PLASTICENE 13th ANNUAL PHYSICAL THEATER INTENSIVE: JUNE 13—18, 2009

When:

• Saturday 6/13 1-5 pm
• Sunday 6/14 1-5 pm
• Monday 6/15 6:15-10:00 pm
• Tuesday 6/16 6:15-10:00 pm
• Wednesday 6/17 6:15-10:00 pm
• Thursday 6/18 6:15-10:00 pm

Where: UIC Studio Theater, 1044 W. Harrison Street, Chicago

Fee: $195 early registration (before 5/26) $225 thereafter. Send a check and contact info to Plasticene, 1849 N. Damen Avenue #1, Chicago IL 60647

What: 24 hours of physical theater training, improvisation, and creation for anyone who wants to move, innovate, develop, and play…

Plasticene offers one of the best and most challenging workshops of the summer! Plasticene’s Intensive is a great way to get physical with one of Chicago’s most critically-acclaimed experimental theater companies. This exciting and  challenging workshop emphasizes acting and theater founded in the body,  space, and objects. Plasticene’s work has gained city-wide recognition as one of the most innovative opportunities to gain heightened awareness of themselves and the use of space and the body in theater.

The Intensive is a perfect introduction to the tools and process used to develop Plasticene performances. The process is a mixture of diverse techniques and experiments  from many traditions including yoga, corporal mime, Boal, Grotowski, Zaporah, object work, and contact improvisation. This session builds links from physical control to spatial awareness to contact improvisation to object encounters and culminates in group creation.  Each day includes a warm-up, technique and improvisation. Live, improvised music accompanies three classes.

No previous training is necessary—degree of difficulty can be determined by each participant.  Various company members teach throughout.  You may register if you have to miss one session, but no more than one.

2—5 PM, SUNDAY May 3, 2009
NEW MUSIC at the legendary GREEN MILL

curated by Julia Miller

This afternoon I perform (on springboard) in Julia Miller’s microtonal composition for many notes or many players.

Green Mill Jazz Club
4802 N. Broadway Ave.
Chicago, IL 60640

773-878-5552

www.greenmilljazz.com

Admission: $5

Julia wrote (4/29/09):

I’m really happy to announce that we now have a blog!!!

www.newmusicgm.blogspot.com (more…)

THE WHITE AIRPLANE“Soundtrack Album”

BRAZILDISC/PHANTOM SOUNDTRACKS release date: 05/26/09

written, produced, recorded & mixed by Eric Leonardson and Heath Hays
tracks 3 and 11 Leonardson/Friz
except track 9, produced by Darren Callahan (as Teenage Blackout)
mastered by Blaise Barton

Eric Leonardson - springboard, electronics

Heath Hays - laptop, sound design

Anna Friz - melodia

http://www.darrencallahan.com/white_airplane/index.html

This Spring semester my Introduction to Sound students at SAIC produced four one-hour live webcasts. These are now available in the Free Radio SAIC archive.

• Eight Forms of Hair Removal (April 8, 2009)
• Eight Forms of Snare Removal (April 9, 2009)
• Dear Late Night Traveler (April 22, 2009)
• Dream Stream (April 23, 2009)

10 a.m.–6 p.m. Monday, April 20

Listening to Our Planet is a daylong event that celebrates the Earth and its natural beauty and resources. This multi-disciplinary event is a part of Columbia College’s Critical Encounters Earth Week 2009 program, organized under the theme of “Human / Nature”.

Listening to Our Planet will showcase art works by individuals and community groups, including the World Listening Project and the Midwest Society for Acoustic Ecology. Participating departments and programs include the Columbia College English Department and New Millennium Studies program. Raquel Castro’s film, Soundwalkers will be screened, and I will be having a conversation with world renowned author of Wild Soundscapes: Discovering the Voice of the Natural World, and nature sound recordist Bernie Krause.

Listening to Our Planet is free and open to the public.

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Plasticene performs The Gist presented as part of Collaboraction’s 9th Annual SKETCHBOOK Festival, April 16 - May 10

The Building Stage

412 N Carpenter

Chicago, IL

Link for showtimes.

Directed by Mark Comiskey
Created and performed by
Laura Fisher, Michael Macias,
& Brian Shaw
Sound by Eric Leonardson

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Members of the World Listening Project will be on Chicago’s WLUW 88.7 Loyola radio program Something Else hosted by Philip Von Zweck this Sunday night at 10PM Central (GMT -6) on April 5th. Field recordings by WLP members will be aired and news of upcoming events provided.

If you live outside the broadcast radius of WLUW, you can still listen to the Internet stream: http://wluw.streamguys.net/listen.pls

8:00 p.m., Saturday March 28

I perform at Enemy with Daniel Fishkin, daxophone player extraordinaire. The Green Pasture Happiness will open: Aaron Zarzutzki (no-output turntable), Daniel Fandiño (electronics), and Brian Labycz (electronics).

Daniel Fishkin has built and played daxophones of all shapes and sizes since 2004. Daxophone: a flat piece of wood, anchored at one end, and played with a bow.  This German idiophone, invented in 1987 by Hans Reichel, sounds anywhere between a violin or baby.  Live looping can elevate this monophonic instrument into a badger’s choir, or perhaps evoke the mating rituals of the musk-elk.  Daniel’s current interests include improvisation, transformation, Goethe’s Faust, and narrative song-form.

I will perform on Springboard, which has its own crude form of daxophone built into it, along with a variety of coil springs and other readily available materials that have been noted for their remarkable sounds.

Dan’s MySpace profile: www.myspace.com/dandelionfiction

Hans Reichel’s website: www.daxo.de

The Green Pasture Happiness… “is predatory, smarmy, and slaphappy. those who get hypnotized by its dialectic approach to the history of music do not hear what it is really saying. they sincerely believe that the cure for evil is more evil. their violent, tendentious campaigns of malice and malignity are to improvisation what the blitzkrieg was to international diplomacy, by which I mean that they like forcing one to fall into the trap of thinking that all musical literature that opposes diabolism was forged by resentful, unambitious bludgers.”

7:30 p.m., Monday March 30

I perform at Myopic Books with Aaron Zarzutski (objects) and Guillermo Gregorio (reeds)

Plasticene performs in the Objects in Motion Festival, a three week festival of puppetry, toy-theater, and object-based performance opening Saturday, March 14, 2009, at The Building Stage: www.buildingstage.com.

We’ve taken some explorations and put them into a 17-minute low-tech chamber-piece called Light Cycle (featured in Program A) , performed by Mark Comiskey, Brian Shaw, and Laura Fisher, directed by Dexter Bullard, with me providing sound.

Our appearance is shared on Program A with B-LO, Joe Mazza, Sid Yiddish, and Renata Sheppard, plus a weekly featured artist. Currently, we are scheduled to perform on these dates/times:

Saturday, March 14 at 8:00
Thursday, March 19 at 8:00
Saturday, March 21 at 8:00
Thursday, March 26 at 8:00
Saturday, March 28 at 8:00
Thursday, April 2 at 8:00
Saturday, April 4 at 7:00

Visit www.buildingstage.com for tickets, schedule, and information.

Next month there will be another sketch-style piece directed by Mark Comiskey involving video/live interaction appearing at Collaboraction’s 9th Annual Sketchbook Festival: collaboraction.org

Map

I composed music for the world premiere production of Darren Callahan’s The White Airplane, directed by Susan Padveen and performed by the Polarity Ensemble Theatre.The White Airplane will run February 13 - March 22, 2009 at Polarity’s new space in the Josephinum Academy, 1500 N. Bell, Chicago.

Call 1-800-838-3006 for tickets. Join us for opening night, Monday February 16th!

Here is a download link to one song I composed (the link will expire in 14 days).

My compostion includes music created with Anna Friz (melodica, accordion, electronics) in Chicago, June 2008.

Read The White Airplane Reviews

Watch the trailer:
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