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Emma’s Parlour – a performance installation by Leeway Foundation Transformation Awardee Laureen Griffin. The exhibition runs September 6- 30th with opening on September 11 and features six performances by Martina Plag and Leah Walton:
- Sept. 15-18 at 7pm; (in conjunction with Philly Fringe Festival)
- Sept. 25-26 at 6pm
Emma’s Parlour also includes six sixty-minute live performances of miniature theatre by collaborators (puppeteer, mask maker) Martina Plag and (actor, teacher) Leah Walton, September 15-18 at 7pm and Sept. 25-26 at 6pm. Tickets are $20 are available (Sept. 15-18) at the Philly Fringe Box Office 215-413-1318 and Sept. 25-26 online at www.studium-praxis.org
About the Exhibition September 6-30
Inspired by the life and philosophies of anarchist and feminist – Emma Goldman, Griffin will transform UCAL’s gallery into a middle class urban Victorian Parlour featuring hand-painted wall paper with portraits, printed fabrics draping windows and doorways and upholstered found furniture. This installation will serve as a set design for the performances.Emma’s Parlour also includes materials from Griffin’s ongoing investigation Beauty Revisited featuring images of period rooms in historic style homes as a means to comment on gender – specifically female identity. In addition, there will be a series of photographic portraits referred to as Gender Portraits on display. In these portraits, the participant (portraitee) and artist (Griffin) examine personal narrative which is then transformed into portraits revealing inner emotions and fantasies. During the month of September as part of the installation, people are invited to pose for portraits. To schedule your portrait to be taken in the parlour contact www.laureengriffin.com
About the Performances Sept. 15-18; Sept, 25-26
In EMMA, historian and playwright Howard Zinn dramatizes the life of Emma Goldman, the free-spirited thinker who was exiled from the United States because of her outspoken views. This adaptation, performed by Plag and Walton, uses wit and humor to reveal Emma Goldman’s remarkable life. Through innovative storytelling and theatrical devises, a birdcage is transformed into a prison, a working gramophone into a wedding hall and café. In the space of toy (miniature) theater the performers aspire to transport audiences to the turn-of-the-last century New York City and a trans-Atlantic voyage. EMMA was selected to appear at the 2009 Festival of Jewish Theatre & Ideas at Theater Three in NYC.About the Collaborators - Emma’s Parlour
Laureen Griffin’s artistic renditions of female beauty and community practices have won her awards and recognition in Philadelphia and the United States. The 2007 Leeway Foundation Transformation Award, 5-County Arts Fund, and artist in residency at 40th St. AIRSPACE, launched her artistic vision towards new and expansive audiences through her work Gender Portraiture Project. In February, she was invited to the Women’s Studio Workshop in Rosendale, NY for printing large scale fabrics as part of her new Beauty Revisited series. She co-founded transgression artist collective in 2006. Since 2002 she has been actively re-presenting notions of femaleness through video, photography and printmaking while leading video and photography projects with diverse participants such as families in transitional housing and youth in Camden, West Philadelphia, Northeast High School students of Arab and Palestinian descent and AP High School Students in Radnor. Laureen has exhibited in Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. In 1996, she received her MFA from Cranbrook Academy of Art, Bloomfield Hills Michigan and in 1986 her BFA from Syracuse University.Martina Plag is the founding creative director of studium-praxis, which creates puppetry for adult audiences to address contemporary issues and to advocate social change and awareness. German-born and trained as an architect, her masks, puppets and automata have been in numerous juried exhibitions. Plag has designed puppets, sets and prototypes for Mum Puppettheatre, Philadelphia Gas & Electric Arts, Philadelphia; Slingback Productions, NYC, the Children's Theatre Company, Minneapolis, MN, Rowan University, Glassboro NJ and the International Opera Theater in Città della Pieve, Italy. In 2008, studium-praxis presented several original productions: Emma at the Da Vinci Art Alliance, …out of the shadows … at Philadelphia’s CEC New Edge Mix and in New York at the Joyce SoHo and the New Dance Alliance Performance Mix. Plag has worked as puppet wrangler for PBS Kids Sprout’s Let’s Go and The Sharing Shows. Her self-produced experimental short-film, mantra, showed at the 2006 Philadelphia International GLBT Film Festival. Plag is a founding member of the Philadelphia-based artist collective transgression. She curates the “Puppetry Slam Philadelphia” series at Curio Theatre in West Philadelphia. Most recently studium-praxis was invited to present Emma as part of this year’s Festival of Jewish Theatre & Ideas at Theater Three in NYC
Leah Walton is an actor, teacher and collaborator based in Philadelphia, PA. She trained at Ithaca College, the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Theater Institute in Waterford, CT, Moscow Art Theatre School in Russia, Gate Theatre of London, England and the Michael Chekhov Association. Since moving to Philadelphia in 2004, Leah has performed with numerous local theatre companies, including the Walnut Street Theatre , InterAct Theatre Company, Pig Iron Theatre Company (Pay Up—2006 Barrymore Nomination Best Ensemble in a Play), EgoPo Productions (Spring Awakening—2007 Barrymore Nomination Best Ensemble in a Play), Montgomery Theatre, City Theatre Company and Mum Puppettheatre. She has collaborated with other Philadelphia artists, to create original theatrical pieces with the Tribe of Fools, Pig Iron, and Theatre Ariel. In addition to performing, Leah is also a free-lance theatre teacher, coaching actors of all ages and abilities at the Walnut Street Theatre School and the HMS School for Children with Cerebral Palsy.