by TALVIN WILKS
Performed by HARTBEAT ENSEMBLE
Jimmy & Lorraine is a meditation on the American political climate of the late ’50s and early ’60s through the lens of two significant artists of the time, James Baldwin and Lorraine Hansberry…
Friday & Saturday, July 14 & 15 at 8pm, Sunday, July 16 at 4pm
Sara Juli
Tense Vagina: an actual diagnosis is about motherhood- its beauty, challenges, isolation, comedy and influence on the human experience. This hour-long evening-length solo uses humor, movement, sounds, songs, text and audience participation to reveal “all that is awesome and all that sucks” when it comes to being a mother.
Tense Vagina focuses on the seldom-discussed and taboo aspects of motherhood, such as loss of bladder control, tears, monotony, loneliness and dildos. The narrative is anchored in sharing the physical therapy Sara received at The Pelvic Floor Rehab Center of New England as she sheds light and humor on her treatment of post-childbirth urinary incontinence.
Created and Performed by Sara Juli with an original set by Pamela Moulton, Costume by Carol Farrell and with original lighting designer, Justin Moriarty. The show runs 1 hour with no intermission and is not appropriate for children due to its strong language, subject matter and dildos.
KOFEST STORY SLAM
5 minute stories on
“Tactics for Trying Times”
This year, the KO Festival theme, “Tactics for Trying Times,” will be also interpreted through an art installation created by Kali Quinn. This interactive, public sculpture will be up and accessible outside of the Holden Theater throughout the five weeks of the festival, giving audience members an opportunity to contribute their own thoughts on the season theme and learn from what others have contributed.
Kali Quinn has previously created three installations of this sort as part of the festival: “Birth Stories” (2012), “Facing Our Age” (2013), and “Finding Courage” (2014). Originally commissioned by Ko, these installations have taken the Ko themes to other communities at festivals and universities throughout the Northeast. Stay tuned for more installation updates and read more about previous installations HERE.
We can’t make this match without you! Visit us on Valley Gives Now!
Come with a story. (Or two. Or three.) Leave with a performance. (Or two. Or three.)
Come without a story, and by the end of Day One, you’ll discover more compelling material than you’d ever think possible. “After all,” says theatre artist Gerard Stropnicky, “people are simply wonderful walking story anthologies.”
Why do some stories – some performances – spark your imagination, set fire to your soul, and leave you transformed, while others just sit there? Is it the content, or the telling? The framing, or the style? Can story be employed to bring laughter, or tears, or understanding, or lasting social change, or all of the above?
Gerard Stropnicky has been working in story for twenty years. This award-winning director has helped create compelling work from interview, gathered story, letters to the editor, even advertisements, recipes and children’s games. He’s written, directed and acted in countless styles; he’s coached diverse thousands of performers, professional and not, young and old, from every walk of life, to bring their stories to vivid life.
We’ll play with monologue, and help each other create scenes. We’ll experiment with styles, colors and tones. We’ll make ourselves vulnerable to our stories, and to one another. The workshop will draw on the work of the late playwright and poet Jo Carson, Stropnicky’s long-time creative partner, as well as other practitioners of Story Work, and will culminate with a showing. This on-your-feet writers and performers story intensive is designed to release the enormous potential energy already alive in you and your story.
A repeat of last summer’s sold out workshop – alums welcome. PERFECT FOR PEOPLE INTERESTED IN PARTICIPATING IN THE KoFEST SUMMER SLAM ON 7/22/16.
Gerard Stropnicky’s exploration of story has taken him from the coal mines of Appalachia to war-torn northern Uganda, from south Georgia cotton fields to Pennsylvania Marcellus Shale frack pads. He’s worked with moonshiners, church choirs, recovering addicts, former child soldiers, rural teens, Mardi Gras Indian Queens in New Orleans, and more.
Big Queen Pauline Johnson, Little Queen Paris Hayes, Big Queen Wanda Womble and Queen Mercedes Stevenson with Gerard Stropnicky
A multi-faceted theatre artist (director, writer and actor), he graduated from Northwestern, studied with Alvina Krause, and in 1978 co-founded Bloomsburg Theatre Ensemble (BTE), where he worked for the next 34 years. These days he goes where he’s invited, applying community story to create original large-scale, site-specific performances in communities facing trauma, crisis, transition, or change. These transformative events, and the process that breathes life into them, offer communities both validation and challenge, bringing health, and changing lives.
For this work, as well as for his role in co-founding the national Network of Ensemble Theaters, Jerry was honored as a United States Artists Fellow in 2010. Stropnicky has acted in hundreds of roles and directed scores of productions, written and/or directed more than twenty “Theatre of Place” projects.
