UP next:
Telegraph Valley
created by LA Samuelson
in collaboration with sound artist Adam Stone & dramaturg elle hong; curated by Louise Martorano
Installation: open now - April 7, 2024
Performances: 7:30 p.m., March 21, 22, & 23, 2024
RedLine Contemporary Art Center, 2350 Arapahoe St., Denver
Tickets: $5 suggested donation, available HERE
Telegraph Valley is a performance and installation of work devoted to friction—specifically, the friction of “having a body” while “being a body.” Telegraph Valley echoes the syntax of the telegraph, assembled from roofing material, multiplayer cassette tape loops, rotating light sources, plywood, house frames, rudimentary electricity experiments, and a dancer. Friction is conductive. Telegraph Valley uses it to:
Reverse engineer the feeling of having sent out and/or received a message through the medium of one’s body.
Vibrate memory through matter.
Recirculate human intimacy, effort and interiority through connection with analog and digital technologies.
Communicate with the dead.
recent production:
Image: Isinglass by Stephanie Aitken; used with permission of the artist
A collage-style, non-linear devised work exploring the collapse of the Anthropocene, Things We Will Miss is a personal meditation on the climate crisis and the beauty and inevitability of impermanence. The piece asks: What will we remember as we slip into the unknown? What legacy do we seek as we dive, lurch, tumble head first into the abyss? What will we miss, what can we miss, if we miss our chance?
Born of the debris of late-stage capitalism and driven by image, light, and sound rather than linear narrative, Things We Will Miss viscerally honors the grief and beauty, the horror and hope inherent in what it means to be alive in this very moment.
Workshop Production
July 7-22, 2023
Carsen Theater @ The Dairy Arts Center
2590 Walnut St., Boulder
Pick-Yr-Price tickets, $5-$50 - tickets available NOW!
directed by Emily K. Harrison
created by and featuring Savanna Arellano, Juliet Davidson, Del Gonzales, Emily K. Harrison, Nathaniel Klein, and Emma Miller
design by Jess Buttery and Emily K. Harrison in collaboration with the ensemble
full creative team HERE
Cast and Creative Team Bios
Savanna Arellano (she/hers) was born and raised in Denver, Colorado. A graduate of the Denver School of the Arts, she studied briefly at Hussian College Los Angeles. She has since returned to Denver and is getting her Bachelor’s in Business Intelligence at Metropolitan State University. Recent credits include Dance Nation (Zuzu), Danny and the Deep Blue Sea (Roberta), The Shape of Things (Evelyn), Fool for Love (May), Chicago (Annie “Pop”), Cabaret (Sally), The Glass Menagerie (Laura), and Big Love (Lydia).
Juliet Davidson (she/her) hails from New York City and is a 2023 graduate of Hamilton College. She’s very excited to be in Boulder this summer and is desperately trying to make herself enjoy hiking. What Juliet certainly enjoys is performance – in all its many forms. Her love for theatre began after her big break as The Virgin Mary in the annual nativity scene. She’s glad to start making a career out of it. Juliet is also an avid musician, producing her own music for the sake of herself and a few invested friends.
Delbert (Del) Gonzales (he/him) is an aspiring actor and a student at Hamilton College. Del is working towards a BA with a Theatre concentration and an Anthropology minor. He is a proud member of Yodapez, a comedy improv troupe and a beatboxer and bass in The Buffers, an a cappella group. He makes bizarre sounds and hopes that one day people will think its cool. This is Del’s first professional production so he is super excited!
Nathaniel Klein (he/him) is a performer and creative team lead on square product theatre’s Things We Will Miss. Nathaniel was a performer and deviser in the original workshop production at Sewanee: The University of the South, and he has thoroughly enjoyed seeing the piece develop with new perspectives and explorations. Nathaniel is currently based in Madison, Wisconsin.
Irmak Sagir (she/hers) is an aspiring performer and performance-maker from Turkey. She is a rising senior at Hamilton College majoring in Theatre with minors in Art History and Dance & Movement Studies. She is passionate about interdisciplinary performance and devised theatre. In her free time she likes to pretend like she can juggle, or try to decide what her favorite food is, a question she has never been able to answer.
Jess Buttery (she/her) studied lighting and production design at the University of Colorado Boulder and has worked professionally all over the Front Range and nationally. Recent credits include Dance Nation, Everything was Stolen, House of Gold, She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange, This Aunt is Not a Cockroach, How I Learned to Drive, Ham McBeth, SLAB, and 5 Lesbians Eating a Quiche. Jess served as faculty at the Denver School of the Arts for nearly a decade, and currently serves as an Assistant Professor of Instruction at Hamilton College.
Rosie Glasscock (she/they) needs both hands to count how many shows she has done with square product theatre and is so proud to be a part of the company. During her time as stage manager with square she has used multiple fake blood recipes, cleaned strawberry ice cream from astroturf and dried deli ham out of plastic succulents, lowered a sandwich and a rifle from the ceiling (separate occasions), and even got to go to the Denver Pop Culture Con. Rosie has also worked with dancers and other theatre companies in the Boulder/Denver Area.
Emily K. Harrison (she/her) is a theatremaker and educator based in Boulder, Colorado and Clinton, New York. Recent acting credits include Ashlee in Dance Nation, JonBenét in House of Gold, and Amy in She Rode Horses Like the Stock Exchange (all Regional Premieres). Recent devised work includes Everything was Stolen, This Aunt is Not a Cockroach, Ham McBeth, SLAB, and Peggy Jo & the Desolate Nothing. Emily is an Assistant Professor of Theatre at Hamilton College.
Emma Miller (she/her) is a recent graduate of Sewanee: The University of The South. She was born and raised in Nashville, Tennessee and started to pursue theatre at a young age. She has written and staged many original plays and children’s theatre productions. She is beyond thrilled to be a part of the creation process of Things We Will Miss.
photos by Jun Akiyama
Featuring two unrehearsed performers who have never met, Celebration, Florida by Greg Wohead is a quietly surreal show for anyone who has ever missed anyone or anything. Veering between reality and simulation, the piece orbits around ideas of surrogacy; a stand-in to replace a person you miss, a re-creation of an experience you can’t stop thinking about, nostalgia for a place that perhaps never existed. Greg will speak to the audience through two performers using pre-recorded audio and headphones. They will know almost nothing about the show when they walk onstage.
LIMITED ENGAGEMENT: March 15-18, 2023 @ The Dairy Arts Center, Boulder
Read Toni Tresca’s feature for the Boulder Weekly.
Image: Glitters, by Thomas Saliot; used with permission of the artist.
Dance Nation
by Clare Barron
directed by Gleason Bauer, choreographed by Laura Ann Samuelson
Somewhere in America, an army of pre-teen competitive dancers plots to take over the world. And if their new routine is good enough, they'll claw their way to the top at the Boogie Down Grand Prix in Tampa Bay. But in Clare Barron's raucous pageant of ambition and ferocity, these young dancers have more than choreography on their minds, because every plié and jeté is a step toward finding themselves, and a fight to unleash their power. Dance Nation is a play about ambition, growing up, and how to find our souls in the heat of it all.
THREE WEEKS ONLY!
July 14 - 30 in the Black Box Theatre @ the ATLAS B2 Center for Media, Arts, & Performance, University of Colorado Boulder
1125 18th St., Boulder
Tickets available NOW. Cast and creative team announcement HERE. Full digital program HERE.
Read Lisa Kennedy’s review of the production in The Denver Post, and features in Colorado Arts & Sciences Magazine and Broadway World.
WINNER 2019 Obie Award (Special Citation for Playwriting and Directing)
FINALIST 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Drama
WINNER 2017 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize
2016 Kilroys List
WINNER 2015 Relentless Award (American Playwriting Foundation)
“A blazingly original play […] marvel at how close what you see cuts to the bone.” – The New York Times
“I have seen the future, and it is Dance Nation.” – The Washington Post
“If you were ever a 13-year-old girl, Clare Barron’s daring, raw Dance Nation will probably hit you hard […] It’s a brave, visceral, excitingly off-kilter barbaric yawp of a play. And it gets at something excruciatingly tender: the burden of modesty on young American women.” – New York Magazine
CONTENT ADVISORY:
Dance Nation contains gore, coarse language, depictions of self-harm, simulated masturbation and descriptions of masturbation, and discussions of sex/sexual violence. May not be suitable for patrons under the age of 15.
This production includes a brief strobe effect and may be disruptive to people who are sensitive to light.
Dance Nation is presented by arrangement with Concord Theatricals on behalf of Samuel French, Inc. | concordtheatricals.com
this production made possible in part due to support from:
photos by Michael Ensminger
Flower Lamp by Indigo
Everything was Stolen is a piece created from a variety of stolen and original (but mostly stolen) texts, songs, videos, images and ephemera in an evocation of America (which was also stolen - hey!), inspired in part by the Japanese concept of wabi-sabi, and in part by something American composer John Cage once said: ‘And so it is out of this chaos, this accumulation of history and novelty, that we begin building.’
The piece was originally developed by Emily K. Harrison with students at Brunel University London, and will continue to be developed with a Colorado-based cast for the March 2019 professional World Premiere.
March 14 - April 6, 2019
Buntport Theatre
717 Lipan St., Denver
Created and directed by Emily K. Harrison with Ayla Sullivan Rosamond Glasscock, Production Stage Manager
Featuring: Luc D’Arcy, Aziza Gharib, Seth Palmer Harris, Adam Russell Johnson, Liz Kirchmeier, Jihad Milhem, Katie Ross, Rachel Seiger, Tara Spires, Kristin Marie Stelter, Emily Tuckman, Fabian Vazquez, and Ronan Viard
photos by Michael Ensminger