Bellona, Destroyer of Cities: A performance work by Jay Scheib

Friday, May 13 and Saturday May 14,  7:30 pm
Sunday, May 15,  2:00 pm
Institute of Contemporary Art, 100 Northern Avenue, Boston (map)

MIT Professor Jay Scheib, recipient of a 2011 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation and named one of 25 artists who will shape the next 25 years of theater by American Theater Magazine, returned to the ICA stage with a new work, based on Samuel R. Delany’s epic science fiction novel, DhalgrenBellona is part two of Simulated Cities/Simulated Systems, Scheib’s trilogy of multimedia performance works.

Bellona, a once illustrious city, has been decimated by a mysterious cataclysmic event, leaving it all but forgotten.  Its people try to understand why buildings repeatedly burst into flames and city streets appear to rearrange themselves, citing race-related violence and a social experiment gone wrong.  A parable of the dangers facing the modern American city,Bellona, Destroyer of Cities explores the shaping of space to express complex issues of race, gender, and sexuality. The production combines passages from Delaney’s novel with original material and video and photography by Scheib and artist Carrie Mae Weems.

Bellona, Destroyer of Cities was presented as part of Emerging America, the second annual theater festival, co-presented with American Repertory Theater and the Huntington Theatre Company, launching the new American voices of tomorrow.


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JAY SCHEIB
WEBSITE

Jay Scheib, Associate Professor of Music and Theater Arts
Designer and Director of Bellona: Destroyer of Cities
May 13-15, 2011

Jay Scheib, Associate Professor of Music and Theater Arts at MIT, a recipient of a prestigious 2011 fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, has been named by American Theater Magazine as one of the 25 theater artists who will shape the next 25 years of American theater. Writer, director and designer of plays, operas and installations, his work has been presented throughout Europe and the United States. In 2009, Time Out New York listed him the Best New York Theater Director, commenting, “Mixing multimedia with deadpan-cool (and very sexy) actors, Scheib is forging new ways of seeing drama. In addition to his theater productions, his collaboration with punk rock ensemble World/Inferno Friendship Society, Addicted to Bad Ideas, toured to numerous venues around the world. He has recently collaborated with his MIT colleague, Evan Ziporyn, on the staging of Ziporyn’s A House in Bali in New York and Boston.