REDCAT, CalArts’ downtown center for contemporary arts, presents JACK &, a new stage work by theater artist Kaneza Schaal, Thursday, November 15 to Saturday, November 17, 2018 at 8:30 pm.
The new work co-commissioned by REDCAT, comes soon after its New York premiere as part of the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festivala and is being billed as “a multimedia comedy of errors structured on social codes and training.”
Kaneza Schaal, New York City-based theater artist, first came to REDCAT as a performer with seminal New York ensembles The Wooster Group and Elevator Repair Service. Now she returns with her own work as the director and co-creator of JACK &, a multimedia comedy of errors structured on social codes and trainings. From The Honeymooners and Amos & Andy, to debutante balls and prison re-entry programs, JACK & is a place of theatrical imagination that inhabits the liminal space between dream and reality.
Starring Cornell Alston, the piece considers re-entry to society after prison through a prism of baking fiascos, minimalist painters, ancestral ceremonies, and the dreaming one gives to the state while incarcerated. Drawing from diverse social rituals, JACK & gives creative dream time its due.
Schaal first saw Cornell Alston perform in the title role of August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom at the all-male Fishkill Correctional Facility, where Alston was serving 33 years. For Alston—who uses acting to work through his transition to civilian life—the piece is part of an ongoing personal process.
Jack & features design by artist/author Christopher Myers and a live sound score by Rucyl Mills.
Kaneza Schaal’s recent work GO FORTH premiered at Performance Space 122’s COIL Festival and then showed at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda; LMCC’s River-to-River Festival; Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans; Cairo International Contemporary Theater Festival in Egypt; and at her alma mater, Wesleyan University, CT. Schaal received a 2018 Ford Foundation Art For Justice Bearing Witness award, 2017 MAP Fund award, 2016 Creative Capital Award, and is an Aetna New Voices Fellow at Hartford Stage.
Her work with The Wooster Group, Elevator Repair Service, Richard Maxwell/New York City Players, Claude Wampler, Jim Findlay, and Dean Moss has brought her to venues including Centre Pompidou, Royal Lyceum Theater Edinburgh, Whitney Museum, and MoMA. She was nominated for a 2018 Bessie Award for Outstanding Performer. JACK & was co-commissioned by PICA, Walker Arts Center, REDCAT, On the Boards, and Center for Contemporary Art Cincinnati and will show at Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago and Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Her new work in development, CARTOGRAPHY, was workshopped through New Victory Theater Lab, NYU Abu Dhabi, and the Kennedy Center’s New Vision New Voices. Schaal’s work has also been supported by Baryshnikov Arts Center, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Nathan Cummings Foundation, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Theater Communications Group, and a Princess Grace George C. Wolfe Award.
Cornell Alston was a long-time member of Rehabilitation Through the Arts (RTA), a non-profit organization that uses the arts to teach life skills to men and women both inside and outside of state correctional facilities. Alston served as the community outreach coordinator for RTA. He also led the Youth Empowerment Through the Arts Initiative, which RTA launched in Queens, NY in January 2014. Alston has been a theater artist for over 20 years. He worked as a performer and collaborator with Kaneza Schaal on Please, Bury Me at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and GO FORTH during a Performance Space 122 RAMP residency. Other highlights of his performance career include One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 12 Angry Men, and playing the title role in August Wilson’s Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom.
Christopher Myers is an artist and writer who lives in New York. He is widely acclaimed for his work with literature for young people and is an accomplished fine artist who has lectured and exhibited internationally. His practice can be divided into two categories—interventions in historical narratives and work crafted with artisans from around the globe. Myers’ work has been exhibited at PS1/MoMA, and included as part of Greater New York, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Prospect Biennial in New Orleans, and Contrasts Gallery in Shanghai. He has curated shows in Vietnam, a designed theatre that has travelled from New York’s PS122 to the Genocide Memorial Theater in Kigali, Rwanda, and collaborated with Hank Willis Thomas on the short film Am I Going Too Fast which premiered at Sundance. Myers participated in the Whitney Independent Studio Program. He has written essays that have been published by The New York Times, and he is currently working on a book comparing global censorship methodologies. Throughout his career, Myers has given talks and workshops in Juvenile Detention Facilities around the US.
The performance runs Thursday through Saturday, beginning at 8:30pm with tickets ranging from $16, for students to $20 General Admission.
To purchase online at https://www.redcat.org/event/
