Cabaret Unkempt
World Premiere: Carnival Center's Studio Theater, December 2006.
Cabaret Unkempt is an irreverent and satirical memory piece performed by Jennylin Duany and Elizabeth Doud, which uses projected media, music, and poetry to explore Miami-based writer and performer Jennylin Duany's Cuban American background, her body, her self-image and her moving, often hilarious, experiences as a performer of "size" in a culture where size definitely matters. With the slick juxtaposition of her counterpart and collaborator, Elizabeth Doud, the work offers audiences a voyeur's pleasure of looking into a world that is sensual and audacious. Cabaret Unkempt uses satire and physicality to explore moments when all of us, regardless of size, are confronted with letting go of the identification with our body-trappings, and are faced with our deepest insecurities. "In this piece I pay homage to the 'excess' parts of me that have been there for such a longtime." The performers ruminate on the bombastic expectations of control, body mass, plastic surgery and self acceptance in a world obsessed with body image. The work surveys the landscape of "unkempt women," her super-ego, and creates a cartography of her body's journey. This performance plays beautifully to an intimate theater space, and engages audiences through humor, visceral provocation and a sense of humanity.
Refugee
Premieres November 2007 during the 2007/2008 season.
Marc Joseph’s new work is a Haitian-and-hip-hop flavored play with song-and dance interludes, about fleeing home in search of freedom and adapting to a strange new land called Miami. Refugee is a stirring tale—at once terrifying and bleak, but full of hope, inspiration, and triumph. Ludovic, a singer of protest songs, escapes the political oppression of his native Haiti, only to find indifference, confusion, hostility and loneliness on U.S. shores. It’s a personal story that Joseph himself has lived, but one that millions of Americans can call their own.
1000 Homosexuals
Premieres April 2008 during the 2007/2008 season.
Carnival Center for the Performing Arts and Camposition, Inc. Present
1000 Homosexuals
By Michael Yawney
Directed by Ken Schmoll
Commissioned by Carnival Center for the Performing Arts
Homophobic militant and juice queen Anita Bryant is back in 1000 Homosexuals, a world premiere comedy commissioned by Carnival Center’s Miami Made program about her 1977 battle against gay rights. With much of the text taken from government records, public media, and underground gay manifestos of the time, playwright Michael Yawney says he wanted to write a play that would cause people to question their beliefs about gay people, sex, religion and childhood—a play that would show how different the ‘70s were from today and how today’s world grew out of that turbulent time.
Flock
Premieres December 2007 during the 2007/2008 season.
Flock was commissioned by Carnival Center as part of its Miami Made program
and is a 90-minute performance for saxophone quartet and audience participation. During the performance, the four musicians and 60-80 audience members move freely around the performance space. Wireless networking hardware and software determine their relative locations and use that data to generate performance instructions for the musicians, who view them on wireless handheld displays on their instruments. Real-time video animation artistically renders the data on video monitors scattered throughout the performance space to give a visual experience of the score.
The Dew of Repentance
Premieres during the 2008-2009 season.
People’s regrets and aspirations, cell phones and text messages, puppets and music are all part of Black Shift Red’s high-tech experiment in audience-bonding.