NOW Fest Begins at REDCAT This Weekend

Above: Trailer for the New Original Works Festival 2016 at REDCAT.

The first program of the New Original Works (NOW) Festival kicks off this week (July 21-23) at the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (REDCAT), featuring works by Jeepneys, White Boy Scream and Miko Revereza; Rebecca Bruno and Mak Kern; and Emily Mast, who each perform all three nights.

Above: Jeepneys performs this weekend at REDCAT.

Body Ship

CalArts alumna Anna Luisa Petrisko (Music MFA 14)—whose artistic persona, “Jeepneys,” is named after the type of converted World War II jeeps now used as public transportation in the Philippines—brings together visual and performing arts elements as well as cosmic-inspired, hand-painted bodysuits in her experimental work that investigates post-colonial identity.

Petrisko teams up with White Boy Scream (stage name of fellow CalArtian Micaela Tobin [Music MFA 16]), and visual artist Miko Revereza, for Body Ship, a sci-fi opera about sisters who turn their bodies into ships to explore the cosmos.

Video: Rebecca Bruno’s ‘Crave’ was performed at REDCAT’s Studio 2014.

Forest

In Forest, dance artist Rebecca Bruno collaborates with Mak Kern, a visual artist, to build a musical forest made out of chimes for a performance that creates “a kinetic architectural environment of steel instruments and supple movement, enhanced by thoughtful stagecraft and dramaturgy.”

Above: Video: B!RDBRA!N (2012) & ENDE (2014) from Emily Mast.

The Cage is a Stage

Hybrid artist Emily Mast uses elements of visual art, dance and theater in her work. For The Cage is a Stage, she takes inspiration from John Berger’s book, Why Look at Animals? to present a performance that compares art galleries to zoos in order to explore objectification, animism, marginalization and our animal nature.

NOW Fest continues for the next three weeks (Thursdays through Saturdays) with different artists and performers each week.

With additional writing by Leann Lo.