Archive: Arts & Entertainment

The Cherry Artists' Collective announced the commission of a new work of live streaming theater exploring life under pandemic quarantine, co-written by seven brilliant collaborating writers from around the world. The as-yet-untitled work will première in early May and will plumb the ways interactions and relationships happen on global screens in a time of danger.

For the past five years, the Ithaca-based Cherry Artists' Collective, has created theater that is "Radically Global, Radically Local, and Formally Innovative". They have created productions with playwrights from Serbia, France, Germany, Argentina, El Salvador, and Quebec, as well as experimental new works inscribed in their local community. Now for the first time the Cherry Collective brings together writers they have worked with from around the world to collectively create a new piece for an extreme time.

This moment is a paradox. After struggling for decades with the isolations of capitalism, we are asked to separate further. With so much contact already mediated by the screen, we are asked to eliminate togetherness in favor of digitality. But in some ways the world is more unified than it has ever been: countless people in vastly different places around the world are living versions of the same extreme circumstance.

From an isolation that brings cultures into shared experience, the Cherry Artists' Collective seeks a way for live performance to reflect this commonality in a time of isolation. The Cherry International Streaming Project is being written as we speak by seven award-winning multidisciplinary writers, each bringing their global perspective on quarantine and digital life:

Youness Atbane (Casablanca, Morocco), performer & visual artist; exhibited at British Museum & MASS MoCA
Iva Brdar (Belgrade, Serbia), playwright; two-time Theatertreffen Stückemarkt finalist
Jorgelina Cerritos (San Salvador, El Salvador), playwright; Casa De Las Americas award for drama
Rebekka Kricheldorf (Berlin, Germany), playwright; Kleis, Kassel, and Saarbrücken awards
Santiago Loza (Buenos Aires, Argentina), filmmaker/playwright; Un Certain Regard prize, Cannes Film Festival
Saviana Stanescu (Bucharest, Romania/Ithaca, New York), playwright; Innovative Theater Award, New York
Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon (Ithaca, New York), poet; National Book Award finalist

In early May the Cherry Artists' Collective team in Ithaca NY will collide these authors' texts with our signature envelope-pushing performance style to create a single work of live video streamed performance. The work will be directed by Artistic Director Samuel Buggeln and co-director Beth Milles, and performed by members of the Cherry Artists' Collective and others. Translations will be by Neil Blackadder, Buggeln, and Ana Brdar.

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