NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center - Performances in November 2016
Holoscenes
This month's line up at the NYU Abu Dhabi Arts Center looks exceptional, it includes a "concert novel", piano karaoke, large-scale performance-installation in an aquarium and a play reading festival.
All the events are free to attend, but you must book tickets online in advance. Click on each title below for more information.
When: Wednesday, 2nd November at 8.00pm and Thursday, 3rd November at 4.00pm and 8.00pm
Where: Black Box at NYU Abu Dhabi
Reveling in the inherent theatricality of rock and roll performance, Notes of a Native Song combines Stew’s incisive, poignant, and funny storytelling with already-on-their-way-to-being classic songs inspired by playwright, novelist, and essayist James Baldwin. Created by Tony Award- and Obie Award-winning playwright/singer-songwriter Stew (Passing Strange) and co-composed with his Obie Award-winning, Tony-nominated longtime collaborator Heidi Rodewald,
Native Song is spirited and engaging a “concert novel” exploring Baldwin’s life and work that is already acclaimed by audiences in Harlem and San Francisco. Stew’s electric stage presence and the deep beauty and intelligence of his and Heidi’s songs are backed by a virtuoso band.
Sid Gold's Request Room - Live Piano and Singing
When: Sunday, 6th November at 7.00pm
Where: Black Box at NYU Abu Dhabi
Pianist Joe McGinty (leader of NYC’s famed Losers Lounge) brings the popular NY piano bar scene to Abu Dhabi. The playlist features hundreds of songs for you to choose from. Make a request to the pianist and get ready to sing along. Go solo (1950s style) or get the whole audience involved. The song list is available here. THIS SOUNDS LIKE SO MUCH FUN.
Holoscenes
When: 16th - 19th November, 4.00-9.00pm
Where: NYU Abu Dhabi Central Plaza
Performers inhabit a large aquarium in a visceral large-scale performance-installation that embodies the trauma of global climate change.
Lars Jan’s Holoscenes is a large-scale performance-installation that embodies the trauma of flooding. It is a visceral, cross-disciplinary project born out of the widely-shared concern that our troubled relationship to water will become the central issue of the 21st century. The project directly connects the everyday actions of individuals to global climate change, while contemplating the evolution of our capacities for empathy and long-term thinking.
Presented in public space, the centerpiece of Holoscenes is a large aquarium that floods, drains, and floods again. The flooding aquarium is inhabited by a rotating cast of performers conducting everyday behaviors sourced from collaborators across the planet.
Created by Lars Jan / Early Morning Opera Produced by MAPP International Productions
Arab Voices: here/there/then/now
When: 26th - 28th November
Where: Black Box at NYU Abu Dhabi
A festival of staged readings featuring plays by Arab and Arab-American writers and their diverse stories of life in Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and Lebanon — as well as in their characters’ adopted countries—and illuminates lives behind the headlines with candor, generosity and humor. Curated by Catherine Coray and co-produced by Gaar Adams and the NYU Abu Dhabi Theater Program.
Saturday, November 26th at 2.00pm
OH MY SWEETLAND- Written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi
Written in response to a journey taken by Zuabi and Corinne Jaber to the Syrian refugee camps in Jordan, where they met people “in the harshest moments of their life, yet still they were generous, full of grace, hope and even humour…this piece is inspired by their stores, but more than anything it is inspired by their spirit—that elastic rubber-like ability man has to adapt and to weather the storm.”
Saturday, November 26th at 7.00pm
THEHOUR OF FEELING - Written and directed by Mona Mansour
It’s 1967 and the map of the Middle East is about to change drastically. Fueled by a love of English Romantic poetry, Adham journeys from Palestine to London with his new wife, Abir, to deliver a career-defining lecture. As the young couple’s marriage is tested, Adham struggles to reconcile his ambitions with the pull of family and home. But what if seizing the moment means letting go of everything he knows?
Monday, 28th November at 7.00pm
FOOD AND FADWA - Written by Lameece Issaq and Jacob Kader Directed by Shana Gold
Meet Fadwa Faranesh, an unmarried, 30-something Palestinian woman living in Bethlehem in the politically volatile West Bank. Known for her delectable cooking and deep-seated sense of duty to her family and aging father, our kitchen maven insists on continuing the preparations for the wedding of her younger sister, despite constraints of daily life under occupation. Politics blend with family tensions to create a sometimes humorous and sometimes heartbreaking meal. This new play melds the fight a Palestinian family wages to hold onto its traditional culture with its need to celebrate love, joy and hope.