Life and Times – Episode 2

A performance based on the life story of one of their own company members, Life and Times uses a verbatim transcript of over 16 hours of recorded telephone interviews as found material to construct an extremely ambitious music-theater spectacle – the tale generated from one simple question, asked of a friend: “can you tell me your life story?”

Far from resembling the traditional arching narrative with dramatic structure and tension, Life and Times resembles instead a patchwork quilt or spider’s web – the wanderings and digressions of a single person considering the entirety of their whole life.  Filled with simple moments of insight, flashes of half-forgotten friends, the subject of this musical saga stops her life to consider all the moments that made her who she is.  Since her life is quite normal and unexceptional, her story inevitably contains many bits of our own.  You remember your first crush, the boy you met on vacation, the friend with whom you secretly started smoking…

It is a portrait of an unremarkable life, an epic narrative along the lines of Proust’s Remembrance of Things Pastor George Perec’s Je Me Souviens, a deep map of memory, which takes us on a subterranean plunge into the layers of our own forgotten history.

Where Episode 1 starts with birth and continues to age 8, in performance that fuses communist musical and “mass games” rhythmic gymnastic spectacle - Episode 2 picks up the tale from age 8 to 14: the adolescent years, the company’s aesthetic this time turning upon the concept of chorus and chorus line: both fitting in and sticking out of the social group.

A production of Nature Theater of Oklahoma and Burgtheater Wien in coproduction with Kampnagel Hamburg, le Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre de la Ville Paris, Kaaitheater Brussel, and Rosas. Life and Times – Episode 2 also made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Pilot, with lead funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Conceived and Directed by Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper From a telephone conversation with Kristin Worrall Original Music Robert M. Johanson and Julie LaMendola Design Peter Nigrini Featuring Asli Bulbul, Elisabeth Connor, Anne Gridley, Robert M. Johanson, and Julie LaMendola with Ilan Bachrach, Gabel Eiben, Daniel Gower, Matthew Korhais, and Kristin Worrall Chorus Director Nora Hertlein Dramaturg Florian Malzacher Production Manager Dany Naierman Audio Engineer Daniel Gower

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Production Chronology

November 2013 Spielart, Munich, Germany (w/ Episodes 1, 3&4)

November 2013 Nouveau Théâtre de Montreuil, France (w/ Episodes 1, 3&4)

October 2013 Melbourne Festival, Australia (w/ Episodes 1, 3&4)

September 2013 Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, Philadelphia, PA (w/ all Episodes 1-5)

June/July 2103 Berliner Festspiele/Foreign Affairs, HAU Hebbel am Ufer, Germany (w/ all Episodes 1-5)

May 2013 Norfolk & Norwich Festival, United Kingdom (w/ all Episodes 1-5)

May 2013 Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival, Sweden (w/ Episodes 1, 3&4)

January/February 2013 Public Theater/UTR Festival/Soho Rep, New York (w/ Episodes 1, 3&4)

November 2012 Mousonturm, Frankfurt, Germany (w/ Episodes 1, 3&4)

September 2012 (Internationale) Keuze, Rotterdamse Schouwburg, Netherlands (w/ Episodes 1, 3&4)

August 2012 Rhur Triennale, Essen, Germany

May 2012 Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

May 2012 Theatre de la Ville, Paris, France

March 2012 Hebbel Theater, Berlin, Germany

March 2012 deSingel, Antwerp, Belgium

March 2012 Kaaitheater Brussels, Belgium

February 2012, Theater Maria Matos, Lisbon, Portugal

July 2011 Festival d’Avignon, France (with Epsiode 1)

June 2011 Kampnagel Hamburg, Germany

November 2010 Burgtheater Kasino, Vienna, Austria (premiere)