Liminal presents Fassbinder

Liminal presents Rainer Werner Fassbinder's BLOOD ON THE CAT'S NECK (AKA MARILYN MONROE CONTRE LES VAMPIRES).

One weekend only:

Thursday, December 8 at 7:30
Friday, December 9 at 7:30 & 9:30
Saturday, December 10 at 7:30 & 9:30
Sunday, December 11 at 5:30 & 7:30

at Disjecta Gallery  
8371 N Interstate Ave, Portland OR

Buy tickets now.
 

Celebrate the holiday season this December with Liminal's immersive opera update of Fassbinder's 1972 black comedy for the stage.  

This December 8-11, Liminal fights back with Marilyn Monroe contre les vampires, an operatic multimedia installation performance of a 1972 darkly comic anti-establishment play written by influential enfant terrible filmmaker Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Itself influenced by Arthur Schnitzler's La Ronde, sci-fi comics, and copious alcohol use, Fassbinder's Marilyn Monroe contre les vampires is a hilarious and unflinching stab at all classes of society.

In this (literally) biting social satire, Phoebe Zeitgeist is a singing alien sent to Earth to report back an eyewitness account of human democracy in action. She encounters characters from all areas of life who educate her well on what it means to be human. However, Phoebe has a problem: she learns our words, but she still can't figure US out. Marilyn Monroe drives a fever pitch, culminating in the sexiest version of Hegel's Science of Logic ever set to music. Beer and wine will be served.

Liminal combines performance art, video and opera into a unique, immersive experience. A hybrid of theatre and gallery installation, of live performance and video, there is no central stage and audiences are invited to walk around the 360-degree videoscape and performance (seating is provided for those needing it). The viewer encounters both live and recorded performers: a ghostly ensemble of video actors projected onto screens throughout the space, interacting with each other, with Phoebe and with the audience to create a unique video-opera experience. 

Also: Vampires.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: substance abuse, holiday blues, sexual harassment, semiotics, societal complacency, firearms, fetishes, structuralism, choking, privileged classes behaving badly, blood sucking, suicide, Hegelian dialectics.

Featuring Fassbinder zines by Going Places

featuring Carissa Burkett (soprano) as Phoebe Zeitgeist 

with Linda Austin, Todd Van Voris, Carla Grant, Wayne Haythorn, Eleanor Johnson, Don Kern, Alex Reagan, Danielle Ross, and introducing Evan Corcoran as Donald J. Trump

written by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
translated by Denis Calandra
direction by John Berendzen
developed by John Berendzen and the ensemble
costume by Manot VonRocket and Faerin Millington
original music by John Berendzen
video and tech by Rory Breshears, Ben Purdy, Sharon Porter, Jared Lee

Liminal presents [OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE]

For Immediate Release
Portland, Oregon USA

     [ OFFENDING THE AUDIENCE]

Get Tickets Here.

November 6-22   7:30pm Friday, Saturday, Sunday; also 2:30pm Sunday
At Action/Adventure, 1050 SE Clinton, Portland, OregonUSA 
$10-25 sliding scale     $8 student-artist-industry     mature content

In 1965, Peter Handke began work on the seminal work of anti-theatre, Offending the Audience: a stripped-down, genre-defying and hilarious verbal happening that shook the establishment of the day. 50 years later, Portland performance group Liminal creates an original multidisciplinary adaptation, reworking Handke's avant-garde classic for the modern age of pan-surveillance and fractured media self-reflections.

In a fierce new adaptation that takes Handke's experiments into the 21st century, Seattle-based polymath Misha Neininger and John Berendzen orchestrate a complex musical, visual and conceptual score out of the original bare-bones text: sonically, rhythmic sung-spoken textual textures interact with an electronic soundscape; surveillance technology confronts the audience fumbling with messy feedback loops in the dark.

This Gesamtkunstwerk will be performed and in German and English. There may or may not be subtitles. The ghosts of Edward Snowden, Rosa Parks and Samuel Beckett may perform acts of defiance and nude interpretive dances. WARNING: They really, really dance.

Will you be offended? Answers Handke, "You don't have to feel offended. You were warned in advance." Offending is one way to relate, adds Berendzen. "No one is offended by anything in the theatre anymore. Either way that's not the point. We want to democratize the space between us and the audience, a level playing field. We want you to feel involved."  

Neininger came all the way from Berlin to find new audiences: “There is a real buzz from swarms of cyborg insects in the Northwest. People are getting pissed off. I watched people swatting drones with flip-flops. But who knows, the audience may turn out to be a dismal failure. For the audience to be a smashing success it needs to balance the fear of surveillance with the desire to be seen.”

In the end you may ask yourself: How do you look back at whoever is looking at you? 

written and directed by Misha Neininger and John Berendzen
media and surveillance art by Misha Neininger
sound design and music direction by John Berendzen 
electronic smart costumes by Jenny Ampersand
performed by Misha Neininger with returning founding member Amanda Boekelheide and Starr Ahrens, Evan Corcoran,  Carla Grant and Alex Reagan.  

Offending the Audience is the third installment in this year's series on Peter Handke, following the premiere of Radioplay I (Hand2Mouth, June 2015) and The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld (Imago Soiree, July 2015)"Liminal's been waiting twenty years to interpret this piece. Finally, we think we're ready." says Berendzen. Adds Neininger:

Sie werden kein Schauspiel sehen.
  There will be no play.
Ihre Schaulust wird nicht befriedigt werden.
   Everything will be open and transparent.

About Peter Handke
Best known for his screenwriting collaborations with Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire, Wrong Move), Austrian Peter Handke was a major voice among the anti-theatre experiments of the latter 20th century, along with Stein, Beckett, Fassbinder, Foreman and other theatrical subversives. Simultaneously linguistic clown and ontological terrorist, he eviscerates language itself in order to expose its comic failings, giddily exploding false theatricalities in order to reveal beneath the pure presence of the raw, exhilarating and liberating liveness of the performance event. This series marks Liminal's third plunge into the depths of Handke, following 1998's Handke Salmagundi (an amalgam of early writings) and The Hour We Knew Nothing Of Each Other (2000), a completely silent play.

About Liminal
Liminal is a nonprofit Portland-based network of theatre, performing, and media artists. Liminal is known both for its uniquely staged plays (as in 2013's OUR TOWN), and also for its large-scale live walk-through performance installations (as in 2012's Liminal presents Gertrude Stein). Liminal was founded in Portland in 1997 and has produced nineteen original full-scale projects. Liminal has received numerous Portland Critics Circle (Drammy) awards, including Best Original Production (2000, 2003, and 2005); Best Choreography (2003); Best Sound Design and Best Music Direction (2000 and 2003).

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Liminal presents e.e.cummings' SANTA, announces Backdoor Theater residency

For Immediate Release

Attn:  Arts & Theatre

Portland, ORE

Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha! There ain't no Santa Claus!" - e.e. cummings

Liminal wants to save Christmas. From itself. Launching off of e.e.cummings' texts Santa Claus (1946), The Christmas Tree (1920), and others, Liminal once again tackles the big issues: life, death, sex, and online shopping. 
 
Equal parts modern mystery play (casting Santa as Joe Everyman), anti-commercial anti-capitalist allegory (Death as the archetypal one-percenter robber baron), and good clean modernist holiday shenanigans (colors! line and form! conceptual constructs!), SANTA paints an alternate universe in which Death and Santa are twins separated at birth and Santa's home life turns out to be far more complicated than we thought. Metaphysical hijinks ensue when Death tricks Santa into endorsing products that don't quite exist. 
 
Will Santa ever discover his true secret identity? Is it still poetry if it doesn't rhyme? Do you really need to see A Christmas Carol  a fourth time? 
 
Recommended for ages 13 and up.

December 4-21; Thurs - Sun 7:30pm; Sun also 3pm; No show on December 13.
At the The Backdoor Theater, 4319 SE Hawthorne
$15-25 sliding scale
Reservations: 503 567 8309

liminalgroup.org  | facebook.com/liminalpdx
 
 
This production, Liminal's most intimate, features ensemble members Jeff Marchant as SANTA; Leo Daedalus (host of The Late Now) as DEATH; alto Carla Grant in a singing role as WOMAN; Alex Reagan as the CROWD; and introducing Delilah Scanlon (age 9 1/2) as CHILD. Sumi Wu (Imago) designs costume; Ben Purdy (defunkt, NWCT) ceates a dimensional video landscape as the set; and Rory Breshears (Rocky Horror Show) designs lighting.
 
Liminal co-founder and artistic co-director John Berendzen directs and composes music.
 
Liminal has been awarded a Winter Residency at The Backdoor Theatre, the home of their friends at defunkt theatre. 
 
 About Liminal
 Liminal is a nonprofit Portland-based network of theatre, performing, and media artists. Liminal is known both for its uniquely staged plays (as in 2013's OUR TOWN), and also for its large-scale live walk-through performance installations (as in 2012's Liminal presents Gertrude Stein).
 
Liminal was founded in Portland in 1997 and has produced eighteen original full-scale projects. Liminal has received numerous Portland Critics Circle (Drammy) awards, including Best Original Production (2000, 2003, and 2005); Best Sound Design and Best Music Direction (2000 and 2003).
 
“Listen; there's a hell of a good universe next door: let's go.” - e.e.cummings

Liminal presents Our Town, announces Headwaters Residency

For Immediate Release

A multimedia, multi-level makeover of the American classic.

“Enjoy your ice cream while it is on your plate” - Thornton Wilder

Portland’s most experimental performance troupe enters the ring with America’s best-loved play. In this multimedia, multi-level flashback of psychedelic barbershop Americana, Liminal gives the American Dream a much-needed update. This is not your father’s Our Town, recommended for ages 14 and over.

Liminal brings together the créme of Portland theatre, visual, and multimedia artists. Portland art-comedy darling Leo Daedalus (host of The Late Now) leads as The Stage Manager. Introducing Jahnavi Caldwell-Green as Emily Webb, andCorey O’Hara as George Gibbs.  A singing cast features Jeff Marchant, Carla Grant, Alex Reagan, Leslie Finch, Rebecca Lowe, Wayne Haythorn, and Nathan Hansen, and . Jen Raynak (PCPA), Ben Purdy (defunkt, NWCT), and kollodi collaborate on sound, media, and visual design. John Berendzen directs.

Liminal has also been awarded a Fall Residency at The Headwaters, where last year P.E.T.E.’s R3 played to acclaim. 

November  14 to December 1, 2013 - Wed, Thurs, Fri, Sat 7:30pm; Sun 3pm
(no show on Thanksgiving)

At The Headwaters, 55 NE Farragut #9

$12-25 sliding scale   |  503 567 8309  |  liminalgroup.org

Liminal Presents Gertrude Stein

For Immediate Release

A part of the March Music Moderne 2012 festival, Liminal performance group curatesLiminal presents Gertrude Stein, an immersive multimedia performance installation in response to the writings of 20th century modernist master Gertrude Stein. Celebrating the sensual musicality of Stein’s own spoken language, as well as many of the musical settings of her texts, Liminal again brings together the best of Portland’s diverse arts scenes. Luminaries from every discipline join forces to create a total sensory music experience in a warehouse performance environment.

Virgil Thomson’s Capital Capitals becomes a video-opera in the hands of Leo and Anna Daedalus; director Camille Cettina and composer John Berendzen premier One Dancing, an original music-theatre piece based on Stein’s portrait of Isadora Duncan; Doug Theriault(sound) and Stephen Miller (video) turn Stein’s Plays into a media environment, David Abel performs ambulatory readings of her early works, and Sandra Gibbons shows her Tender Buttons series of comic panels. Other collaborators include JoAnn Johnson (performance), Margie Boule and Andre Flynn (voice), Stephen Alexander (piano), Bryan Markovitz and Ben Purdy (installation), Jen Raynak (sound), James Yeary (performative bartending), and many more.

March 22, 23, 24: 7:30-11:30 pm

Liminal space: 340 SE 6th at Oak

503 567 8309

$12-25 sliding scale

Advance tickets available at Brown Paper Tickets.

A part of March Music Moderne.

Funded with support from the Regional Arts and Culture Council.

Space provided by happylucky, inc.

Beverages by Bengerminz Premium Vodka and Ninkasi Brewing Company.