Elijah Green
photo by Georgia Neirheim
Andrew Ondrejcak continues work on an adaptation of influential Swedish playwright August Strindberg’s A Dream Play. The play presents the scenario of a divine visitation into the contemporary tedium of the everyday human. Despite unremarkable existences, the characters’ stories layer and culminate in a portrait of the interconnectivity of all humans, with each individual both the center of the world and part of something they cannot comprehend.
Collaborating Artists: Written, directed and designed by Andrew Ondrejcak; Performed by Cara Francis, Yuki Kawahisa, Carmen Pelaez, Carlos Soto, William Burke, and Stephanie Hayes; Choreography by Rebecca Warner
About Andrew Ondrejcak: Ondrejcak observes the human body to an absurd level, exploiting all of the allegorical possibilities in human functioning – from communication and reproduction to the body’s physical weakening and eventual decay. His works are comic-tragedies in which the physical world is overtaken by it’s metaphysical potential. Ondrejcak often creates a meticulously designed world, a plastic world of heightened theatricality, only to gradually tear it apart to find the humanity buried within. These visual images combine with fragmentary language into a series of poetic, playful and complex examinations in which the fragility and instability of our seemingly certain reality is questioned.
Ondrejcak is a Mississippi-born writer, director, and designer. Recent works include You Us We All (2013) with composer Shara Worden, co-produced by deSingel Arts Center (Antwerp) and Kampnagel (Hamburg); Kings of Macedonia, PRELUDE Festival, (2012); and FEAST, St. Marks Incubator Arts Center (2012) and a reperformance of the works of Marina Abramovic in The Artist is Present, MoMA (2011). As a designer, Ondrejcak creates installations for fashion shows and photo shoots, working with Vogue, Bazaar, W, and Vogue China, among others. Since 2003, he has been a freelance lecturer at the Museum of Modern Art, where he focuses on painting and sculpture and specializes in programs for visitors with disabilities. Ondrejcak studied architecture and design at the Savannah College of Art and Design and playwriting at Brooklyn College. He is currently developing a new work with composer Bryce Dessner for the Brooklyn Youth Chorus (2014).
Upcoming for Elijah Green: Elijah Green was developed at the LMCC Artist Studios on Governors Island as part of the River To River Festival 2013. It will be further developed at a residency at Baryshnikov Arts Center, late 2013.