The Brick presents
?!: New Works 2023 – Night 7
featuring  Charlene Jean, abs wilson, James LaBella, Kevin Laibson
April 13, 2023
8pm

Hosted by Travis Amiel and Cosimo Pori

The spiritual successor to The Exponential Festival, ?!:New Works features a veritable slew of experiment(al)(ing) artists from a variety of disciplines presenting brand new work. Working it out. With each other. With you.

LINEUP

SHIT IN THE BLOOD: A BIOMYTHOGRAPHY OF RECIPES
by Charlene Jean

SITB is a ‘digestion play’ concerned about what is lost due to assimilations’ demands forced unto and seducing Black American and Black Immigrant communities. It considers how the generational voids can be compared to digestive tract diseases diverticulitis / diverticulosis. We consider SHIT IN THE BLOOD to be a collaborative project, a scripted show with explicitly somatic opportunities for the performers and the audiences – from stomach affirmations and vagus nerve release. This will be scripted drama, movement, and lecture on the theories our collective has ideated upon.

written by Charlene Jean in collaboration with Bryanna Bradley and features Bryanna Bradley‘s Gastrointestinal Epigenetic Somatic Theory (GEST)
Co-devised by Charlene Jean, Bryanna Bradley, and Courtney Bryan Devon
SITB features soundscapes by Pharaoh Rapture (FKA Myles E. Johnson) and producer Sergio Rivera
Photo credit: Jannai Stroude

Follow them: @psalmsofchar, @bryannabradlee @Coourtinator

cw: strobes, nudity

All We Know of Love & Fire
by abs wilson

In this 20 minute indie-pop musical, historic poets Sara Teasdale, Emily Dickinson, and Sappho come together to answer (with the help of the audience) a single question: how do you hold and carry loneliness— without giving in? Presenting their own personal solutions, the three women debate, weave poetry, and say a silly joke or two as they grow together and search for the answer. Because in the end, they’re going to need each other if they’re going to face the great well of loneliness— without losing their flame.

book and lyrics by abs wilson
music by Wren Mied
directed by Thalia Ranjibar
with Caroline Game playing Sara Teasdale
Veronica Mansour playing Sappho
and abs wilson playing Emily Dickinson

The Curator
by James LaBella

The Curator is a story about me and a decision I made. A warped confessional. A radically self-critical interrogation of Gen Z’s relationship to censorship and art made about the AIDS Epidemic.

With help from Travis Amiel, Matthew Antoci, and Meaghan Robichaud
Photo by David Bruin; Design by James La Bella

Find them: Jameslabella.com / @James.La.Bella

CW: Brief mentions of violence, grooming; discussion of sexual acts, HIV/AIDS

The Harmnf: 29 Hours of Collaboration with Language Models and Generative Adversarial Networks
by Kevin (as a robot) Laibson

A short lecture featuring key takeaways from my 29-hour workshop devised production of Chekhov’s The Harmfulness of Tobacco, as the only human being on the project.

Written and performed by Kevin (as a robot) Laibson based on and featuring media from a collaboration by Kevin, GPT-3 API, Synthesia, VQGAN+CLIP, Midjourney, Stable Diffusion, Riffusion, DALL-E, Clipdrop, Tensorflow, Google and Kaggle datasets, etc.

cw: frank discussion of the end of humanity

Find them: kevinasarobot.website, @kevinasarobot on instagram, tiktok, mastodon, tiktok

Lineups are subject to change.

Art by Mark Toneff

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A Note on Accessibility: The Brick has trigger warnings posted in the space for each show for you to check if you so choose. If you would rather ask questions in advance of being in the space or would like to enter in advance of house opening due to our seating not being assigned, please reach out to theresa@bricktheater.com.

In consideration for the health and safety or our staff members, artists, and audiences, The Brick remains committed to maintaining vaccination requirements and mask mandates for our in-person presentations for the foreseeable future. We ask that all audience members remain masked. All staff and performers will be vaccinated; performers may not be masked. Audience can provide proof of vaccination with a government issued I.D. along with a physical copy or picture of your COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card, the NYC COVID Safe App or the New York State Excelsior Pass. Please be patient with staff.