As with classical music, opera, dance and film, Bard SummerScape always has something novel and intriguing up its sleeve when it comes to mounting a theater production each July. This year those wacky Bardians are teaming up with one of downtown Manhattan’s longest-running and most accomplished experimental theater ensembles, the Wooster Group. Company founding member Elizabeth LeCompte, whose string of honors includes the 2016 Dorothy & Lillian Gish Prize, a MacArthur Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Arts Lifetime Achievement Award, will direct the world premiere of the Wooster Group’s original piece A Pink Chair (In Place of a Fake Antique).
Opening this Thursday, July 13 and running through July 23, A Pink Chair is a 100th-birthday tribute to trailblazing “Theater of Death” director Tadeusz Kantor (1915-90), founder of the Polish theatrical company Cricot 2. Weaving together live performance, music and video with material from Kantor’s archives, the new piece takes the form of a conversation among the company, Kantor’s ghost and his daughter, Dorota Krakowska, who is collaborating with the Wooster Group as dramaturge. The performers include Zbigniew Bzymek, Enver Chakartash, Jim Fletcher, Ari Fliakos, Dorota Krakowska, Erin Mullin, Danusia Trevino, Kate Valk and Suzzy Roche (the latter better-known as a member of the singer/songwriter sister act the Roches).
The black-box LUMA Theater in the Richard B. Fisher Center for the Performing Arts on the Bard College campus in Annandale-on-Hudson will host ten performances of A Pink Chair, beginning at 7:30 p.m. on July 13, 14, 15, 20, 21 and 22, with 2 p.m. matinées on July 16, 19, 22 and 23. Ticket prices range from $25 to $65. To order, or for more information, call (845) 758-7900 or visit http://fishercenter.bard.edu/summerscape.
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