14/15 Season Announcement

It's here, our 14/15 season lineup! Bracketed by two very different community events (Berlin/Nottingham’s Gob Squad and Detroit's Complex Movements), the season embraces community, individual responsibility, and finding new ways to delight in viewing and changing your world. Live music features prominently in the new season, from jazz to hip-hop to electronica to Bach, while new environments and structures invite you to change your perspective – from Complex Movement’s “pod installations” to Mariano Pensotti’s gorgeous split-level stage to Michelle Ellsworth’s intimate living-room performances. This next season is a season of progress and change, and we couldn’t be more excited about the future.

Visit our subscription page to learn more about the different ways to subscribe to our 14/15 season!

Antoine Defoort & Halory Goerger | Germinal
LILLE/GHENT | THEATER | SEP 25 – 28, 2014
This super-charming French/Belgian company uses the conceit and materials of theater as a metaphor for human evolution. Four unassuming performers deliberately construct a world from the ground up, using simple theater technologic tricks. The performers collectively invent telepathy, speech, music, philosophy, and more, building the very foundations of human interaction. Witty and intelligent, Germinal is one of the most talked-about pieces on the international performance circuit. Directors Defoort and Goerger move freely and seamlessly between visual art, music, theater, and interactive performance. This will be their first time in Seattle. TOP

Murphy/Lachow Company | The Man Who Can Forget Anything
NYC/SEATTLE | THEATER | OCT 9 – 12, 2014
Director/choreographer Megan Murphy and filmmaker Gregg Lachow have been making performance together for 25 years, most notably as performance company Run/Remain. They return to On the Boards with a continuation of their particular vision – a next-generation familial mash-up of film, music, dance and theater – delving into memory, real and imagined love, aging, leaps of faith and bouts of vertigo. Featuring Murphy, Lachow, veteran performer/musician Maggie Brown, Seattle lyrical-force Sam Lachow (whose own rap career is blowing up in the NW), and dancer Marissa Neiderhauser. TOP

Amy O’Neal | Opposing Forces
SEATTLE | DANCE | OCT 23 – 26, 2014
Choreographer O’Neal turns her eye on dance and gender stereotypes with a new piece made for seven B-Boys (breakdancers) from different Seattle crews. O’Neal pries apart the perceptions of masculinity/femininity and the expectations of gender conformity in B-Boy culture in this mix of urban dance and sociological research. O’Neal has performed at OtB many times with her own work; Opposing Forces marks her first large-scale performance in a strictly choreographic role. Opposing Forces was commissioned and supported through OtB’s Performance Production Program. TOP

Tere O’Connor | BLEED
NYC | DANCE | THU - FRI | NOV 20 – 21, 2014 | On the Boards

Tere O'Conner | POEM and SECRET MARY | SAT | NOV 22, 2014 | On the Boards

Velocity Open Forum celebrating the work of Tere O’Connor NOV 17 – 23 | Velocity Dance Center | in partnership with On the Boards.

Influential American choreographer Tere O’Connor distills three distinct dances into one masterpiece of movement. Using choreography as a mirror of human consciousness, BLEED pulls from a myriad of movement sources; crossing boundaries from Renaissance courtliness to ballet to tribalism to children’s play, allowing the audience to find their own similarities/differences and create their own meaning. A true choreographer’s choreographer, Tere O’Connor has been making and teaching dance for over three decades. This will be the first time his company work will be seen in Seattle. TOP

Ahamefule Oluo | Now I’m Fine
SEATTLE | MUSIC/THEATER | DEC 4 – 7, 2014
Comedian/storyteller/musician Ahamefule Oluo leads a grand-scale experimental pop opera about keeping it together. Drawing from darkly funny real-life stories about illness, despair, and regeneration, Now I’m Fine features a 17-piece orchestra and a spectacular cast of local performers including Evan Flory-Barnes, D’Vonne Lewis and okanomodé SoulChilde. This will be Oluo’s OtB mainstage debut. Now I’m Fine is supported by OtB’s Performance Production Program.. TOP

Frank Boyd | The Holler Sessions
NYC/SEATTLE | THEATER | JAN 8 – 11 & 15 – 18, 2015
Powerhouse artist Frank Boyd presents an intimate theatrical performance staged as a live jazz radio show dedicated to inspiring a visceral and emotional experience of jazz. Ray – an explosive Kansas City DJ who is relatively new to jazz – broadcasts his experiences of the music live with an eccentric passion and total irreverence. The show includes loud music, profanity, poetry, silence, improvisation and an unwavering belief in the power of jazz music. Written and performed by recent Seattle transplant Frank Boyd, a magnetic performer and member of Elevator Repair Service and the TEAM (NYC). TOP

Mariano Pensotti | Cineastas
BUENOS AIRES | THEATER/FILM | JAN 29 – FEB 1, 2015
Argentinian auteur Mariano Pensotti returns to Seattle with the story of four filmmakers, four films, and a year in Buenos Aires. Film influences real life and fiction influences reality (and vice versa), as Pensotti simultaneously follows the personal lives of the filmmakers and the films they are creating. Pensotti is known for his ingenious technical tricks; Cineastas features a bi-level stage which allows the audience to experience two realities at once. Pensotti first visited OtB in 2012 with El pasado es un animal grotesco. TOP

Richard Maxwell/New York City Players | The Evening
NYC | THEATER | FEB 19 – 22, 2015
The king of experimental NYC theater revisits Seattle with a brand-new piece co-commissioned by OtB. Tragic, comic, and elegiac, The Evening probes the lives, desires, and dreams of three characters inside a dive-bar setting: a fighter past his prime, his manager, and a prostitute. The show features a small cast including veteran NYCP performers Jim Fletcher and Brian Mendes, with a live band and set design by Sascha van Riel. Maxwell last visited OtB in 2003 with the groundbreaking Drummer Wanted. Maxwell was the recipient of the 2013 Spalding Gray Award (jointly awarded by The Walker Performing Arts Center, On the Boards, The Warhol Museum, and Performance Space 122). The Evening is an OtB commission. TOP

Kyle Abraham/Abraham.In.Motion | When the Wolves Came In
PRESENTED AT THE MOORE THEATER in partnership with Seattle Theatre Group
NYC | DANCE | MAR 4 – 5, 2015
On the Boards teams with Seattle Theatre Group to present rapidly rising star choreographer Kyle Abraham in a new ensemble work. Abraham’s intellectual, civic-minded, and physically graceful work draws on themes of human emancipation, social structures, queer urban dance, and the powerful protest music of Max Roach. Abraham was a recipient of a 2013 MacArthur Fellowship. He was last seen at OtB in 2012 with the wildly popular Live! The Realest MC. Abraham was awarded a summer 2014 residency at OtB. When the Wolves Came In is supported by OtB’s Performance Production Program. TOP

Kate Wallich/The YC | Splurge Land
SEATTLE | DANCE | APR 2 – 5, 2015
Up-and-coming choreographer Wallich creates her first large evening-length work at OtB with the help of Seattle “slacker artist” JD Banke, backed by the cool electronic music of Johnny Goss (Cock & Swan). Wallich’s mesmerizing brand of uber-contemporary movement is performed by dancers Lavinia Vago (Rubberband, The YC), Matt Drews (Saint Genet, tEETH), Waldean Nelson (605 Collective, Camille A. Brown) and Wallich herself. Splurge Land plumbs the highs, lows, hopes and fears of the post-internet generation. Splurge Land is commissioned and supported by OtB’s Performance Production Program. TOP

Complex Movements | Beware of the Dandelions
DETROIT | INTERACTIVE THEATER/MUSIC | APR 16 – 19 & MAY 7 - 10, 2015
This groundbreaking Detroit collective is changing the face of art in the 21st century. Complex Movements is a group of self-described sci-fi hip hop technological geeks with a passion for social change. Performances incorporating music, video projection, interactive technology and audience participation/power take place in a “pod” built on the OtB stage. Each performance accommodates 35 – 40 people. The audience and the company work together to create real-time art using music, tech, imagination, and social justice strategies. Performances take place in mid-April and again in early May, with the company using the interim to connect with local community leaders, working together to identify local issues and give the public tools for possible change. Complex Movements is: graphic designer/fine artist Wesley Taylor, music producer/filmmaker Waajeed, hip-hop lyricist/activist Invincible, and creative technologist Carlos (L05) Garcia. TOP

BONUS EVENTS
SUBSCRIBER APPRECIATION EVENT | SEASON KICKOFF
Gob Squad | Super Night Shot
BERLIN/NOTTINGHAM | THEATER/FILM/PERFORMANCE ART
*One night only! SAT, SEP 6, 2014*
Terrifically playful and hyper-intelligent German/British art collective returns to OtB with a one-night, spectacular, interactive performance to kickstart our season. The public become co-stars in a movie (filmed on-location one hour before showtime) celebrating unplanned meetings with strangers and delighting in the randomness of urban existence. The banality of everyday life will be transformed into the glamour and glitz of a big screen blockbuster. The lucky audience will cheer on the stars as they await the screening of the film in the OtB beer garden. Advance tickets for this one-night event will only be available to OtB subscribers. TOP

YEAR-LONG PROJECTS
2 ARTISTS EXPERIMENT WITH PERSPECTIVE AND PERFORMANCE LOCATION
Michelle Ellsworth | Clytigation #1, #2, & #3
BOULDER | DANCE/THEATER
SEASON-LONG PERFORMANCE
Polymath Ellsworth returns to OtB for the third time with a series of pieces meant for an intimate audience. Ellsworth turns her considerable genius, humor, and physicality on the Oresteia, specifically: what happens to Clytemnestra after she kills Agamemnon? This series incorporates video processing, surveillance videos, modern and ancient wars, tiny dances, Ellsworth’s endearing neuroticism, and a romantic pas de deux with a quad-copter. Ellsworth was last seen at OtB in 2012 with Phone Homer. TOP

Erin Jorgensen | Six
SEATTLE | MUSIC/PERFORMANCE
SEASON-LONG PERFORMANCE
Marimbist/composer/OtB employee Erin Jorgensen presents a series of six free concerts, to be held at different times of day in different locations around OtB. The Bach cello suites and their corresponding moods and keys are the jumping-off place for music and confidentialities; creating small breaks in the mundanity of everyday life. Jorgensen was last seen at OtB in a 2012’s Redemption, a collaboration with sound engineer Steve Fisk. TOP

*Program subject to change.

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14/15 Season Announcement