PS21 Announces Theater Week August 9 – 15: World Premiere of She/Her and The Wooster Summer Institute Theater Intensive (July 23, 2021)

PS21 Announces Theater Week August 9 – 15: World Premiere of She/Her and The Wooster Summer Institute Theater Intensive

Contact: info@ps21chatham.org; 518-392-6121

To Our PS21 Family,

PS21 is thrilled to announce Theater Week, August 9 – 15. The World Premiere of She/Her, feminist monologues on experiential truth and communicating with authenticity, will be at the Pavilion Theater stage on August 12, 13, and 14. The Wooster Group Summer Institute, a theater intensive for Columbia County Youth run by Ariana Smart Truman and Kate Valk is held between August 9 and 15 and culminates in two free public performances on August 14 and 15.

A PS21 First: The Wooster Group Summer Institute
Led by Kate Valk, Ariana Smart Truman, and Christopher-Rashee Stevenson,at the PS21 Dance Barn, August 9–15

The Summer Institute at PS21,  a free one-week theater camp for Columbia County public school students aged 12 to 17, held at PS21 Dance Barn. Based on the famed Wooster Group Summer Institute created in 1996 by founding company member Kate Valk, participants study movement, voice, acting, script-writing, and other aspects of performance under the guidance of performance luminaries including Valk, longtime Wooster Group associate Ariana Smart Truman, and guest artist Christopher-Rashee Stevenson. The focus is on creative play, fun, and collaboration as students create an original theater piece, which they present onstage for families on August 14-15.

No prior experience with theater or acting is necessary, only a desire to show up on time every day and to participate in all activities, including the two public performances. Lunch is provided.  Email info@ps21chatham.org to learn more.

Kate Valk is an actress working in experimental theater productions. For over thirty years, she has been performing internationally in roles she has created with The Wooster Group. Valk joined The Wooster Group in 1979, assisting the group’s director Elizabeth LeCompte on everything from making props and costumes to transcribing and editing texts. Since 1981 she has had a formative role in the creation of 25 full Wooster Group theater productions. Valk’s many awards include an Obie Award for Sustained Excellence in Performance (1998) and a New York Dance and Performance “Bessie,” Award for Outstanding Performing with The Wooster Group (2002). Valk attended New York University’s Tisch School for the Arts and studied with Stella Adler.

Ariana Smart Truman has been a leading force for 20-plus years in the field of Creative Producers, theatrical producers who position the artist’s voice at the center of process. A commitment to social justice is at the heart of her professional practice; she resists inequity in art-making and arts education. Truman served as the Producing Director for the award-winning theater ensemble Elevator Repair Service from 2003 to 2020, producing all the company’s work, spanning over 75 engagements worldwide and Off-Broadway. As a producer and fundraiser she has collaborated with many of NYC’s most acclaimed experimental performing artists, ensembles and institutions. She teaches workshops on producing theater, and is a frequent guest lecturer, most recently at Yale School of Drama, Brooklyn College, NYU Abu Dhabi, and NYU. She has been teaching experimental performance practice to school-age children since 1994, and it is the most rewarding and exciting thing she does.

Christopher-Rashee Stevenson is a theater artist from Baltimore. A current SUITE/SPACE (‘20-’21) artist at Mabou Mines and an alum of Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab ’18, his work as director and performer has been featured at The Performing Garage, The Tank, JACK, HERE Arts Center, The Actor’s Studio, American Repertory Theater, Millennium Film Workshop, Lincoln Center Education, LaMaMa, and the Eubie Blake Jazz Institute. He is currently working with Elevator Repair Service on their new piece Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge, and on a post-COVID chamber version of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing, as well as an Afro-futurist mash-up on the vampire genre using everything from Stoker’s Dracula, Bill Gunn’s Ganja and Hess to Octavia E. Butler’s Fledgling, a piece on blood and survival.

SHE/HER
August 12, 13, and 14

SHE/HER is a multimedia performance of women speaking their truth, born out of a desire to present examples of the feminine experience. History as we know it has erased women, or at best given them a supporting role in the shadows. Here, an all-women cast of eight step into the light to share their stories of hope, fear, loss, trauma, passion, ancestry, birth, motherhood, and romance, with wit, humor, movement, and song. SHE/HER, conceived by director Nicole Ansari years ago, has developed into a collective experience of authentic sharing and relating.

Nicole Ansari recalls, “When artistic director Elena Siyanko offered me a residency to develop and present a play at PS21, I immediately saw the opportunity to create something current and original and to work with performers that have touched me in some significant way. I chose to reach out to women that weren’t necessarily full-time actors. I wanted to present a culturally diverse spectrum of women with something to share that was both unique and universal. I allowed myself to “feel” into the performers for this play and approach the casting process purely from an intuitive perspective. The organic process of casting moved into an equally organic way of developing the script. The result of this ongoing process is SHE/HER.”

Ansari says that “The creation and much of the rehearsal process for SHE/HER took place on Zoom – the method that so many artists are using to collaborate during the pandemic. The group has met weekly for several months to explore the themes that unite and divide us as women. Through writing prompts and exercises, the cast of SHE/HER delved deep to excavate the stories and experiences that we feel compelled to share with the world. I also filmed the players in their natural surroundings to get a well-rounded feel for each individual story. Accompanying our monologues (written entirely by each performer, prompted by the writing exercises and conversations we had over weeks of remote rehearsals), video footage will be projected onto a screen behind us. I chose the vintage 8 mm film quality to signify the importance of the influence of the past on our current experience of life, and to suggest the fragmented nature of memory.”

This World Premiere of SHE/HER is the first iteration. Director Nicole Ansari has created the concept to facilitate the capability of the show to develop and morph as it travels to different venues and countries, incorporating local artists with each new staging.

Creator and Director: Nicole Ansari
Co-Producers: Lawryn LaCroix of Pinkhouse Productions and Nicole Ansari
Producing Assistant: Aransas Haley
Monologues written by each performer: Antoinette Cooper, Kate Rigg, Liza Li Loube, Melis Aker, Nicole Ansari, Nova Scott-James, Michelle Joyner, Yibin Li
Gesture Choreography: Jennifer Aks-Neuman
Music by Yibin Li, Melis Aker and Kate Rigg
Assistant Director: Tracy Russell

SHE/HER is produced by Nicole Ansari and Pinkhouse Productions

Artist Biographies

Nicole Ansari is an International Multidisciplinary artist and Climate change activist working as an actor/director/writer and producer in Theatre, Film, TV and Performance Art. Beyond her extensive Film and Television career, Nicole was a member of the famed Theatre du Soleil under the direction of Ariane Mnouchkine in Paris and on tour and performed classical Repertory, as well as in the West End to Broadway, Off Broadway, and in regional Theatre. She recently won best director at the British Web Awards for the upcoming show “Messy,” and has produced three feature films. Nicole is interested in the elevation and healing of human Consciousness and in rewriting history with a focus on the female narrative. Full Bio on IMDB or www.nicoleansari.com or www.actorsrising.com

Kate Siahaan-Rigg is an actor, who upon graduation from Juilliard immediately hit the comedy clubs, poetry spaces, and downtown haunts for multi-hyphenate performers with restless hearts. She is an award-winning artist activist who writes, performs, and produces work for television, film, stage, and dive bars around the world. NY theater credits include the world premieres of Dogeaters at the Public Theater, BFE at Playwrights Horizons, and the original production of the Vagina Monologues. She has been invited twice to perform solo works at the Smithsonian Institute and was an artist at MTC, The Mark Taper Forum and the Eugene O’Neill Playwrights Conference. www.katerigg.com for more.

Michelle Joyner is an actor for stage and screen, a screenwriter, director, storyteller, and recent empty nester. She leads The Long Table, a woman’s writing group, and has recently fulfilled a lifelong dream of moving back to the Berkshires after being away for 40 years. She and her husband are developing RAMSDELL, an artist retreat to open later this year. They have four sons in various stages of launching, and a brand-new grand baby – finally a GIRL!  www.michellejoyner.com

Liza Li Loube has been involved in performance for as long as she can remember. She began playing violin at age 6, studying first with her mother Yibin Li, and began her theater experience at Lee Strasberg Institute when she was 8. Her work continues with recitals, chamber music festivals in Italy & France, and ongoing immersion in acting at LaGuardia High School for the Arts, Bedlam, Elevator Repair Service, and NYSSSA. She maintains a lifelong interest in feminism, cats, and banana pudding.

Yibin Li was born near the Gobi Desert in Western China, and made her way via Shanghai to New York, where she enjoys a career as an international violinist and educator. She is passionate about performing and storytelling, and created a nonprofit organization called OneMusic Project to help more people fall in love with the intimate experience of live chamber music. This is her second theatrical performance. See more at yibinli.com.

Melis Aker is a writer, actor, and musician from Turkey who finds herself writing about memory, the “in-between space,” exile, and intergenerational/ancestral female relationships as a bilingual immigrant. Her scripts have been commissioned by and developed at institutions including the Atlantic Theatre, NYTW, Roundabout, Ars Nova, Cannes Film Festival, Playing On Air, the O’Neill, IFP, Finborough Theatre, and Morgan Freeman’s Revelations Entertainment. She has also had the pleasure of acting in “The Equalizer” (CBS), “The Blacklist: Redemption” (NBC), “Seneca” (HBO Max), Love in Afghanistan (Arena Stage), and under her grandmother’s dining room table. She also sings when she feels tickled to do so… www.melisaker.com

Antoinette Cooper is a poet, Priestess, rainmaker, and TEDx speaker committed to the liberation of Black bodies through the arts, ancestral healing, social justice, and medical humanities. She holds a B.A. from Cornell University, a Master of Fine Arts from Columbia University, and sits on the board of Narrative Medicine at CUNY School of Medicine. She understands that there is no separation between all the realms of the body, the earth, and the arts, so her work explores the intersections of these multiple dimensions. She is currently at work publishing a multi-genre collection that documents the historical and present-day violence on the Black female body. See www.antoinettecooper.com for more.

Nova Scott-James is a filmmaker, innovation doula, and community organizer from Harlem, NYC. Her childhood experiences of being flooded with the sounds and culture of jazz has impacted her creative aesthetic greatly as her work honors improvisation, altered states of consciousness, ritual, and collaboration. Nova is also a reiki practitioner and dedicated intuitive worker – she uses these abilities to serve people as a director and creative coach by guiding them in honoring their creative genius. See http://www.novascottjames.com and instagram.com/novascottjames for more.

Tracy Russell hails from Norwich, New York and is a writer for stage, film, and television with an unyielding inclination to tell women’s stories, particularly those of the search for home, ancestral connection, and belonging in the natural world. As an actor, she was last seen in the award-winning short film Dirty Girl and at the Philly Fringe Festival in the play My Name is Dara. She holds a B.A. in Psychology and an M.F.A. in Stage and Screen Writing from Lesley University. She is currently developing several female-driven projects, including a full-length play, TV pilot and a short film. Read more about Tracey here.

Jennifer Aks-Neuman received an AD from Dean Jr. College and a BFA from The Music and Performing Arts Professions at New York University with a dance major and education minor. Years of studying and performing dance led to fourteen years as Teaching Artist and Choreographer at National Dance Institute. She discovered her mission along the way: to assist Womxn in finding creative ways to honor their personal stories. Today, she works with Womxn to help them tell their stories with movement, utilizing her professional video, editing and photography skills to create video movement diaries that document what could not be heard by the spoken or written word. For more see: www.herstories.com or @dance_herstory