Coney Island Ritual Cabaret Festival calls For Proposals

International Culture Lab is calling for proposals from performance artists, actors, musicians, dancers, performers from the variety arts, and beyond... to present an original performance piece between 5 and 15 minutes in length. Deadline for applications: Sunday March 1, 2020 with Performances, Fri-Sun, April 24-26, 2020.

Producers, NICK FRACARO and GABRIELE SCHAFER challenge performance artists of all kinds to deconstruct and reinvent their particular art form - whatever it might be. The goal is TRANSFORMATION - of self, society, politics, or anything. The Ritual Cabaret has - for half a decade - set out to invent a new genre by re-inventing those in our present psyche.

Each year, the Festival performances inspire and evolve the aesthetic "ritual cabaret." Before downloading the application, we encourage you to read this short synopsis (http://intlculturelab.org/index.php?g=ritualentertainment) of their collaborative search to help guide your proposal.

The history of the Festival is informed by dancer/choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata who originated butoh in 1950's in an effort to defy and subvert authority, including conventional notions of dance, thereby seeking transformation - on the personal, societal and political level. It is no coincidence that this is around the time of the legendary Off-Off Broadway Movement in NYC.

DOWNLOAD THE APPLICATION: AS PDF or AS WORD DOCUMENT

For questions, please contact us at festival@intlculturelab.org.

NICK FRACARO (Co-Artistic Director/Dramaturg) was born and raised on an Illinois farm. In 1981 he co-founded and became artistic director of the cross-disciplinary precursor to ICL, Thieves Theater, for which he directed Peter Weiss' Marat/Sade at Toronto's Theatre Centre, Heiner Mueller's Despoiled Shore Medeamaterial Landscape with Argonauts and the world premiere of R.W. Fassbinder's Trash, the City and Death in New York, among many other projects, including ICL's Diva Divan. He was a founding member of RAT, an international coalition of theater workers dedicated to sharing resources and ways of working, for which he organized conferences in New York, Philadelphia and Rosario, Argentina. As dramatug at Dallas's Undermain Theater in 1999, he created one of the first theater blogs which he later continued at RatSass (ratconference.com/blog). He holds a BA from Illinois Benedictine College (IL) and an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from The University of Illinois at Chicago. Contact Nick at nick@intlculturelab.org.

GABRIELE SCHAFER (Co-Artistic Director) was born and raised in Germany, educated and trained in theater in the US. In 1981 she co-founded ICL predecessor Thieves Theatre, which produced the world premiere of R.W. Fassbinder's controversial Trash, the City and Death in her translation. In Germany she has acted at Hamburg's Thalia Theater, Theater Rampe and Theaterhaus Stuttgart. Other theater acting credits include New York's Public Theater, Seattle's Annex Theater, the Wellington NZ and Los Angeles fringe festivals, and the Yale Repertory Theater. At ICL she originated the role of Kathleen in Outside Inn and Mother/Jackie in S/he. For a full acting resume please see her personal website at gabrieleschafer.com. She has studied Butoh since 2001, until 2007 was producer of the CAVE New York Butoh Festival, and she co-created ICL's Diva Divan. She holds a BA in Theater and Criminal Justice from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama. Contact Gabriele at gaby@intlculturelab.org.