Kayenta Arts

N O W I S W H E N W E A R E (the stars)
2023-03-19 18:00 - 19:00, 2023-03-19 19:00 - 20:00, 2023-03-19 20:00 - 21:00, 2023-03-19 21:00 - 22:00 UTC | Center for the Arts at Kayenta
Andrew Schneider (New York)
INSTALLATION / THEATER
March 9-19, 2023

TICKETS: $10-$35
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
This new, one-of-a-kind, immersive experience comes from the mind of New York-based theater/technology pioneer Andrew Schneider. N O W I S W H E N W E A R E (the stars) draws on inspirations as broad as seeing the Milky Way for the first time to installations such as Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror Room and Random International’s Rain Room.
Moving beyond an immersive gallery experience, the stars’ unseen narrator guides each visitor through a theatrical cosmos of their own individual journey. Nearly 5,000 reactive points of light and a 496-channel sound system envelop each audience member. The Stars invites viewers to become active explorers – as they discover the traces of themselves in light, the universe, and those who have been here before us.
This is a non-seated, interactive environment filling the entirety of the Center’s black box theater. Audience members are free to move around the space, and are encouraged to wear comfortable shoes. Special accommodations are available for those who cannot stand or walk without assistance. Recommended for ages 16 and older.
Development of NOWISWHENWEARE was made possible with support from The Brown Arts Institute, The Simons Foundation and Science Sandbox, The Onassis Foundation, The Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program, and Eliko Industries. This project was produced with Los Angeles Performance Practice / performancepractice.org

GUIDED PERFORMANCE: $35 general admission / $10 students
A one-hour long crafted experience, for up to 8 audience members at a time. This theatrical experience features a beginning, middle and end, all guided by an unseen narrator.
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Your Optimism is Not Required
2023-04-21 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-04-22 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-04-23 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-04-25 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-04-26 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-04-27 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-04-28 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-04-29 19:30 - 21:30 and 1 more date
THEATER
Team Sunshine Performance (Philadelphia)
Walton Commons Plaza
YOUR OPTIMISM IS NOT REQUIRED is a performance event, facilitated workshop, and communal gathering all woven into an experience that illuminates the ways we might move immobilizing despair about our world into collective hope and action.
YOUR OPTIMISM IS NOT REQUIRED takes place at an intimate, outdoor performance site encircling a campfire. Guided by two performers, the audience comes to embody characters in the lives of Daughter and Dad: a fictional biracial teenager and her white father on a camping trip confronting futures potentially shaped by environmental and societal crises.
Inspired by renowned Buddhist ecologist Joanna Macy’s work Active Hope: How to Face the Mess We’re in Without Going Crazy, OPTIMISM is an original piece of participatory theater from Team Sunshine Performance that aims to move despair, anxiety, and hopelessness from immobilizing obstacles to animating forces of human connection.

Director: Alex Torra
Associate Director: Rachel Camp
Performer/Creators: Benjamin Camp and Jackie Soro
Production Designer: Makoto Hirano
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The Last Five Years
2023-06-15 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-16 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-17 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-18 14:00 - 16:00, 2023-06-21 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-22 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-23 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-06-24 19:30 - 21:30
MUSICAL THEATER
The Last Five Years
written and composed by Jason Robert Brown
directed by Miranda Wright
June 15-24, 2023
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
An emotionally powerful and intimate award-winning musical about two people who fall in and out of love over the course of five years, starring local actors Greg and Mimi Knell.
Jason Robert Brown’s Drama Desk winner, The Last Five Years, has been translated into a handful of languages and was named one of TIME Magazine‘s ten best shows of 2001. A testament to the show’s longevity, and spurred by the show’s regional popularity, The Last Five Years enjoyed an Off-Broadway revival at Second Stage in 2013. A film adaptation was released in 2014, starring Anna Kendrick and Jeremy Jordan
Originally Produced for the New York stage by Arielle Tepper and Marty Bell
Originally Produced by Northlight Theatre, Chicago, IL
THE LAST FIVE YEARS is presented through special arrangement with Music Theatre International (MTI). All authorized performance materials are also supplied by MTI. www.mtishows.com
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Chautauqua: Living History -Voices From World War II
2023-09-29 19:30 - 21:30, 2023-09-30 19:30 - 21:30
LECTURES & IDEAS / THEATER
Chautauqua: Living History
Voices From World War II
Friday & Saturday, September 29-30, 2023 // 7:30pm
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
Theater, History, and Storytelling: Chautauqua is an oral storytelling tradition that brings history to life through interactive theater and compelling discussion aimed at stimulating critical thinking and increasing appreciation for complex histories.
This year, we present Voices from World War II, starring General George Patton, favorite leader of the European troops (but often not politically correct) and Ernie Pyle, famous war correspondent who reported from the troops in the trenches.
Ernie Pyle will be presented by scholar Doug Mishler. Doug Mishler is an independent scholar who has taught at the University of Nevada and Western Washington University. He is the author of a history of the Ringling Brothers Circus and has consulted on several public television and Chautauqua programs, regularly appearing in Maryland and Colorado. He has studied and presented as P. T. Barnum, Theodore Roosevelt, William Lloyd Garrison, Henry Ford, Jefferson Davis, George Wallace, Upton Sinclair, and Major General Robert Ross. In addition to Ernie Pyle, he also portrays Billy Sunday, William Clark, Andrew Carnegie, Edward R. Murrow, Thomas Hart Benton, and Nikita Khrushchev. Mishler has a Ph.D. in American cultural history from the University of Nevada, Reno.
Ernie Pyle was an in-the-trenches correspondent who reported on the actual conditions and trials of the GI’s living under terrible conditions as opposed to the uplifting propaganda put out by the government.
General George Patton will be presented by Tim Beasely. General Patton was a swash-buckling leader on the European Front and was known for his personal regard for the troops under his command. He was always seen with high top black boots, an infantry helmet and two silver pistols strapped to his hips. He had the capability of surpassing General Eisenhower in the European command but because of his offensive political rhetoric, he was ultimately relegated to lower posts and finally died in a car crash at the end of the war.
Tim Beasley, from Norfolk VA, has performed for over 30 years as an authentic and truly accurate General Patton, speaking for many formal military bases and patriotic events. His very believable impersonation of “Old Blood and Guts” as a motivational speaking special guest is a highly recognized leadership icon, combining powerful positive thinking with American pride.
Each speaker will present a speech “in character,” followed by an “in character” lively discussion with the audience. They will then appear as themselves, answering questions from the audience about World War II and these historical figures from a more contemporary perspective.
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What the Constitution Means to Me
2023-11-09 19:30 - 21:00, 2023-11-10 19:30 - 21:00, 2023-11-11 19:30 - 21:00, 2023-11-12 15:00 - 16:30, 2023-11-15 19:30 - 21:00, 2023-11-16 19:30 - 21:00, 2023-11-17 19:30 - 21:00
THEATER
What the Constitution Means to Me
by Heidi Schreck
directed by Zoe Aja Moore
November 9-18, 2023
The Lorraine Boccardo Theater
Playwright Heidi Schreck’s boundary-breaking play breathes new life into our Constitution and imagines how it will shape the next generation of Americans. Fifteen-year-old Heidi earned her college tuition by winning Constitutional debate competitions across the United States. In this hilarious, hopeful and achingly human new play, she resurrects her teenage self in order to trace the profound relationship between four generations of women and the founding document that shaped their lives.

“Uproariously funny, wrenchingly moving, critically challenging and politically inspiring.” – David Cole, The New York Review of Books
TICKETS
