Andrew Schneider

OBIE award-winning performer, writer and interactive-electronics artist Andrew Schneider and recurring collaborators present their original theatrical work NERVOUS/SYSTEM to the MIT community during their two-part residency in July and November 2018.

NERVOUS/SYSTEM is the third project in a triptych of new performance works by Schneider and Company with a core ensemble of collaborators (following YOUARENOWHERE and AFTER) that create rapid-fire existential meditations using physics lectures, pop culture and personal revelations to dissect subjects ranging from quantum mechanics and parallel universes to missed connections and AA recovery steps. Using an array of complex visual and aural effects to produce a fluid, shifting landscape of sensory overload, these three projects transform the physical performance space and warp linear time to short-circuit preconceived notions of individual perspective and what it means to be here now.

NERVOUS/SYSTEM specifically follows the trajectories of seven individual and entirely disparate narratives throughout the history of the planet and explores how interconnected all events truly are. Borrowing concepts from physics and philosophy like loop gravity, eternalism and block time, the narrative structure of NERVOUS/SYSTEM attempts to collapse linear time, putting effect before cause and pushing us to think about our realities and how we as humans affect one another in profoundly new ways.

The residency culminates in the premiere of NERVOUS/SYSTEM, running November 9–11, 2018 in Building W97. Schneider’s collaboration with MIT Theater’s Joshua Higgason includes class visits and public programs ranging from post-show talkbacks with students to panels with faculty members. Following its premiere at MIT, NERVOUS/SYSTEM is presented at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) December 12–15, 2018 as part of the 2018 New Wave Festival.

Andrew Schneider comes to MIT as part of the 2018-19 MIT Performing Series, a prototyping and presenting series curated by Jay Scheib, professor for Music and Theater Arts, and presented by the MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology, and supported in part by the Council for Arts at MIT. MIT Performing promotes a research based artistic practice and serves as a new platform for contemporary performance.

This artist residency was supported by the Abramowitz Memorial Lectureship Fund. 

Joshua Higgason, Technical Instructor, Music and Theater Arts, MIT

Andrew Schneider is an OBIE award-winning, Drama Desk nominated performer, writer and interactive-electronics artist creating original works for theater, video and installation since 2003. Based in Brooklyn, New York, Schneider creates and performs original performance works, builds interactive electronic art works and installations, and was a Wooster Group company member (video/performer) from 2007-2014.

Rooted at the intersection of performance and technology, Schneider’s work critically investigates our over-dependence on being perpetually connected in an always-on world.

Schneider’s original performance work in NYC includes AFTER (2018 – Under the Radar Festival, The Public Theater); YOUARENOWHERE (2015 OBIE award – The Invisible Dog, 2016 Drama Desk nom – 3LD); DANCE/FIELD (2014 – Dance Roulette); TIDAL (2013 – River to River festival); WOW+FLUTTER (2010 – The Chocolate Factory Theater); five AVANT-GARDE-ARAMA! works (2005-2013 – PS122); PLEASURE (2009 – Issue Project Room); and resident artist (2006) at LEMURplex. His work in Chicago includes TRUE+FALSE (2007) and STRATEGIES AGAINST ARCHITECTURE (2008) among others, both at The University of Chicago as a resident artist.

Currently Schneider is working on commissions from Performance Space 122 and EMPAC (FIELD, PS122, 2017) and Ars Nova (TBD).

Schneider creates wearable, interactive electronic art works such as the Solar Bikini, (a bikini that charges your iPod), and wireless programmable sound effect gloves. His interactive work has been featured in such publications as Art Forum and Wired, among others and at the Center Pompidou in Paris.

Schneider is a recurring collaborator with The TEAM, Heather Christian, Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera, Hotel Savant, Fischerspooner, Kelela and AVAN LAVA. His off-broadway designs include Dolphins and Sharks at the Labyrinth Theater; Small Mouth Sounds at Ars Nova and the Signature Theatre; and Roosevelvis at the Vineyard Theatre. Schneider has served as an Adjunct Professor at NYU and has taught courses on Technology and Performance at the Interactive Telecommunications Program, and at Bowdoin and Carleton Colleges. Schneider holds a BFA in Theater Arts from Illinois Wesleyan University and a Masters Degree in Interactive Telecommunications from NYU.

More at the artist’s website: Andrew Schneider

“Hallucinatory. Psychotropic. Miraculous. A show like Andrew Schneider’s “After” invites baroque descriptors. But I should probably just tell you that for most of the show I thought the stage was floating. The stage was not floating.” 

– Alexis Soloski, The New York Times

“…there exists nothing else like it. This is what LIFT is for, what theatre is for. A genuinely mind-blowing show.”

– Tim Bano, The Stage UK

“Revelatory Theater”

 – Miriam Felton-Dansky, The Village Voice

New York Times, “Andrew Schneider Now Embraces Glitches in ‘Youarenowhere’”

The Stage UK, “YOUARENOWHERE review at Shoreditch Town Hall – ‘mind-blowing’”

The Village Voice, “Obie-Winner ‘YOUARENOWHERE’ Is Revelatory Theater”