A Wendy's Subway Wrap-Up

Our stages may be dark, but there's still plenty going on here in Fort Greene. The Wendy's Subway Reading Room, for instance, remains on display through this coming Sunday, January 28 and is FREE and open to the public all weekend from 12—5pm. The space, located in the BAM Fisher Lower Lobby at 321 Ashland Place, features literature selected by international, independent, and artist-run libraries, as well as a collection of books selected by last season's Next Wave Festival performers and visual artists. Below, we highlight some of our favorite pieces from the visual and performing artist-curated reading lists. For highlights from donating libraries, be sure to peruse the #WSxBAM hashtag on Instagram.

In Context: Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia

Two survivors of the Khmer Rouge, composer Him Sophy and filmmaker Rithy Panh, attempt to return dignity to their country’s fallen with Bangsokol–a musical ritual remembering the Cambodian genocide. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

Remembering Cambodia's Lost Artists

In 1975, the tyrannical Khmer Rouge came to power in Cambodia following a brutal civil war. Over the course of the next four years the regime held power, some 1.7 million Cambodians died from starvation, disease, overwork, and genocide. The Khmer Rouge targeted intellectuals, artists, actors, and musicians as undesirables because they didn’t fit Pol Pot's image of a new Cambodia—a country free of all outside influence and any remnant of what he considered “decadent” culture.

The overall effect of this campaign against creatives was disastrous for the country's cultural landscape. By the time the Vietnamese drove the Khmer Rouge from power in 1979, most artists were dead, in exile, or too traumatized to practice their craft. Below, we partnered with illustrator Nathan Gelgud to honor five Cambodian visionaries lost during this tragic time in conjunction with Bangsokol: A Requiem for Cambodia, coming to the 2017 Next Wave Festival on Dec 15 & 16.

In Context: Tesseract

Choreographic duo Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener present Tesseract, the fruit of their years-long collaboration with pioneering video artist (and fellow Merce Cunningham Dance Company alumnus) Charles Atlas, at BAM Dec 13—16.Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: Farmhouse/Whorehouse: An Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra Starring Lili Taylor

Suzanne Bocanegra returns to BAM Dec 12—16 with Farmhouse/Whorehouse, a performance piece inspired by her grandparents who lived on a farm across the road from the Chicken Ranch (better known as the “Best Little Whorehouse in Texas”). Starring Lili Taylor, the piece uses text, costumes, video projections, and more to consider the American myth of rural utopia.

Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: HOME

Physical theater artist Geoff Sobelle returns to BAM Dec 6—10 with HOME, in which he leads an ensemble of dancers and designers in a feat of impossible carpentry: raising a house onstage and making a home within it.

Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: Suddenly

Israeli director Zvi Sahar and PuppetCinema present a dystopian puppet epic, adapted from Tel Aviv-based writer Etgar Keret’s darkly funny short story collection. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: 8980: Book of Travelers

Singer-songwriter Gabriel Kahane's hymn to the analog intimacy of American rail culture has its world premiere at the BAM Harvey Theater Nov 30—Dec 2. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: Haruki Murakami’s Sleep

Based on the 1994 short story by the beloved Japanese author Haruki Murakami (The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle), this hypnotic physical theater piece by Brooklyn-based, Obie Award-winning company Ripe Time follows one woman beyond the bounds of society. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: The Fountainhead

Belgian director Ivo van Hove offers a brutal reexamination of Ayn Rand’s notorious paean to radical individualism, a saga of sex, architecture, and skybound ambition. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

What's Home?

Geoff Sobelle’s HOME, in which a house is constructed, is at the BAM Harvey from Dec 6—10. Sobelle answered some questions from Christian Barclay.

Photo: Maria Baranova

What drew you to the idea of exploring the relationship between “house” and “home”? 

When I first starting thinking about HOME, I was on the heels of my last independent work, The Object Lesson (2014 Next Wave). I was looking for a subject that everyone could relate to. No matter where you’re from or your current situation, I would imagine that just about everyone is concerned with their housing and their sense of “home.”

Tesseract—Q&A with Rashaun Mitchell & Silas Riener

Tesseract, a work by Charles Atlas, Rashaun Mitchell, and Silas Riener at the BAM Harvey Theater from Dec 13—16, is in two parts: a 3D dance film, and a live performance with video. The three artists all worked with Merce Cunningham. Rashaun Mitchell and Silas Riener answered some questions from Susan Yung.

Charles Atlas. Photo: Mick Bello

Can you talk about the visual concepts and costumes in the film? Were there any specific sources or influences?

The visual design is based on a spectrum of ideas ranging from exposed and conspicuous imagery to notions of concealment and camouflage. There’s a foundation question about how bodies might exist in different environments, how we might assimilate or rebel in a given setting. We explore the disembodiment of shape in abstract geometry and how it might refer back to something on a body, a landscape. We found anchors in Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions, a satirical 1880s novel and animated film of politics set in a geometrical universe, the low-budget film Cube 2: Hypercube, a futuristic experiment where the participants are in a disorienting cube that keeps changing.

Bangsokol—Never Forget

Him Sophy composed music for Bangsokol—directed/designed by director Rithy Panh, with libretto by Trent Walker—at the BAM Howard Gilman Opera House on Dec 15 & 16. Sophy answered some questions from Sarah Garvey.

Photo: Tey Tat Keng

How did the idea for doing a requiem like this come about? Was it a recent idea or is it something that you have wanted to do for a while?

After the 2008 world premiere of my opera Where Elephants Weep, I started to think of what would be my next composition. At that time, one of my dear American friends, Mr. Charley Todd, who is the co-founder of Cambodian Living Arts, came to me with an idea for a new musical work: how can we commemorate the two million Cambodian people who were killed during the civil war and during the genocidal regime of Pol Pot? Indeed, in Cambodia there hasn’t been a symphonic piece of music honoring these souls in Bangsokol.

In Context: John Cale: The Velvet Underground & Nico

The inveterate experimentalist celebrates 75 years, performing selections from his legendary career, including his landmark work with the Velvet Underground, the baroque pop perfection of Paris 1919, and beyond. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: 17c

Big Dance Theater returns to BAM Nov 14—18 with 17c, a dizzy intertextual romp through the diaries of famed 17th-century philanderer Samuel Pepys and his tragic wife Bess

Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: Aroundtown

David Dorfman Dance returns to BAM Nov 8—11 with Aroundtown, a new work that explores the question: What if real love means really being around?

Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: A Billion Nights on Earth

When a treasured object goes missing, real-life father and son actors (Michael and Winslow Fegley) must rely on their own creativity, and each other, to survive a world of wild landscapes—and still make it back home. Context is everything, so get even closer to A Billion Nights on Earth with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: Man to Man

Become what you can’t afford to lose: that’s the solution of the troubled protagonist in Wales Millennium Centre’s riveting production of playwright Manfred Karge’s 1982 masterpiece based on true events, in a new translation by Alexandra Wood. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: Grand Finale

Israeli choreographer Hofesh Shechter’s latest work conjures the bleak and beautiful contradictions of our ever-collapsing universe, featuring his own pulsating original score performed live onstage. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.

In Context: State of Siege

French director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota sets his sights on Albert Camus’ 1948 play, an alternative-fact-filled allegory about fear, contagion, and betrayal in the wake of a government takeover. Context is everything, so get even closer to the production with this curated selection of related articles and videos. After you've attended the show, let us know what you thought by posting in the comments below and on social media using #BAMNextWave.