The Awesome Collective presents its inaugural performance event — TRANSFIGURATION X 5 — at 4pm Sunday, December 12, at Firehouse 13.
Born in Spring 2010, the Awesome Collective explores new methods and vocabularies for cross-genre performance and cross-institutional collaboration. In this initial experiment—an artistic game of “telephone”—artists of numerous disciplines divided into collaborative teams. The first group had one week to create a piece of art responding to a fortune cookie. That artwork was presented to the next group, who then had one week to respond with a new work, and so on and so on. . . resulting in an utterly awesome portmanteau of theater, performance art, music, film, and puppets.
Free, Sunday, 4pm, Firehouse 13, 41 Central Street
The Awesome Collective is comprised of playwrights, visual artists, performers, musicians, researchers and makers from a variety of local universities and arts organizations. Members are affiliated with Brown University, Rhode Island School of Design, Johnson & Wales, AS220, Perishable Theater, and Trinity Repertory Company—a list that will keep growing as new collaborative relationships are cultivated.
While the Collective’s long-term goal is to create new works together as well as produce projects initiated by individual members, the focus of this first initiative is simply to introduce artists to one another and provide a platform for experimentation, opening up lines of communication between individuals and institutions. The project’s culmination at Firehouse 13 will provide an opportunity for the community and other interested artists to come together and explore the possibilities of longer and more dynamic collaborations.
TRANSFIGURATION X 5 will feature five wildly different performances that are, like the different artists within the Collective, in conversation with one another. Curated by Joe Waechter, the event will include: “Ornitottero,” a meditation on tension and release, by Blevin Blectum (aka Bevin Kelley), Mia Chung, and Theo Goodell; “semblance,” a gestural reflection on the murky articulation of buying in and buying out, by Rob Grace and Adara Meyers; “Réflexions d’un Hédoniste Râleur,” a journey through the rantings of a very hungry Frenchman, by Israel Buffardi and Margaret Namulyanga; “Aileron,” a flight, by Kirsten Volness and Rachel Jendrzejewski; and a yet untitled interactive performance by Jacob Richman and Gosia Rymsza-Pawlowska. TRANSFIGURATION X 5 will be presented on Sunday, December 12 at 4:00pm at Firehouse 13, 41 Central Street, in Providence, Rhode Island. The event is free of charge. For more information, please visit www.firehouse13.com.