man, the flower of all flesh
performances: April 21 - May 14, 2005 - Thurs, Fri, Sat at 7pm
Tickets $20, students and seniors $10
Man, the Flower of all Flesh . . .
a ‘theater without actors’ performance work and accidental singspiel, based on the short story ‘The Machine Stops’ by E.M. Forster
Conceived/constructed/manipulated by Hanne Tierney
Musical direction/double bass Jane Wang
Vocalist/narrator Tanya Thomas
Voices Adam Fischer and Cooper Mumford
Artist Matt Freedman
Light designer Trevor Brown
Additional music Grant Smith
Knitter Jamie Mumford
Manipulator Shawn Lane
Video artist Stefanie Fischer
Inspired by E.M.Forster’s 1909 story The Machine Stops, this latest performance of Tierney’s ‘abstract theater’ elaborates on the classic modern dread of the take-over by machines. Industrial materials come alive through their movements and gestures, combined with music, light and spoken words. They reveal how E.M. Forster’s vision of the future has become our present.
E.M Forster’s story (written in 1909) centers on the woman Vashti and her son, who live in a claustrophobic underground society, run by The Machine, a tyrannical, communal brain. As their fear, that the Machine will stop some day, slowly becomes real, their environment falls apart, and eventually destroys itself, and the story returns to the beginning, a witty take on evolution, whereby the movements of plumbing pipes turn into the gestures of homo sapiens.
Hanne Tierney’s ‘theater without actors’ has its historic roots in the work of early Modernist theater theoreticians and playwrights, such as Maurice Maeterlinck and Edward Gordon Craig. Their search for an abstract theater, i.e. a theater without the realism of human actors on the stage, has occupied many 20th century theater artists, and Tierney’s theater, a combination of an inventive puppetry technique and an unorthodox use of material, offers a gratifying solution to this quest.
Previously choreographed to interact in a variety of specific ways, the materials in this production are manipulated into emotionally expressive gestures and movements through an elaborate system of 120 counterweighted strings. These strings are arranged across a ceiling grid and manipulated from a sidewall, very much like a musical instrument. The mechanics are visible and comprehensible - complicated, but utterly low-tech. As in previous productions, Trevor Brown’s lighting design creates a beautiful environment for the drama of the story to unfold.
The artist Matt Freedman provides the prologue with a performance of his fascinating lightning sketches, a kind of fast-moving story-board technique with origins in 19th century fairground entertainment, that often doubled as an early form of news casting.
Composer and double bassist Jane Wang, has expanded this work into a singspiel. She draws from different song styles and genres to complement the telling of the story. The musical elements consist of two live voices, featuring that of the talented Tanya Thomas, one live double bass (both “unplugged” and electronically altered) and pre-recorded material, specifically created for this performance by Wang and internationally known multi-instrumentalist/composer Grant Smith, utilizing combinations of voices, tablas, electronics, guitar, piano and a ukulele.
Hanne Tierney has performed her theater at BAM’s Artists in Action project, the Sculpture Center, the Guggenheim Museum, the Whitney Museum, at three Henson International Festivals of Puppet Theater, and in numerous festivals throughout Europe. She has received four UNIMA Citations for Excellence Awards (Union Internationale de la Marionette). Jane Wang has collaborated on several works for Tierney’s Theater without Actors. She has toured extensively both in the U.S. and overseas and has been recorded on diverse projects ranging from world music to her own new music compositions. In 2002 Wang received an Artslink grant for performances in Budapest, Hungary. Matt Freedman’s work has been widely exhibited in New York City. His lightning sketches have been presented previously at five myles and at the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
FiveMyles, an exhibition and performance space in Brooklyn was founded by Hanne Tierney 1999. In 2000 it received an OBIE award for “presenting magnificent contemporary performance work that fully engage the folks in the neighborhood.” Given the complicated and time-consuming weaving of Tierney’s theater “instrument”, a premiere of Tierney’s work is best served by as long an installation period as five myles can offer.
This production is funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, New York State Council for the Arts and The Jim Henson Foundation.
DIRECTIONS:
Take 2, 3, or 4 trains to Franklin Avenue. Walk two blocks against the traffic on Franklin. Walk ¾ block to 558 St. Johns Place. FiveMyles is within easy walking distance from the Brooklyn Museum.