JACK will present the acclaimed performance collective, Sister Sylvester, with their new work, They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain which will preview on Thursday, September 3rd and open on Friday, September 4th at JACK (505 1/2 Waverly Ave in Brooklyn). The company’s New York premiere will run through September 19th. They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain, a multi-faceted piece, directed by Kathryn Hamilton, examines the ties between art and rebellion. The New York Times chose Sister Sylvester’s recent work, Dead Behind These Eyes as a critic’s pick and Time Out called their The Maids’ The Maids “genuinely subversive.” They Are Gone But Here I Must Remain, will be performed September 3rd, open on September 4th and continue September 5th, 10th, 11th, 12th, 17th, 18th and 19th at 8PM. Tickets are $20 and are on sale at: http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/2027329 or by calling 1-800-838-3006.
They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain is an original multi-disciplinary performance by Sister Sylvester. Based on firsthand interviews and research, it charts the story of a film that caused a revolution. Using Peter Whitehead’s 1969 cult film, The Fall, and its rumored influence on international political activism in the 1970s, it combines firsthand interviews and the company’s blend of video and movement-based performance. Staged within the genre of performance lectures, the play explores the connections between image and action, artist and activist.
Several years ago, director Kathryn Hamilton began to explore a provocative story: that British director Peter Whitehead’s seldom-seen 1968 film The Fall inspired the 1974 student occupations in Athens that forced the junta to cede power and restored democracy to Greece. Based on interviews with leaders of the Columbia University occupation by the SDS in 1968 (captured in the film), Peter Whitehead makes the case between art and politics, utopianism and nihilism, and the potential for art to effect social change. They Are Gone And Here Must I Remain uses these materials, along with the experiences of the artists involved to question the point of contact between the between the image and action.
They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain features Kathryn Hamilton, Kelsea Martin and Cyrus Moshrefi.
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SISTER SYLVESTER is a New York based company which uses reality and fiction together to create performances based in contemporary reality. Formed in 2008, they have created work in both site-specific venues as well as in theaters, keeping an investigation of the audience-performer relationship at the heart of their practice. Their work is concerned with power, how it is wielded within our society, and how language becomes a weapon in enforcing those hierarchies. They invite disruption into both the performance and the process, and look for dissonance and difficulty in text, image and sound.
KATHRYN HAMILTON is a performance maker based in New York and Instanbul. She is the founder and director of the New York-based company Sister Sylvester, and a member of Köşe, an art space in Istanbul. American Theatre Magazine highlighted Sister Sylvester as one of fourteen ‘theatrical plans to change the world’ in 2014. Recent productions include The Maids’ The Maids at Abrons Arts Center; The Fall at The Park Avenue Armory, as part of the Under Construction Series; Dead Behind These Eyes (NYT critic’s pick) at Sing Sing Karaoke; Science Fiction at Köşe. Kathryn has received grants from LMCC, BAC, the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and has been a resident at Salem Art Works; San Sebastian European City of Culture; Park Avenue Armory; Flux Factory, Queens; and Spread Art, Detroit, among others. She also writes journalism about art and politics under various pen names.
PETER LORIMER WHITEHEAD (b. 1937) grew up in Liverpool and London. He attended Cambridge University and later the Slade, where he began working with film. In 1965 he released Wholly Communion a feature length film of the International Poetry Incarnation, a poetry happening organized by Allen Ginsberg. The Benefit of the Doubt (1967) explores Peter Brook’s anti-Vietnam War play US. He worked with various bands making both feature-length films (like the Rolling Stones’“Charlie is My Darling (1966)), as well as music shorts, leading Whitehead to be dubbed the “godfather of the music video.” In 1967, he released his cult documentary Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London, featuring interviews with Michael Caine, David Hockney, and Vanessa Redgrave and original performances by the Rolling Stones, The Animals, and Pink Floyd. Following the poor reception of The Fall (1969) he retreated from filmmaking until 1973’s Daddy, a collaboration with visual artist Niki de Saint Phalle. Today, Whitehead continues working as a novelist and occasional filmmaker. Retrospectives of his work have been seen around the world since 2006.
They Are Gone But Here Must I Remain is sponsored, in part, by the Greater New York Arts Development Fund of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC). It was developed over two residencies: The Park Avenue Armory (invited guest by Sasha Frere-Jones), where it was shown as as a part of the Armory’s “Under Construction Series” in November 2014 and a developmental residency from KÖŞE performance space in Istanbul, Turkey. Additional support came from the Mental Insight Foundation.
JACK is located at 505 1/2 Waverly Ave, Brooklyn NY 11238 between Fulton St. and Atlantic Ave. in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn and is a 15-minute walk from BAM or the Barclay’s Center. It is accessible by taking the C train to the Clinton-Washington stop, one block away from JACK, or the G train to Clinton-Washington, a few blocks away. There is also free street parking available on Waverly Ave.