AARON/MARIE

Photo by Bailey Carr, BaileyDOTCOM.com

Aaron/Marie is a high-speed literary and live music spectacle, performed by a narrator and a musician. It follows the mixed tales of a missing roommate, an exile, and various ghosts of the Northeastern United States. Music and narrative intertwine through an ongoing saga of connected stories.

Artist Statement: We like to make live theater that feels like reading a modern book. We like to tell stories that have a musical quality to their structure. We like to make live music that evokes narrative action and weaves together disparate stories. We like to combine storytelling, music, and theater in such a way that the audience sees spectacles in their mind.

Collaborating Artists: Jerome Ellis: Composer, Writer, Performer; James Harrison Monaco: Writer, Composer, Performer; Joe Cantalupo: Designer; Rachel Chavkin: Co-director; Annie Tippe: Co-director

About Jerome Ellis and James Harrison Monaco: Jerome Ellis and James Harrison Monaco are a writing, performing, and composing duo. Their current project AARON/MARIE has been performed (in development phases) as part of Under The Rader Festival’s INCOMING! at Joe’s Pub, at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest 2013, at JACK, at AUNTS-Catch, and at Fresh Ground Pepper. Their other duo-show They Ran and Ran and Ran played at HERE Arts in April 2010. Together they composed and performed the live score to LOVE MACHINE (dir. Andrew Scoville) at the Incubator in May 2013.

Separately, Jerome is a composer who makes concert pieces for piano, live electronic dance suites, ambient pieces for the saxophone, and theater scores. He recently scored Debutante at Ars Nova’s ANT Fest, and has performed his own music at JACK, The Tank, 5C Cafe and Cultural Center, and Fresh Ground Pepper, among other venues. James is a writer and performer, who has performed his own theater work at HERE Arts, soloNOVA at The New Ohio, and Dixon Place (among other spots), and he also writes fiction.