APRIL 29-30 | Alembic #13
Now Repeat in Steinese
curated by Drew Pisarra

Drawing upon Gertrude Stein’s reputation for repetition, Now Repeat in Steinese is four back-to-back stagings of her early enigmatic one-act “White Wines” paired with four different white wines. Fruity? Dry? Acidic? Sweet? Now Repeat in Steinese will be all this and more. By highlighting the role of the director, Now Repeat in Steinese uses one of Stein’s most unstageable works — no plot, no characters, no setting — to reveal the myriad ways such material can in fact be interpreted. Under performance artist Drew Pisarra‘s guidance, this concept was originally staged in NYC. Now, four West Coast theater artists/choreographers/filmmakers interpret the play anew, thereby revealing a completely new set of artistic sensibilities.

What better way to celebrate Alice B. Toklas’ birthday?

Drew Pisarra, curator
Katherine Petersen, co-host
The SteinWays, musical collective
Kyle Delamarter and Starr Ahrens, theater artists
TouchMonkey: Carolyn Stuart and Patrick Gracewood, dancers
Austin Newsom, filmmaker
MORE ARTIST INFO BELOW!

Fri/Sat April 29-30 at 8pm
Performance Works NW
4625 SE 67th Ave.
$12-$15 sliding scale: $8-$12 Fan Club members
Advance tix: https://www.chooseculture.org/event?id=138445

ACT I: Austin H. Newsom
Austin H. Newsome is a San Francisco based artist, working primarily in Film and Mixed Media. He is currently a member of the Tart House Gallery Collective, an avant-garde group of artists and craftsman displaying regularly at a flat in the Mission District of San Francisco and annually at the Burning Man festival. His work is perception-driven as he plays with the different lenses that people put on to see the world from unique perspectives.

ACT II: Touchmonkey
Carolyn Stuart and Patrick Gracewood, have been investigating, teaching and performing Contact Improvisation for over 20 years. They currently offer classes, jams and retreats at Gracewood Studio in Portland, OR.

ACT III: Kyle Delamarter with Starr Ahrens, and Nathan H.G.
This is the first performance of Kyle Delamarter, Starr Ahrens, and Nathan H.G. as a group and Kyle’s directorial debut. Kyle approached Starr and Nathan to perform, who were compelled by the allegiance of friendship—and the premise of invoking the Russian folk-character Baba Yaga to articulate Gertrude Stein’s letters.

ACT IV: The Steinways
The SteinWays are a collection of musicians from Portland and Seattle. Over the past 15 years, they have performed together in a variety of plays and musical cabarets in Portland. Lynn Ann Kister is a poet, a piano player, and a singer; Iven M. is coming out of her self-imposed exile from the Portland music scene to be a part of this most provocative production; LizM brings great devotion to low brass and voice and great cleavage; Jackie Sauriol is all about trombones and flugelhorns, trumpets and flutes and guitars; and Susie Schmitt is a fledgling accordionist with the experience of playing the roles of wild women in the works of such greats as Jean Genet, Holly Hughes, and Anton Chekov.

ACT V: Drew Pisarra and Katherine Petersen
Co-host Drew Pisarra has helped bring seven Gertrude Stein’s work to the stage: Reflections on the Atom Bomb, Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters, Ladies’ Voices, The World Is Round, Yes is for a very young man, Curtain Raiser, and White Wines. His monologues have toured to Highways, PICA, On the Boards and Bumbershoot and he’s collaborated with Kristy Edmunds, IMAGO, Linda K. Johnson, Cynthia Chimienti and Katherine Petersen. Speaking of which, co-Host Katherine Petersen is a mother of one who has been practicing passive solar architecture for the past seven years. Her interest in performance has led her to dance, speak and sometimes play musical instruments on the stage in work that she has created or was created by others including the aforementioned Drew Pisarra (They Eat Their Young, The Potato Story, How to Survive a Disaster).