SoEx Talk
I’ll be giving an artist’s talk at Southern Exposure gallery Wednesday Feb 22 at 7:30pm. I’ll be talking about Odyssey Works and the ideas behind Odyssey Works. It will be the kickoff for the search for applicants for this year’s performances.
I’ll be trying something a bit new – to take people on imaginary Odysseys as they sit in their seats and listen. Should be interesting. Please come out if you can.
More info at: http://soex.org/Event/343.html
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Tags: abraham burickson, odyssey works, theater, relational aesthetics, experimental theater, Southern Exposure, Artist's talk
Odyssey Works at Cannes!
Milan Collins’ film about Odyssey Works, The Midden of Possibility, just go into the Cannes Film Festival! www.middenofpossibility.com
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Tags: abraham burickson, Austin, Experimental, milan collins, New York, odyssey works, performance, san francisco, theater
The latest issue of Jubilat is out in stores now, and contains a long interview with me about Odyssey Works’ 2009 performance, “the Necessary Angel.” Unfortunately, you can’t find it online, but there is a bit of an introduction to it here: http://www.jubilat.org/jubilat/archive/20/jubilat_interview/
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Tags: abraham burickson, experimental performance, jubilat, odyssey works, poetry, theater
Please support our IndieGoGo campaign at http://www.indiegogo.com/OdysseyWorks. We’re trying to fund our 2012 season – the most ambitious ever! We’ll be doing performances in New York, San Francisco, and Austin, TX.
Untitled from abraham burickson on Vimeo.
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New Publications
Hey folks, check out a couple of new publications of mine – at Blackbird (the online journal of VCU)
but for us they… and if an inner landscape
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Tags: abraham burickson, blackbird, poetry
Odyssey Works 2012
Just a bit of an update here. I have been working with folks in New York, Austin, and San Francisco to prepare an Odyssey Works 2012 season. There will likely be a kickstarter to supplement grants and other funds for this year. We plan to do three performances – one in each of the aforementioned cities – all in 2012. It should be an intense year! More information, as well as how to apply to have a piece made for you, will be available in the next few months.
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Tags: abraham burickson, Austin, Experimental, New York, odyssey works, performance, san francisco, theater
Complicity!
This weekend was the premiere of Complicity, a play I wrote a few years back. The play was considered unproducable by the SF theater company who had intended to put it on. Cornell’s Risley Theater, however, thought they could handle it. This is what the Ithaca Post had to say in its preview:
ITHACA THEATERGOERS WILL have the chance to take in a performance that pushes theater to its limits and beyond this weekend at Risley Hall. “Complicity,” written by Abraham Burickson directed by Carolina Osorio Gil and Sarah Myers, is the story of a couple in love and the obsessions that drive them apart. It is also an updated Orpheus myth that takes its audience with it on a journey to the underworld.
“The play is fundamentally participatory; actors break the forth wall and engage the audience, then they break the fifth wall and make the audience part of their reality. Everybody who comes to the show walks out having been through what the characters have been through,” wrote Burickson.
The performance starts in Risley Theater, but the audience soon finds itself out of its seats and lead on a journey out of the building and deep into the heart of the story as they uncover what has happened to the lovers. Some scenes revolve around improvised conversations with the actors, others draw the audience into a surreal world where they are suddenly and irrevocably involved in the fate of the characters. “I’d never seen a script like this before,” said Osorio Gil, “nearly half of it was structured improvisation. A huge demand is placed on the actors to make their performances real and believable, not just to the audience but to them, too.”
Staging was incredibly challenging as well. “That’s why we have two directors, one to focus on the acting, one on the staging. The play was commissioned for a theater company in San Francisco, but they didn’t have the facilities to put it on. We’re lucky at Risley that we can do it.”
Director Osorio Gil and Writer Burickson are both Artists-in-Residence at Cornell. Burickson is the director of the San Francisco-based performance group Odyssey Works and Osorio Gil is an Ithaca-base actor and director who has worked extensively with Actor’s Workshop of Ithaca and Teatro Taller.
Complicity will happen three times only, Friday and Saturday, March 4 and 5 at 8:00 p.m., with a Saturday matinee at 2:00 p.m. Risley Theater is located at the south end of Risley Hall, on Thurston Avenue, on Cornell’s North Campus. Tickets are $8. Because of the interactive nature of this performance, seating is limited to 30 attendees per performance.
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Tags: abraham burickson, cornell, experimental theater, orpheus, participatory theater, risley, theater
Odyssey Works
Call for Participants!
For Odyssey Works: New York, a day-long, interdisciplinary performance.
The Event:
A day-long performance created for a single participant, based on the way that participant sees the world. If your application is chosen, we will create this for you alone, free of charge.
Part experimental theater, part artistic procession, and part psychological journey, Odyssey Works: New York will happen only once and will have as its protagonist a single participant for whom the artists and actors are supporting characters in a fully immersive performance.
In previous journeys, participants have found themselves in rowboats crossing the river Styx to the underworld, happened upon a tunnel echoing with recordings of their own thoughts, or been asked to conduct an orchestra of screams, laughs and tears. What will happen this time is a closely guarded secret.
Who You Are:
Participants must be over 18 and available to participate in a daylong performance starting in New York City on April 16-17, 2011. Participants must also be willing to open their lives to us in preparation through a series of questionnaires, conversations, and interviews.
Who We Are:
Odyssey Works is an interdisciplinary collaborative arts and performance group that explores the boundary between artist and audience. Directed by Abraham Burickson, Odyssey Works has been producing large-scale productions for small audiences since 2001. This is the group’s first East Coast production. Odyssey Works: New York is sponsored by grants from the Cornell Council on the Arts and the Risley College for the Creative and Performing Arts. For more information, and to see video of past participants, point your web browser to www.odysseyworks.org
The Catch:
There is no catch. Participation is completely free. If you are interested in having a performance created for you, please email applications@odysseyworks.org for an application. You may also simply download one from the www.odysseyworks.org by clicking on “APPLY”. Inquiries can also be sent to this address. Be sure to include your contact information.
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Tags: abraham burickson, Cornell University, Experimental, Ithaca, odyssey works, performance, relational aesthetics, theater
Odyssey Works Website Now Up!
It’s at www.odysseyworks.org. Full functionality is not yet there, but it is a lot of fun to tool around already.
oh, and the Movable Feast video is here
and the Henry Video is here!
The videos for the Odyssey Works 2009 projects are coming soon!
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My new chapbook is out on Codhill Press. The cover was designed by Lauren Kohne, a synaesthetic artist who sees letters as colors. She can read the cover as a poem. Can you? There’s only one way to find out. Get a copy at Amazon or (better, faster) Codhill Press.
Charlie, A Chapbook
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Tags: abraham burickson, chapbook, contemporary, design, lauren kohne, poetry, synaesthesia
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