LOS ANGELES //

June 6-9, 2013

Following a four-year development process in East Africa focusing on sustained international cultural exchange, Deborah Asiimwe’s play Cooking Oil will perform in Los Angeles this June. Directed by Emily Mendelsohn, and featuring a cast from Kampala, Kigali, and Los Angeles, the play uses contexts of international aid distribution and women’s education to explore difficult justice. Cooking Oil will perform at AT1, part of Atwater Crossing’s Arts & Innovation Complex, June 6 through June 9, 2013. Each performance will be followed by conversation with the artists on the themes of the play.

In Cooking Oil, a village reckons with the murder of a young girl (Maria) who sold free aid with a powerful, corrupt politician. The politician pockets millions of shillings from the village in benefit of his political aspirations, Maria pockets thousands to raise money for school fees. The story unravels as the storytellers come to face their own complicity in an endless cycle. Layering traditional and contemporary music, dance, chant, and material of aid, Mendelsohn and Asiimwe interrogate in/dependence and the gaze at a suffering Other.

Cooking Oil performed at the National Theatre of Uganda in October 2010 and as part of the Centre x Centre Festival in Rwanda in August 2011. The company completed a recent workshop at the In Movement Center for Art & Social Justice in Kampala, Uganda late in 2012 in preparation for the play’s first performance in the United States this June. Through this extended development process, the growing ensemble for Cooking Oil have pursued a joint aesthetic, fusing traditional with contemporary performance, and African with American aesthetic.

“The performance has evolved to include leading actors, dancers and musicians from Rwanda and Uganda. The project is set up as a ritual, where performers and audiences sit together in a circle,” notes director Emily Mendelsohn. “We committed to a long development process. We have rigorous aesthetic goals, which are made more rich by our commitment to get to know richly, the contexts we are each creating from.”

COOKING OIL runs June 6-9, 2013 at 8:00pm, with additional performances at 2:00pm on June 8 & 9 at the Atwater Crossing Warehouse (3245 Casitas Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90039). Tickets are $20 and can be purchased online at www.cookingoilplay.com. Seating is limited, and advanced purchases are encouraged.

LOS ANGELES /// April 25-May 5, 2013

EXHIBIT A blends historical fact with speculative fiction to explore the convergence of radical visionaries who populated the hills of Silverlake in the 1950s. Archival letters, manifestos and journal entries delve into the lives of landmark figures, including gay rights pioneer Harry Hay and architect John Lautner. EXHIBIT A takes place during a hot and dry summer in Silverlake, during which the reservoir is drained for repairs. Amidst secret society initiation rights and walks around the dry reservoir, restless aliens wander the hills exciting and disturbing inhabitants with unsettling acts.

Using model replicas, topographical maps and green-screen video effects to generate a moody, disorienting vision, performers- both human and puppet- navigate profound shifts in consciousness that have shaped our present.

Work-in-progress showings of Exhibit A have been performed at REDCAT, The Manual Archives, Rio Hondo College, and Links Hall during the Banners and Cranks Festival.

www.automata-la.org/tickets

Cloud Eye Control has received support for the development of their next piece, Half Life, from The Map Fund, a program of Creative Capital, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Half Life is a multidisciplinary performance piece inspired by blog postings of Japanese housewives who were directly affected by the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster; an elegy for an unsafe and nervous world. Two women literally and figuratively live on opposite sides of the world when an unknown cataclysmic force disrupts both of their lives, compelling them to each embark on their own journeys to locate its source. Building off of their unique style of hybrid performance, Cloud Eye Control will layer performers with projections in space, and will create imaginative and odd encounters between the virtual and the physical.

Clouded Sulphur (death is a knot undone) /// February 8 - 17th, 2013

Directed by Janie Geiser

Written by Erik Ehn

Music Composed by Valerie Opielski

Clouded Sulphur (death is a knot undone) is a multidisciplinary performance work that merges puppetry, projection, text, and music to explore the emotional landscape of inexplicable loss. Developed in collaboration by Director/Designer/Filmmaker Janie Geiser, Playwright Erik Ehn, and Composer Valerie Opielski, Clouded Sulphur's elliptical narrative imagines the emotional space around absence. Created in response to the tragic, unsolved murder of a 15 year old Los Angeles girl, Clouded Sulphur navigates a complex terrain of family, loss, revenge, and unexpected hope.