16/17 Subscription Series Announcement

On the Boards is thrilled to announce our 16/17 Subscription Series. From magic mushrooms, to racially-charged, physical stand-up comedy, to the Americana of shape-note singing, to a beautifully strange love duet with an excavator, this season is packed with intellectual and corporeal challenges and delights.

We continue our mission of innovation, equity, and artistic growth this year with continuation of programs designed to build bridges across communities, including the Ticket Bank, the Ambassador Project, Childcare, Studio Suppers, Open Studio, OntheBoards.tv, Performance Production Program, Music, and more.

OtB is known internationally for our constant innovation and stability as our national and global landscape changes, and we plan to keep it that way. See you in 16/17.

16/17 SUBSCRIPTION SERIES

VERDENSTEATRET
BRIDGE OVER MUD
in Association with FuturePerfect Productions
OSLO | THEATER | SEP 22 - 25, 2016
WTF takes on a whole new meaning in this gorgeous and beautifully bizarre work from Norway. This fearless group of cross-disciplinary artists takes over our mainstage with a visually stunning “moveable room,” powered by 195 feet of elevated tracks, 11 motorized vehicles, 60 speakers, and 30 micro-controlled motors. The company literally transports video, sculptures, shadows, screens, and sounds to create a dazzling open-ended imaginary story-space. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

ALAN SUTHERLAND
LITTLE BROWN MUSHROOMS
SEATTLE | DANCE/THEATER | OCT 6 - 9, 2016
Long-standing Seattle artist Alan Sutherland animates his lifelong obsession with mushrooms, with particular focus on the “magic” variety. A long-time butoh artist, this performance marks a 20-year (to the month) anniversary of Sutherland’s first butoh performance. Drawing inspiration from the fantasy/sci-fi children’s book The Wonderful Flight to the Mushroom Planet and including a crackerjack team of artistic collaborators, Sutherland describes Little Brown Mushrooms as a “love letter of thanks to Seattle theater-goers.” SUBSCRIBE NOW.

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ZOE | JUNIPER
CLEAR AND SWEET
SEATTLE | DANCE | OCT 20 - 23, 2016
Duo Zoe Scofield (choreographer) and Juniper Shuey (videography) return to OtB with a powerful and visually stunning search for redemption. The uniquely American folk tradition of Shape Note Singing is incorporated live into this physically demanding new work. Singers join the dancers and vice versa in a fascinating world of constantly shifting perspectives. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

EZRA DICKINSON
PSYCHIC RADIO STAR
SEATTLE | DANCE | NOV 3 - 6, 2016
“I’m famous too. I’m a psychic radio star.” Rising star choreographer and performer Ezra Dickinson builds a large-scale piece around the evocative words of his schizophrenic mother. Structured around complicated familial memories and imagined personalities, Dickinson melds sculpture, dance, animation, and sound in an unblinking and tender look at mental illness in the USA.
SUBSCRIBE NOW.

MARKEITH WILEY
IT'S NOT TOO LATE
SEATTLE | DANCE | NOV 16 - 20, 2016
Performer Markeith Wiley channels the dark humor of comedian Paul Mooney in this fast-paced and ruthless new work merging stand-up comedy, theater, and physicality. Known in Seattle as a choreographer and dancer, Wiley unveils a new no-holds barred persona as an engaging and brutally direct talk show host, accompanied by live music and a rotating cast of guests. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

JEROME A. PARKER | ANDREW RUSSELL
HOUSE OF DINAH
SEATTLE | THEATER | DEC 7 - 11, 2016
Dinah Washington's voice is God for NYC playwright Jerome A. Parker and Seattle director Andrew Russell, and in this intergenerational story of five Black queens. Jean Genet meets Paris is Burning in a world of religious drag ritual, where Washington’s music reigns supreme and survival is the only option. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

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TIAGO RODRIGUES/TEATRO NACIONAL D. MARIA II
BY HEART
LISBON | THEATER | JAN 12 - 15, 2017
Lisbon’s bad boy of theater brings a literal poetic revolution to the stage in a the piece centered around resistance and the strength of poetry when committed to human memory. George Steiner, Ray Bradbury, and William Shakespeare play vital roles in this timely piece that only comes to an end when all the soldiers know the poem by heart. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

GEUMHYUNG JEONG
CPR PRACTICE* | JAN 25 - 26, 2017
OIL PRESSURE VIBRATOR* | JAN 28 - 29, 2017
SEOUL | DANCE
Trained as a dancer and puppeteer, Korean artist Geumhyung Jeong makes beautifully strange and compelling work centered around the human body and inanimate objects. Physical desire mixes uneasily with machinery in a sensual games of love and death featuring a CPR dummy and an excavator.
*Oil Pressure Vibrator will be performed at OtB. CPR Practice will be performed at an off-site location, TBD.
SUBSCRIBE NOW.

TIM SMITH-STEWART | JEFFREY AZEVEDO
AWAITING OBLIVION - TEMPORARY SOLUTIONS FOR SURVIVING THE DYSTOPIAN FUTURE WE FIND OURSELVES WITHIN AT PRESENT
SEATTLE | THEATER | FEB 23 - 26, 2017
An anonymous street artist (AO) tasks Tim and Jeffrey with the creation of a performance as a way of sharing solutions for existing within a collapsing empire. Using street art and secret messages in an updated take on the Fluxus movement of the 60’s, the artists attempt to unravel the challenges of staying alive and making relevant art while surrounded by a crumbling political system. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

JESSICA JOBARIS & GENERAL MAGIC
A GREAT HUNGER
SEATTLE | DANCE | MAR 16 - 19, 2017
A band of intergenerational vagabonds comes together in a Human Be-In built for 2017 as the collective unconscious crashes headlong into Broadway musicals, ghosts, wild dancing, total vulnerability, and Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche. Teetering on the verge of hilarious and tragic, the intergenerational cast tries to heal itself and the audience by any and all means necessary. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

HEATHER KRAVAS
VISIONS OF BEAUTY
SEATTLE | DANCE | MAR 30 - APR 2, 2017
Nine male-identifying performers work in unison around a series of daunting and demeaning tasks. Stomping, shaking, and kicking, they confront the complexities that arise when male conformity is practiced and enforced. Originally choreographed for nine women and performed as The Green Surround, creator Heather Kravas now flips the script to find a more layered meaning in beauty. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

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LARS JAN/EARLY MORNING OPERA
THE INSTITUTE OF MEMORY (TIME)
LOS ANGELES | THEATER | APR 20 - 23, 2017
Artist Lars Jan tries to unravel the truth surrounding his father, an Polish-born Cold War operative and privacy-obsessed misanthrope. Archival wire-tap transmissions, erased memories, and MRI brain scans create a blurry portrait of a human being, raising universal questions around privacy, memory, and fatherhood. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

KRISTEN KOSMAS | PAUL WILLIS | PETER KSANDER
THE PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC OF VALERIE
SEATTLE | THEATER | MAY 4 - 7, 2017
Responding to the urgent need for good news and inspired by comic books, science fiction, the dharma, Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, the writings of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvdensky, and the recent and ongoing onslaught of horrific world events, The People’s Republic of Valerie is part boot-camp space-travel memoir and part how-to manual for the layperson to realize a paradise. Even if only in her own mind. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

RASHAUN MITCHELL | SILAS RIENER | CHARLES ATLAS
TESSERACT
NYC | DANCE/FILM | MAY 18 - 21, 2017
Two incredible movers join forces with a dance filmmaker in a 3-part grand experiment that is part 3D film, part gallery installation, and part live performance. Part 1 explores 3D film, compiling 6 disparate scenes of choreography with 7 dancers into one multi-faceted film. Part 2, performed in a gallery space, expands on a portion of the film. Interacting with large abstracted objects, the dancers utilize the behavior of the live audience in real-time; the audience behavior acting as source material for each dancer. In the live performance of Part 3, powerful and precise choreography, created and performed by former Merce Cunningham dancers Mitchell and Riener is mixed and projected live by longtime Cunningham collaborator Charles Atlas, allowing for up-close and tilted visions of bodies in movement. Illusions become reality as technology allows for new ways of seeing. SUBSCRIBE NOW.

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Projects in our season are curated by OtB's artistic director, 1-2 years prior to being seen in Seattle.

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16/17 Subscription Series Announcement