Wayfinders By Holcombe Waller DATES: Nov 19 22 at 7:30pm LOCATION: BAM Fisher (Fishman Space) RUN TIME: 55min (no intermission) #WAYFINDERS Brooklyn Academy of Music Alan H. Fishman, Chairman of the Board William I. Campbell, Vice Chairman of the Board Adam E. Max, Vice Chairman of the Board Karen Brooks Hopkins, President Joseph V. Melillo, Executive Producer Season Sponsor: Time Warner Inc. is the BAM 2014 Next Wave Festival Sponsor Viacom is the BAM 2014 Music Sponsor BAM Fisher Leadership support for music at BAM provided by: Frances Bermanzohn & Alan Roseman Pablo J. Salame
Wayfinders WRITER AND DIRECTOR Holcombe Waller MUSICAL DIRECTOR Benjamin Landsverk SCENIC DESIGNER Erik Flatmo VIDEO DESIGNER Pablo N. Molina ASSOCIATE VIDEO DESIGNER Keith Skretch LIGHTING DESIGNER Christopher Kuhl ASSOCIATE LIGHTING DESIGNER Katelan Braymer SOUND DESIGNER Casi Pacilio COSTUME DESIGNER Camille Benda STAGE MANAGER Molly Gardner PERFORMERS Holcombe Waller (vocals, keyboard) Benjamin Landsverk (vocals, bass, viola, keyboard) Alexandra Deahl (vocals, bass) Elise Blatchford (flute, vocals) Ellen McSweeney (violin, vocals) Leander Star (horn, vocals) Wayfinders is co-commissioned by Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, On the Boards, Miami Light Project, Legion Arts, and the National Performance Network. Major contributors of NPN include the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Ford Foundation, and National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency. Wayfinders was made possible by the MAP Fund, a division of Creative Capital generously supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and by the Regional Arts and Culture Council of Portland, OR. Wayfinders received residency support from On the Boards, Portland Center Stage, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, and from the NPN Forth Fund and Performance Residency Program. Wayfinders was additionally supported by an individual commission from Tammara and Paul Webber; with angel support from Marilyn Epstein and commission-level supporter Ronni Lacroute; with producer support from Giacomo DiGrigoli, Ben Archibald, Leslie Barber, Dona Tversky, Leslie Durst, and Benjamin Walsh McLean; and with the generous support of 308 individual contributors across the United States through the fiscal sponsorship of Fractured Atlas.
ARTIST S NOTE My performance, Wayfinders, is an abstract, poetic rumination on the simple question, Where are we? Originally inspired by the amazing feats of ancient Polynesian navigation detailed in Wade Davis book and lecture series, The Wayfinders, the piece evolved to examine the interconnection of navigation and consciousness, the illusory nature of location and direction, and technology s growing mediation between ourselves and the everyday world we perceive. From these broad areas of research, Wayfinders gestated in a series of workshops, existing first as cellular explorations. As I assembled, bridged, and collided these early segments, I began discovering thematic parallels with futurist and science fiction writers. What began to take shape was a highly meta, nonlinear, imaginary state of consciousness far in the future wherein our notions of place, direction, and even personal identity become entirely plastic constructs shaped and managed by technology. I hope the world of Wayfinders makes for an entrancing pause in your journey. Holcombe Waller ABOUT THE WORK Setting: In the distant future, a spacecraft travels at faster-than-light speeds towards the edge of space, one of tens of thousands of ships launched without specific destination in an effort to preserve humanity. The ship is a transhuman collective, where the minds of the five human passengers are connected directly to the body of the ship. An intelligent autonavigator program operates the ship and provides a stream of mind chatter for the collective s focus. Of the five passengers, only three remain physically alive; two deceased passengers live on as disembodied identity records within the ship s consciousness system. The status of the ship s energy systems require that a third passenger will soon die, and the autonavigator must pause the engines to upload and save the last, most subtle mind of the dying passenger. SCENES/SONGS: 0. Prologue 1. FTL Shut-down 2. Partial systems restore 3. Ethnosphere restored; Mind chatter resumes 4. The Wayfinder 5. No Coming Home 6. The Sacrifashion Show 7. AutoRoadway 8. Back to the Ocean 9. A Moment to Contemplate a Transition 10. Who Will Save You Now? 11. When the Troubles Came 12. Orientation Practice Ritual 13. Roll On, Country 14. Epilogue
Who s Who HOLCOMBE WALLER Writer-Director-Performer (Vocals, Keyboard) Holcombe Waller is one of America s unique voices in music theater. He is a 2011 United States Artists Berresford Fellow in Music, an award which noted his mournful, folk-inflected style as well as his approach to music as total theater. He is a Creative Capital artist, a three-time recipient of the MAP Fund grant, and a Joan Shipley Fellow of the Regional Arts and Culture Council of his hometown of Portland, Oregon. Waller has been presented and commissioned by Under the Radar Festival at the New York Public Theater, On the Boards, Portland Institute for Contemporary Art, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, Centre Pompidou, Fusebox Festival, PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, and many others. Waller s collaboration with choreography includes work with Joe Goode Performance Group (SF), Zoe Juniper (Seattle), and Miguel Gutierrez, and his film score work includes music for the Sundancepremiered documentary, We Were Here. He is currently touring two interdisciplinary music theater works, Wayfinders and Surfacing, and he is creating a community-choir-based LGBT Requiem Mass to premiere in the fall of 2015. He has also begun work on a solo project, Détournement, which will be a third installment in the SURFACING / WAYFINDERS series, slated for a 2016 premiere which will present all three works as a three-act evening. Learn more at holcombewaller.com. BENJAMIN LANDSVERK Musical Director-Performer (Viola, Bass, Keyboard, Vocals) Benjamin Landsverk is a composer, conductor, and multi-instrumentalist born and raised in Portland, OR. A graduate of Yale University, Landsverk has had a lifetime of experience with liturgical music and has worked in the Episcopal Church for over 18 years, most recently at Portland s Trinity Episcopal Cathedral. As a musician, he specializes in finding and creating connectivity between current popular and traditional classical musical styles and concertizes frequently on the local, national, and international stage. His compositions, arrangements, and recordings have been featured on National Public Radio, and critically acclaimed by such publications as Paste magazine, Time Out New York, NPR Music, and Downbeat. He is also active as a music educator and is the director of Voices Unlimited Portland s flagship choir serving adults with developmental disabilities. Contact him at benlandsverk@gmail.com
LEANDER STAR Performer (French Horn, Vocals) Leander Star is the French horn player with the award-winning wind quintet, the City of Tomorrow. With the City of Tomorrow, he has performed across the US and Canada and recently recorded the first of a three-part album of music addressing climate change. Star has performed alongside members of the Chicago Symphony in concerts with the Chicago Chamber Musicians and presented new works with Fear No Music and the faculty new music ensemble at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. Other projects include playing solo horn in (as well as helping to arrange) the new musical Homomentum by Portland playwright Max Voltage. Star holds positions with Oregon Ballet Theater Orchestra and Portland Opera Orchestra. He also performs regularly with IRIS Orchestra and the Memphis Symphony in Memphis, TN. ELISE BATCHFORD Performer (Flute, Vocals) Hailed for her superb command of color and nuance by Cleveland s Plain Dealer, Elise Blatchford is a member of the City of Tomorrow, a contemporary music-focused wind quintet that took first place at the Fischoff National Chamber Music Competition in 2011. Since then, the City of Tomorrow has continued to tour the United States and Canada. As a former member of the YOA Orchestra of the Americas, Blatchford has played under the batons of Simon Rattle, Carlos Miguel Prieto, and Dante Anzollini, and with YOA toured extensively through Brazil, Colombia, Argentina, Peru, Ecuador, Uruguay, and mainland China. She made her Carnegie Hall debut with Valery Gergiev and YOA in 2010. Blatchford holds degrees from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music and San Francisco Conservatory of Music. She is assistant professor of flute at University of Memphis in Tennessee. ELLEN McSWEENEY Performer (Violin, Vocals) Ellen McSweeney is a Chicago-based violinist, writer, and songwriter. She is the founding violinist of the string trio Chicago Q Ensemble and the Chicago regional editor for NewMusicBox, where she writes frequently on creativity, work-life balance, gender, and healthy career development for musicians. A dynamic and versatile chamber musician, McSweeney has given countless world premieres with Chicago Q Ensemble and has collaborated with ensemble dal niente, Access Contemporary Music, Singers on New Ground, Homeroom Chicago, Millennium Chamber Players, and Four Score Festival of New Music. She has appeared on the DePaul Faculty Recital Series, PianoForte Foundation Salon Series, WFMT, and on multiple series at the Chicago Cultural Center. Before coming to Chicago, she lived in East Africa, serving on the faculty of the Umoja Arts Centre in Arusha, Tanzania. McSweeney holds a BM from Blair School of Music at Vanderbilt University and an MM from DePaul University. She is a winner of Vanderbilt s Merrill Moore Award
for Poetry Writing and the Vanderbilt Review prize for best fiction. Her indie folk duo, Elk, recently released its second EP, You re Home. Her solo debut EP, The Wrong Idea, will be released this fall. ALEXANDRA DEAHL Performer (Vocals, Bass) Alexandra Deahl is a performer and freelance multimedia designer, specializing in lighting and illustration. Deahl has had the pleasure of creating art and working collaboratively at On the Boards, MCA Chicago, Live Arts Exchange (LAX), and PICA s TBA Festival. Recent credits include event lighting design for various stages at the Pickathon Festival and for the Portland Boulder Rally at the Circuit Bouldering Gym; theater lighting design for Come As You Are: 5 Solo Acts and Subject to Change: 10 Solo Acts at Portland Playhouse; Wait Until Dark at NW Classical Theater; and Raven at Imago Theater. In addition to her theater and event work, Deahl is an architectural lighting consultant and has worked with ADX and OHSU. She holds a BA in anthropology from Smith College, plans to pursue graduate studies in architectural lighting design, and can also be seen in Holcombe Waller s show Surfacing. PABLO N. MOLINA Video Designer Pablo N. Molina is a video, lighting, and sound artist whose work employs emerging technologies such as architectural projection mapping, live video processing, and original software development to design and implement immersive media environments. Molina has created numerous experiences for live performance and architectural projects. His video, lighting, and sound designs have been featured in numerous exhibitions as well as theatrical, music, and dance pieces at venues such as Sundance New Frontiers, OSF, RedCat, BAM, TED, Whitney Museum, On the Boards, Microsoft, MCA Chicago, EMPAC, Wexner Center, LACMA, and PICA. He serves on the faculty for the MFA program in video for performance at CalArts School of Theater and frequently guest teaches workshops and master classes on emerging trends in video design and custom software development for live performance. He is a recent artist in residency at the Hong Kong Academy for the Performing Arts and a frequent panelist at the LDI Institute Projection Master Classes. KEITH SKRETCH Associate Video Designer Keith Skretch designs video for performance and installation. He has worked with Mallory Catlett, Big Dance Theater, Pavel Zustiak, John Gould Rubin, Jay Scheib, Martin Acosta, Jessica Blank, Daniel Fish, and WNYC s Radiolab, among others. His experimental short Waves of Grain has been screened at festivals internationally and has gone viral online, and his installation LOOK/KILL debuted this summer at Automata in Los Angeles. He holds an AB from the University of Chicago and an MFA from CalArts, and was recently recognized
with a 2014 Henry Hewes Design Award (with G. Lucas Crane) and a 2014 Bessie Award (with the visual design team) for his work on This Was the End (Chocolate Factory). CASI PACILIO Sound Designer Casi Pacilio has been working in theater since she was five. The theater has always felt like home sometimes peaceful and safe, sometimes alienating and challenging. From NorthSide School of the Performing Arts in Atlanta to City Theatre in Pittsburgh to PS 122 in NYC to the Helen Hayes Theatre on Broadway to the La Jolla Playhouse and UCSD in San Diego to Portland Center Stage in PDX, each has been an adventure, but she feels most at home again working on projects like this one working with groups that take on unique perspectives and demand high production values and often have the least money to spend. It s challenging, but so rewarding. Current projects include: Holcombe Waller s Wayfinders and Surfacing; Hand2Mouth s Pep Talk and My Mind is Like An Open Meadow (Drammy award for Sound Design); the upcoming film Wild; Portland Center Stage s Dreamgirls and Other Desert Cities; and Boom Arts A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff. It s a great adventure to work with Holcombe Waller and all the talented people on this project. Thank you for the opportunity to develop and create new work together. ERIK FLATMO Scenic Designer Erik Flatmo is a set designer based in San Francisco. His work has been produced by companies including American Conservatory Theater, Asolo Repertory Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California Shakespeare Theater, Magic Theatre, San Jose Repertory Theatre, South Coast Repertory, Theatreworks, and Yale Repertory Theater. His work in opera has premiered at Opera Santa Barbara, Opera San Jose, and San Francisco Opera s Merola Program. His work in dance and contemporary performance has debuted at venues such as the American Realness Festival, Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, The Kitchen, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, On the Boards, and REDCAT in addition to international presentations in Chile, France, Germany, Mexico, Poland, and Sweden. He is a graduate of Columbia University and the Yale School of Drama and teaches set design at Stanford University. CHRISTOPHER KUHL Lighting Designer Christopher Kuhl is a lighting, scenic, installation, and conceptual designer for new performance, theater, dance, and opera. Recent work includes The Object Lesson (BAM, Edinburgh Fringe, Philly Live Arts); ABACUS (BAM, Sundance Film Festival, EMPAC, REDCAT); Straight White Men (Young Jean Lee s Theater Company, the Public Theater, Wexner Center, Centre
Pompidou); The Elephant Room (St. Ann s Warehouse, Arena Stage, MCA Chicago); Quartier Libres with Nadia Beugré (New York Live Arts, Walker Art Center); John Cage Song Books (SF Symphony, Carnegie Hall). He was also the production manager and lighting director for Ralph Lemon s How Can You Stay in the House All Day and Not Go Anywhere? Kuhl has also had the pleasure of working and making art at On the Boards, Fusebox Festival, Kennedy Center, YBCA, Jacob s Pillow, LA Opera, Santa Fe Opera, Holland Festival, Beijing Music Festival, Queer Zagreb, KVS Belgium, MAC France, and Santiago a Mil Chile. He is a Sherwood, Drammy, Horton, and Ovation Awards recipient. He received the 2014 Bessie Award for outstanding visual design. He is originally from New Mexico, a graduate of CalArts, an associate artist of Hand2Mouth Theatre, and co-director of Live Arts Exchange (LAX). CAMILLE BENDA Costume Designer Camille Benda has just wrapped on supernatural period thriller The Quiet Ones, starring Jared Harris and Sam Claflin, prior to which she designed 1970 s detective feature Harrigan s Nick. Last year she completed both Cheerful Weather for a Wedding, set in 1930 s England, starring Felicity Jones, Elizabeth McGovern, and MacKenzie Crook, and Menhaj Huda s urban tower-block horror Comedown. Other film credits include Junkhearts, starring Romola Garai and Eddie Marsden. Benda has an MFA from Yale School of Drama and an MA from the Courtauld Institute in the history of dress. As well as designing film, Benda has designed numerous theater productions, including regional theater at Yale Repertory Theater and Off-Broadway at Rattlestick Theater. Benda has given various talks on topics relating to costume history at the Victoria & Albert Museum, The Costume Society, and the Courtauld Institute. MOLLY GARDNER Stage Manager Molly Gardner is a recent graduate of Lewis & Clark Theatre where she studied technical theater with a focus on stage management and production. Since graduating, she has worked as a freelance technician around Portland. Recent credits include Hand2Mouth s Pep Talk, Boom Arts A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff, and Anon It Moves production of Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. KATELAN BRAYMER Associate Lighting Designer Katelan Braymer is a lighting designer, technical director, and production manager based in Los Angeles and Portland. Braymer has spent much of this year touring as technical director for David Roussève s Stardust and Lionel Popkin s Ruth Doesn t Live Here Anymore. She has been an assistant lighting designer at the LA Opera since 2011, and the Kirk Douglas Theatre since 2012. She was the production supervisor and lighting director for the
2013 and 2014 Live Arts Exchange (LAX), a three-week festival presenting new work by a variety of artists. In Portland, Braymer is an associate artist with Hand2Mouth Theatre, has been on the production staff for the Risk/Reward Festival for the past four years, and regularly designs for Miracle Theatre Group. THANK YOU! Thank you to the amazing performers, designers, and commissioners who have helped shape this project into being. Thank you to Holcombe s friends and family for their ongoing support of his work. Photo: Wayfinders video still courtesy of the artist
Photo: Wayfinders Chicago residency, courtesy of the artist