“Perhaps the most experimental jukebox musical ever conceived.” —Bomb Magazine
Director and inventor of algorithmic theater, Annie Dorsen remounts her acclaimed multimedia work Yesterday Tomorrow, created with elements of chance and computer-based artificial intelligence. Ever intent on “nuancing the algorithm,” Dorsen starts with the Beatles’ “Yesterday” and ends with the song “Tomorrow” from the musical Annie, using software that randomly prompts three vocalists to sight-read the songs as they are deconstructed and reassembled. With the scores projected above them, the performers evoke the music’s emotional appeal in a hauntingly beautiful work of musical theater as playful as it is meditative, raising questions around the nature of human creativity in the age of artificial intelligence. Program length: 60 minutes.
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Ways to Save & Accessibility
The performance takes place Friday, March 27 and Saturday, March 28 at 8pm. Tickets are $26 ($20.80 Walker members). For more information, call the box office at 612.375.7600 or visit online at walkerart.org/tickets.
Meet Annie Dorsen and company at a reception in Cityview Room Bar after Friday’s performance. Following Saturday’s performance, join Dorsen and Walker Curator Philip Bither for a Q and A with the audience.
ABOUT ANNIE DORSEN
Annie Dorsen is a director and writer whose works explore the intersection of algorithms and live performance. Her most recent project, Infinite Sun (2019), is an algorithmic sound installation commissioned by the Sharjah Biennial 14. Previous performance projects, including The Slow Room (2018), The Great Outdoors (2017), Yesterday Tomorrow (2015), A Piece of Work (2013) and Hello Hi There (2010), have been widely presented in the US and internationally. Some of the venues where her work has been seen include Performance Space New York (formerly PS122), Le Festival d’Automne de Paris, The Holland Festival, BAM’s Next Wave Festival, New York Live Arts, Kampnagel Summer Festival, Kaaitheater, and The New York Film Festival’s “Views from the Avant-garde” series, along with many others. The script for A Piece of Work was published by Ugly Duckling Presse, and she has contributed essays for The Drama Review (TDR), Theatre Magazine, Etcetera, Frakcija, and Performing Arts Journal (PAJ). She has collaborated frequently with musicians and choreographers, including Anne Juren, Ethel, Questlove/The Roots, DD Dorvillier, and Sébastien Roux. She is the co-creator of the 2008 Broadway musical Passing Strange, which she also directed. In addition to awards for Passing Strange, Dorsen received a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, the 2018 Spalding Gray Award, a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists Award and the 2014 Herb Alpert Award for the Arts in Theatre.
RELATED EVENTS
Mack Lecture: Annie Dorsen and Catherine Havasi with Simon Adler
Wednesday, April 8, 7pm
Walker Art Center
$15 ($12 Walker members, students, and seniors)
Writer and director Annie Dorsen tries “to make perceptible how ideas change over time: where they come from, how they influence and are influenced by politics and culture, and how they take root in the body, physically and emotionally.” For this conversation, she explores the intersection of algorithms and live performance with artificial intelligence researcher and computational linguist Catherine Havasi, moderated by Simon Adler, a producer for WNYC’s Radiolab.
This lecture includes real-time captioning. For more information about accessibility at the Walker, email access@walkerart.org, call 612-375-7564, or visit our accessibility page.