Bryan Davidson Blue Productions

May 10- 23 2016

3B Development Series

IN RESIDENCE: May 10-23, 2016

 Writer/Director Bryan Davidson Blue and actress Emily Batsford take a new look at the Aeschylus trilogy of plays focussing on Elektra, daughter of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra.

Bryan Davidson Blue’s The Oresteia is an episodic, nightmarish reconstruction of Aeschylus’ trilogy of plays (Agamemnon, The Choephori and The Eumenides). It is an image-based theatrical experience using symbols and narrative fragmentation to evoke the ideas at the core of the myth; betrayal, retribution, and the intimacy of violence. The company will use the two-week residency to focus on Elektra (Emily Batsford), the daughter of Agamemnon and Klytemnestra. Elektra’s hands may be cleaned, but her mind is stained with memories– a sister euthanized for political gain, the vengeful murder of her father, a stranger literally dragged kicking and screaming into her life.

Taking inspiration from the original music by Amber Docters van Leeuwen and controversial photographer Bill Henson’s Lux et Nox, Davidson Blue and Batsford will work to create sequences of wordless images that the subject matter. This Oresteia,haunting in its silence, allows objects to become storytellers– what do these objects contain? what have they seen? how will they be used? Elektra becomes our conduit between now and then, between what has and what may, between what is true and what is desired. Of course, like any member of this family, she cannot be trusted.

 * Note: There are no public presentations of this workshop.

Credits
Performed by Emily Batsford
Writer/Director: Bryan Davidson Blue
Composer: Amber Docters van Leeuwen
Lighting Design: Miriam Crowe
Stage Management: Abbey Lowenstein

About the company:

As a company, Bryan Davidson Blue Productions radically re-interpret existing texts, making theatre from theatre. Influenced by late-twentieth century visual art/performance styles Minimalism and Conceptualism, their projects explore intimacy and voyeurism, achieving maximum expression through a paucity of language, movement and design. Credits include: Medea after Euripides (Be Electric Studios), Spring Awakening after Frank Wedekind (Center for Performance Research), On the Misconception of Oedipus by Tom Wright (Dixon Place), and Fewer Emergencies by Martin Crimp (Gary Snyder Project Space). The Oresteia is their new project, reuniting composer Amber Docters van Leeuwen, lighting designer Miriam Crowe and actress Emily Batsford (Asst. Dir: Oedipus).

As a theatre maker, Bryan Davidson Blue creates theatre from theatre; deconstructing and reconstructing texts, taking what is perceived to be known and reintroducing it changed, refreshed, anew. Artistically, Bryan Davidson Blue Productions takes its cue from late-twentieth century visual art/performance styles Minimalism and Conceptualism. The Company’s reductivist approach to theater-making achieves maximum expression through a paucity of language, movement, and gesture. By removing all peripheral/non-essential elements of selected works, the Company distills them to their barest essences. The resulting performances are exciting, often shocking. Take away too much and you are left with nothing. Remove just enough, however, and what remains is absolutely pure.

IRT Theater is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. Tucked away in the old Archive Building in Greenwich Village, IRT’s mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work. Some of the artists we have supported include Young Jean Lee, Reggie Watts and Mike Daisey.

This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Office of Council Member Corey Johnson and The Nancy Quinn Fund, a project of ART-NY.