In brief: Ann Bogart, Elizabeth Streb at Peak Performances
“Falling & Loving,” which premieres on Sept. 24 and runs through Sept. 29 at Peak Performances, brings together three giants of the Avant-Garde theater world: Anne Bogart, director of SITI Company, and Elizabeth Streb, who runs Streb Extreme Action, adapting the work of playwright Charles Mee.
This Peak Performances season opener is the first collaboration between Bogart and Streb. Six actors from SITI Company and six dancers from Streb Extreme Action will share the stage with a “Guck Machine,” a contraption conceived by Streb featuring rings and buckets armed to continually release a variety of materials in cascades. Peak Performances writes, “Streb explores falling — in such varied forms — as Bogart uses Mee’s “Love Sonnets” and plays as a springboard for accessing multiform expressions of loving.”
Elizabeth Streb founded Streb Extreme Action in 1985 and, in 2003, opened SLAM (Streb Lab for Action Mechanics), which Peak describes as “a hub for artistic experimentation and exchange centered around the powerful force of action. Drawing on dance, theatre, and visual art, Elizabeth Streb creates an aesthetic of risk, velocity, and shock using the elements of gravity, centrifugal force, and balance/counterbalance.”
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READ: WORLD PREMIERE FROM LIZ GERRING AT PEAK PERFORMANCES
READ: 'SMASHED' KEEPS ITS APPLES IN THE AIR
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Anne Bogart is a two-time Obie-winning director, and the writer of “A Director Prepares” and “What's the Story.” She is the co-author, with Tina Landau, of “The Viewpoints Book,” and co-founder, with Tadashi Suzuki, of SITI Company.
In conjunction with performances, the exhibit “Extreme: The Pop Action Performance Art of Elizabeth Streb,” displaying notebooks, videos, photographs, drawings, and equipment related to Streb’s artistic creations, organized by the George Segal Gallery’s interim executive director, Ronald Sharps, and the Streb team, will be on view at the George Segal Gallery and in the Alexander Kasser Theater Lobby at Montclair State University through Sept. 29.
Peak Performances writes that Charles Mee brought the artists together. “Both have placed immense emphasis on process and training — with Bogart’s joining of The Viewpoints and the Suzuki method, now taught together in many acting schools nationwide, and Streb’s PopAction technique, confronting falling and fear and posing unique challenges to dancers.
Tickets and more information are at peakperfs.org, or 973-655-5112. More information on the gallery is at montclair.edu.galleries. Performances will be at the Alexander Kasser Theater at Montclair State University, 1 Normal Ave.