This Was The End
Black Eyed Susan and Jim Himelsbach. Photo by Hunter Canning
A performance in which four actors in their sixties attempt each night to arrive at the end of Uncle Vanya – in a last ditch effort to alter the outcome. In Chekhov’s play, Vanya asks – “What if I live to be 60?” This Was The End performs an answer. It uses the play to question how memory functions in the formation of the future. What do we do with our past? What can we make of it?
Artist Statement: Restless NYC is an on and off-site theatrical enterprise designed to excavate classical texts as a source of contemporary performance. To engage the past in a dialogue about its life in the present. An urgent imperative for the language is sought through contemporary circumstance and modes of performance that disrupt the texts and push the productions beyond interpretation.
Artists Involved: Conceived and directed by Mallory Catlett; Designers: G Lucas Crane (sound), Ryan Holsopple (technology design), Peter Ksander (set), Johanna Meyer (choreography) & Keith Skretch (video); Performers: Black-Eyed Susan, Jim Himelsbach, Lizan Mitchell & Paul Zimet
About Mallory Catlett: Mallory Catlett is a director and dramaturg of performance across disciplines. Her most recent production in NYC was City Council Meeting, a national project co-created with Aaron Landsman and Jim Findlay. This Was The End is the third production of Restless NYC, which she started in 2004. The first two were site-specific productions of As You Like It and Richard the Second, which received development residencies at Chashama and LMCC respectively. For This Was The End, Catlett received a 2011 NYSCA Individual Artist Commission and residencies at Mabou Mines Suite (2009-11), Yaddo (2011) and The Performing Garage (2013). It premieres in February 2014 at the Chocolate Factory. The 4th production, Little Crimes is an opera adaptation of two Chekhov short stories and is in development in Vancouver, BC with support from Canada Council for the Arts, Hamber Foundation, ArtsFact and the Shadbolt Center to premiere in 2015.
Upcoming for This Was The End: Premiere at the Chocolate Factory in February 2014.