ABOUT

The performance titled Broken Aquarium is embedded within the large-scale, multi-year project The Carnival of the Animals and was planned to premiere in 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic led to indefinite postponement. Free and open to the public, this roughly 45-minute performance will have limited seating with ample standing room. 

Inspired by Camille Saint-Saëns’s 1886 musical suite for children Broken Aquarium surveys an impossible ecosystem of three endangered sea entities, featuring performances by Bryan Saner and Corey Smith as The Lesser Electric Ray, Elise Cowin as The Eyelash Seaweed, and Alex Bradley Cohen as Limestone. Special appearance by Isaac Cresswell as Polyp, and original music by Jenny Polus and Tim Kinsella. Finnish artist Essi Kausalainen’s handmade costumes provide the visual/material common vocabulary, facilitating the celebratory transformation of human into hybrid entity. The intricacies of non-human life provide the foundation. 

Co-presented by Every house has a door, the Croatian National Theatre, the University of Surrey, and the Chicago Parks Department Night Out in the Parks. This project was made possible by support from The MacArthur Funds for Art and Culture and the Richard H. Driehaus Foundation, The Foundation for Contemporary Arts FCA Emergency Grants COVID-19 Fund, Croatian National Theatre Ivan Zajc Rijecka & Rijeka 2020 – European Capital of Culture, and the generosity of individual donors.

AN INTERRUPTED BESTIARY

Readings from An [Interrupted] Bestiary + Done Dying screening
Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca
Tuesday, Sept 13, 7pm
Uncle Art Gallery, 1359 N Maplewood Ave

Amsterdam-based contemporary theater scholar and researcher Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca will read selections from a creative response to Every house has a door's The Carnival of the Animals. Conceptualized as a hybridized artist talk and open studio, Laura invites the audience to witness the praxis of performance philosophy research through making and writing in relation to the work of others. The work presented was developed alongside Laura's large-scale multi-year AHRC-funded Leadership Fellowship titled Performance Philosophy & Animals: Towards a Radical Equality. Initiated in 2019, she participated in rehearsal residencies and saw early work-in-progress presentations of Every house's latest work Broken Aquarium. Disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic Laura's project witnessed the adaptation of many artists' practices in response to lockdowns, limitations, and instability.

Complimentary copies of An [Interrupted] Bestiary will be available at the event.

Gallery Open Monday and Tuesday 10am–6pm or by Appointment. Call 816-898-2631 or email skskaggs@gmail.com to request an appointment.