Theater 29 Returns to Live Performances with EMERGENCE

Theater 29 returns to live shows with an immersive event featuring new plays, collaborative art installations, and performance art on the theme of Emergence. Created by Josh Berkowitz, Lisa Wagner Erickson, Ellen K. Graham, Elizabeth Faraci, and Joe Marci, directed by Hart DeRose, Emergence debuts June 26 at 2pm at Theater 29.

ABOUT THE EXPERIENCE

Join us on June 26 to experience not only traditional theatrical performances, but also to interact, respond, and create alongside us:

• build a real, live nest that represents our community

• witness-and possibly influence-an ever-evolving piece of performance art as it unspools around us

• experience a staged reading of two new plays

• eavesdrop on strangers and contribute what they hear to a collaborative record of the day

• meditate (or at least zone out big-time)

• enjoy treats and libations that celebrate our collective Emergence.

Before the pandemic, Theater 29 was a space for plays: actors on a stage speaking words a playwright had written, guided by a director and embodying the vision of costume, set, and lighting designers. During the long months when its doors were shut, Theater 29 had to adapt, and invited visual artists, storytellers, musicians, and other artists into the fold. In other words, we are emerging from our cocoon transformed, and we know our audience has undergone transformation too.

THE MULTI-GENRE ARTISTS AND ARTS OF EMERGENCE

JOSH BERKOWITZ

He Needs Me

Josh Berkowitz's multiple years designing and curating site-specific performances compounds its way toward this piece to be experienced on June 26. His interest in John Cage's chance process and object-to-sound work helps to compose this experiment along with Steve Paxton's pedestrian movement. Before leaving the Los Angeles contemporary dance scene, Berkowitz became obsessed with creating junk sculptures made of paint brushes that he could either jump over as if it were an Olympic sport or just smash with a hammer. Source material such as the romantic failure in Patti Page's Tennessee Waltz, found footage of Indian Sage Nisargadatta Maharaj, Frank Zappa's high regard for Dental Floss in his song Montana and Richard Foreman's string theory in building sets will all have its influences. In effect, anything and everything from grappling with Jewish identity through Bar Mitzvah memories to the study of sugar cereal commercials will be investigated with the help of old-fashioned tape recorders and body-mind's interacting directly and inadvertently in space. Grandiosity then contraction and its universal yet private cyclical revelations is of huge importance with Berkowitz's immediate pursuit toward meaningful expression amongst the black hole that is life's absurdity.

LISA WAGNER ERICKSON

The Chicken Flies at Night

In the opening scene of Lisa Wagner Erickson's full-length play, two sisters arrive in a horse tunnel after a harrowing journey from Over There to Around Here. After a horse who owns the corner store takes them in, the sisters try to piece together what has happened along the way and what got lost in the unrelenting wind.

ELIZABETH FARACI

Nest

Come into the trees, surround yourself with the comforting sound of birds, and add your sense of home to our giant nest by weaving in strips of cloth, wrapping it with yarn and twine, and painting its branches. Then, personalize your own egg to add to the dynamic nest slowly emerging. The eggs represent not only our individual uniqueness, but also our vibrant, colorful community, coexisting, collectively protecting and anticipating what is soon to hatch; something each person will be able to take home at the end of the event.

Black and White Pigment Prints
Along the ground, dead matter mixes with the beginnings of life, dormant grasses, and spring sprouts not yet sprung. It's an 'un-pretty' stage between nothing and something, between winter and spring where under the surface, something is starting to grow. But because of its subtle and nondescript appearance, it is often ignored, invisible, and dismissed as nothing. Reliability, resilience and promise is not nothing. When you look closely, you can see that 'nothing' is strong, complex, and quietly beautiful.

Nothing is special
This series of 30"x40" photographs magnifies and brings attention to frequently unnoticed objects and surroundings. Although these nature scenes are inherently modest, the photos have been further simplified to black and white to fully showcase their layers, composition, elegance and charm.

ELLEN K. GRAHAM

Recuerdo

In Ellen K. Graham's short play, "Recuerdo," an engineer, a scientist, and the kindest AI in the universe spend their final minutes adrift in a small spacecraft, dangerously close to an almost-dead star. Time will erase us, our memories, and the machines we built to preserve them: when "after" comes, what will emerge from the stardust?

Guided Meditation

At the Emergence event, Ellen will also be leading attendees in a guided meditation wherein we unbury ourselves and come out into the light.

JOE MARCI

What will emerge?

"There is a conversation in the room that only these people at this moment can have. Find it." - Adrienne Marie Brown, Emergent Strategy

Join Joe Marci for an afternoon of harvesting the pedestrian and unscripted and participate in creating something with stride.

Tickets for Emergence are $20 at www.theater29denver.com. Theater 29 is located at 5138 W. 29th Ave., Denver.

THEATER 29

Located in Northwest Denver, Theater 29 is dedicated to original works by a network of local DIY playwrights and creative artists. Starting in 2020, in addition to playwrights and theatre artists, our network has expanded to include creative artists in poetry, fiction, non-fiction, film, video, audio, and visual art. To date, Theater 29 has featured the work of over 47 Colorado creative artists, including 30 playwrights and theatre artists.

FERAL ASSEMBLY

Feral Assembly is not a theatre company. We have no season, no board, no budget, no members. We just want to tell stories, on stage and in the studio, that engage a diverse and curious audience.

LULUBIRD PROJECT

The Lulubird Project is dedicated to questioning norms, rules, and conventions via theatrical and multi-genre art that is imaginative, inventive, and (like life), often absurd.