Butler Theatre, which began its season with the American classic Our Town, will finish 2015–2016 with Portal 1812, a devised ensemble work conceived and directed by Darla Villani, guest artist in the Jordan College of the Arts (JCA).
Portal 1812, which is being presented from April 13–17 in Lilly Hall Studio Theatre, room 168, is part of Butler ArtsFest 2016 Time and Timelessness.
Show times are:
Wednesday, April 13: 7:00 pm
Thursday, April 14: 9:00 pm
Friday, April 15: 10:00 pm
Saturday, April 16: 2:00 pm and 6:00 pm
Sunday, April 17: 4:00 pm
Tickets are $5 for students, $10 for seniors, and $15 for adults. They are available at butler.edu/theatre or by calling 317-940-9247.
Portal 1812 is a dynamic 65-minute fusion of physical and spoken performance and interactive gallery installation within the real-time sonic and visual experience of the gaming realm. Through movement, story, sound, and image, the cast portrays a group of eight participants selected from millions of applicants to join the “Space Capture Program.” Each of the participants is granted the opportunity to release a single question, their invisible aspiration, across time.
To devise this high-powered performance, Villani led JCA students through a multidisciplinary practice integrating movement, writing, image, and sound to craft scenes and narratives that are personal and provocative, and also link Portal 1812 to the theme of Butler ArtsFest 2016: Time and Timelessness.
Portal 1812 offers audiences a whirlwind treat for the senses that they normally don’t experience at arts events in Indianapolis. The space itself comes alive with possibility.
The cast:
Alexander Borrello – (Novi, Michigan)
Evie Davis – (Nashville, Tennessee)
Taylor Galloway – (Colorado Springs, Colorado)
Nathan Haston – (Noblesville, Indiana)
Ariel Laukins – (West Lafayette, Indiana)
Emma Shafer – (Des Moines, Iowa)
Alannah Walterhouse – (Kalona, Iowa)
Lexy Weixel – (Columbus, Ohio)
Darla Villani is a New York-based multidisciplinary artist, solo performer, and writer who has designed and led workshops on interdisciplinary approaches to devising work in New York City and London. After training as a painter at the Art Institute of Boston and Massachusetts College of Art (BFA), she turned toward dance and choreography receiving National Endowment for the Arts grants, residencies, and commissions, regularly showing work in New York at the Joyce Theatre, Dance Theatre Workshop (now NY Live Arts), The Kitchen, and international venues. Bill T. Jones invited her to collaborate as choreographer and performer in the creation of Ursonate for his company and Robert Wilson invited her to the Watermill Center to work on Death, Destruction and Detroit III, Barcelona Point, and on his adaptation of Ibsen’s The Lady From The Sea, with Dominque Sanda.
Darla Villani is the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship in choreography as well as a MacDowell colony residency fellowship in interdisciplinary research, where she translated a narrative from a dance work and deconstructions of the 1812 overture into a memoir: 750/1812.
Media contact:
Marc Allan
mallan@butler.edu
317-940-9822
