Arena Stage Cradle Series - banished? Productions

“Art is not a mirror held up to reality
but a hammer with which to shape it.”
― Bertolt Brecht

banished? Productions wields this hammer with a bold vision, innovative style, and a distinctive voice. As an avant-pop performance company of interdisciplinary artists, they use movement, language, sound, food, rhythm, gesture, distance, history, breath, and memory to convey, illustrate, and navigate narrative. They are concerned with your pleasure ... your full sensorial pleasure. Their work is exhilarating, unique and captivating. I am hooked!

But what is Avant Pop? In essence, it's an interdisciplinary art form that picks up where post modernism left off and infuses elements of Mass Media, such as graffiti, film, internet, pop music, animation, television, advertising, and video games. For those interested in learning more about Avant Pop, check out internationally renowned digital artist and writer Mark Amerika's manifesto.

For those of you fortunate to live in the D.C. area, you can experience banished? Productions first hand and see for yourself what is so extraordinary about this company. From November 8 – November 11, 2012, Arena Stage's Cradle Series will feature performances from banished? Productions along with dog & pony dc. I'll be there Friday and can hardly wait!

About the Play
Into the Dollhouse is an original hybrid performance that uses devised dance and collaged text to tell a story about looking back in order to walk forward. The piece takes inspiration by Meredith Monk's Education of the Girl Child, Anna Halprin's Parades & Changes and fuses song lyrics to snippets of Charles Mee's Salome, and Judy Blume's Forever. Into the Dollhouse is an exploration of nostalgia as a means of time travel as much as it is about navigating a society that dictates what constitutes femininity, asking along the way: Who did we think we would become? Will we ever get there? What rituals have left an imprint on our journey? Contains brief nudity.

Here's more about banished? Productions Into the Dollhouse and my interview with collaborators Niell Duval, Otis Ramsey-Zoe, and Carmen C. Wong:

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NIELL DUVAL is the founding Technical Director of banished? productions who handcrafts all of banished?’s props, set and installation pieces largely with found and scavenged materials. This commitment to using ugly/beautiful objects that would otherwise end up in a landfill has helped develop banished?’s polished-edgy aesthetic. In addition Niell has been a full time props artisan at the Arena Stage in Washington DC since 2001. His meticulously crafted pieces have been commissioned over the years by institutions such as The Kennedy Center, The National Opera, The Shakespeare Theatre, National Geographic, and the National Gallery. A selection of his work was featured in the exhibit “Theatrical Artisans: Props and Crafts from DC Theatre” at the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center. Before his move to DC, Niell co-founded a handcrafted boomerang company in his hometown of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

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Jacqueline Lawton: If you only had three words to describe banished? Productions, what would they be?
Niell DuVal: original, accessible, memorable 

JL: What is your role in Banished? Productions?
Niell DuVal: I'm the technical director so I do all the building and fabrication plus a fair amount of the design.  I have also learned to wear other hats as needed, like managing sound and video.  Everything has to be done on a micro-budget, so I often scavenge for used and discarded materials. Generally for me, form follows "found."  

JL: What inspired you to create Into The Doll House?
Niell DuVal: My role was primarily creating the set.  Carmen and Levia, our resident designer, first came up with the idea of the frozen baby dresses.  I started experimenting with the construction and the look, originally making them stiff and upright, then making them have their own unique poses.  It was interesting how they each started developing their own personality.   

JL: Why should audiences come see Into the Doll House?
Niell DuVal: It's original, it's memorable and it's tight.  There's not a second of dead time, including the moment you walk in the door.

JL: Why was it important for the production of Into The Dollhouse to be a part of Arena Stage’s Cradle Series? How has this experience benefited the growth and development of the piece?
Niell Duval:There are always numerous little things that I can improve on, visually and technically, and being a part of the Cradle Series gives me an ideal chance to do so.  And the Kogod Cradle is a such a terrific space, it will bring its own energy to the production.  I'm looking forward to seeing that.

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OTIS CORTEZ RAMSEY-ZOE is a Lecturer of Theatre Arts at Howard University, Future Classics Program Coordinator at The Classical Theatre of Harlem, Series Editor for NoPassport Press’s Dreaming the Americas Series, a freelance dramaturg, and a Company Member of banished? productions. He has developed new works with such organizations as The Sundance Institute, Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, and Centerstage and by such writers as Denise Hart, Colman Domingo, Tarell McCraney, Noah Haidle, Kirsten Greenidge and Tim Acito. Previously, he was Literary Manager and First Look Coordinator at Centerstage and an Allen Lee Hughes Dramaturgy and Literary Senior Fellow at Arena Stage. Mr. Ramsey-Zöe holds degrees from New York University and the University of Notre Dame. 

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Jacqueline Lawton: If you only had three words to describe banished? Productions, what would they be?
Otis Ramsey-Zoe: Avant-pop, Playful, Innovative.

JL: What is your role in Banished? Productions?
Otis Ramsey-Zoe: I’ve collaborated with Carmen for over twelve years now. As far as banished? goes my role has always been and continues to be to listen and to ask question. I’ve engaged in conversations around everything from the name the company to devising projects to working to clarify ideas in production. I sometimes say that whenever Carmen asks I say “yes,” but this is far from true. I offer up equal servings of  “nah,” “uuuuumm,” “er” and the like to help push an idea or project along. I do a fair amount of institutional dramaturgy as well as production dramaturgy and even a little performance—need a dancing waiter?  I’m your man.

JL: What inspired you to create Into The Doll House?
Otis Ramsey-Zoe: Carmen is really the driving force behind this idea, and because I’ve known her for so long I can both trust in and surrender to her vision while serving as this informed outsider-ly voice. In this piece nothing that is present is there “by chance,” not even chance. Not one thing. Each detail is carefully planned, and these details are what inspire me in working to create this piece. There are details that I have not fully discovered, which is a part of its alchemy and oscillation between revelation and concealment.

JL: Why should audiences come see Into the Doll House?
Otis Ramsey-Zoe: Audiences should see this show because it involves play and growing up, and they’ll come out of it a little wiser (yes, I do believe this) and more connected to themselves and/or to someone they’ve watched age. On the other hand, I have about a headful of other thoughts on why audiences should see this show, but it’s hard for me to describe them here without fear of giving away too much, you know? I want audiences to have those discoveries in the context of experiencing the piece. I welcome conversations with people after they’ve seen it wherein we can have an exchange and I can freely share some of those thoughts.

JL: Why was it important for the production of Into The Dollhouse to be a part of Arena Stage’s Cradle Series? How has this experience benefited the growth and development of the piece?
Otis Ramsey-Zoe: As a result of this opportunity we are getting the chance to further interrogate how the show works. I fear that I would be repeating Carmen here, so I direct readers to her response for more on that.  But as banished?'s company philosopher (yes we just created this role!), this opportunity is a reflection of banished?’s growth over the years. banished? has always been a company that has sought only to do amazing work, to be led by a spirit of experimentation, and to never limit itself by categories. banished? projects are decidedly multidisciplinary, drawing upon dance, theatre, video, installation/object art, sound & audio, food and performance and etc. So, being invited by Arena Stage to be apart of this series is a nice encouragement for the company. Artists don’t always receive that kind of acknowledgement, and who knows what’s in the future. So, we treat this like a “moment” in the Sondheim sense of the word—“shimmering and lovely and sad. Leave the moment, just be glad for the moment that you had.”—which is to say that we’ll enjoy it, learn from it, have it, and then keep on creating excellent and provocative and powerful work. Peace and Power.

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CARMEN C. WONG is the founding Artistic Director and agent provocateur of banished? productions. A 2012 Mayor’s Arts Awards nominee for Outstanding Emerging Artist, and recipient of the 2010 DCCAH Young Artist Award, Carmen first got her start in interdisciplinary performance in Berlin, working on Constanza Macras/Dorky Park’s “Back to the Present” (2003). Her continuing work in Scandinavia and Europe was fueled by an artist residency in Helsinki in 2010, and furthered by a TCG Global Connections travel grant in 2011. There she continues to study other forms of live art and creates culturally-relevant versions of her ongoing Futurist-inspired hybrid gastro-performance project series, “Tactile Dinner” which has expanded to include a “Tactile Eating” workshop.

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Jacqueline Lawton: If you only had three words to describe banished? Productions, what would they be?
Carmen C. Wong: playfully-emotive, thought-filled, avant-pop (cheating with hyphenates!)

JL: What is your role in Banished? Productions?
Carmen C. Wong: I am the everything-but-tech person: collaborator-whisperer, avant-pop-art-rainmaker! AKA Founding Artistic Director.

JL: What inspired you to create Into The Doll House?
Carmen C. Wong: My most recent trip home to Singapore probably gelled quite a lot of the remnant thoughts on the piece, which genesis was fairly simple: tell a story about childhood, its beauty in oddity, its shape-shifting. What little seemingly-innocuous incidences and influences shaped how we saw the world, built the person we have become and continue to evolve into? I wanted to capture it as seen from the outside, (perhaps the grown-up side), and craft a memory piece filled with fragments of the past, playing with the unreliable and fragile nature of childhood memories. Sourcing recollections and stories from my collaborators helped me stretch my voice so this story became more culturally-specific for an American audience, a really crucial detail for the experience to be successful.

JL: Why should audiences come see Into the Doll House?
Carmen C. Wong: The show takes you on journey into nostalgia, and for about an hour, you get a chance to join your reminiscing, memories and stories to our narrative.

JL: Why was it important for the production of Into The Dollhouse to be a part of Arena Stage’s Cradle Series? How has this experience benefited the growth and development of the piece?
Carmen C. Wong: Staging the show at Arena with the Cradle Series gave us a way to frame the piece within a different space and reconfiguration, and was a good way to learn which elements should be non-negotiable. I'd wanted this experience to simulate a tour situation, to see how we can tighten the spatial and performative elements to make the piece more nimble yet maintain its integrity. Working the way I do, reprising a show also gives me the opportunity to edit, re-examine and strengthen the narrative, no matter which form it takes: verbal/written text, movement/dance, music. This time we worked extensively on the "script" (which looks like a "run of show") finding new ways to record the choreography and shifts in mood behind the text (which also saw some changes) in each vignette. It helped tremendously that we expanded the artistic family to include two new dancers (who were coached by their predecessors) who will perform in this production.