissioning History Highlights
The Walker actively commissions work from emerging and established artists and provides artists intensive residencies to develop their work and connect their art and ideas with its audiences and neighboring communities. During the past decade alone, the Walker has commissioned more than 100 works involving hundreds of performing artists whose Walker commissioned works have travelled to 270 venues in the U.S. and 30 countries. The Walker helped to establish now common national practices like commissioning work from leading artists (Merce Cunningham, Trisha Brown, Twyla Tharp and many more) and our commitment continues to this day with 5-8 new commissions and production residencies per year. The Walker has hosted multiple residencies from hundreds of artists over the years, including longstanding relationships with artists such as Cunningham, Brown, Philip Glass, and Meredith Monk, and more recently, vanguard artists such as Elevator Repair Service, Erik Friedlander, Cynthia Hopkins, So Percussion, and Ralph Lemon (who opened the 14/15 season with a new interdisciplinary work, Scaffold Room). 15/16 commission highlights include premieres like Sarah Michelson’s tournamento; Julian Crouch, Rinde Eckert, Paola Prestini’s Aging Magician; and Trajal Harrell’s The Ghost of Montpellier Meets the Samurai.