LEDA'S BACK!

New photos from Joe's Pub on Flickr!

SOUNDING is a new cross-disciplinary piece play written by Gibbs and directed by Marting.  

Loosely inspired by Ibsen's LADY FROM THE SEA, SOUNDING synthesizes dialogue with cinematic POV video and a rock songscape influenced by Patti Smith, Bartok and Portishead.  

Leda, once New York City's art rock goddess, is now wife to a psychiatrist on Cape Cod.  But a Dionysian musician from her past, The Stranger, refuses to release her.  As she mourns the death of her infant child, Leda confronts the upheaval The Stranger brings one crazy weekend when ex-lovers collide and realign at a ridiculous rate.

Developed in the HERE Artist Residency Program, with additional support from the MAP Fund, New York Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts & Media Collaboration Award, LMCC Swing Space and Gertrude Stein Repertory Theater's Digital Performance Institute.

Photo: Carl Skutsch

>>Listen to the interview on WPS1: Art Radio 

The impulse behind The Stranger was the relationship we see between Ibsen, Hitchcock and Freud.  We watched "Vertigo" and "Spellbound."  We bounced off Freud's theories and his own neuroses – both influenced by Ibsen.  We noticed Ibsen, Hitchcock and Freud are all very funny.  We talked about Jennifer Gibbs's experience rehearsing the Ibsen, presenting it to small audiences, when they found real intimacy, dark silliness and a seamless incorporation of the supernatural within the everyday.  While writing the script, Jennifer used Ibsen's structural methodology as a model, unfolding story and character to create a unique atmosphere of suspense.  In this world, "Festival" (the process ripe with sacrifice through which surplus energy must be expended) reins in its ultimate modern-day form: the rock concert.

Jennifer Gibbs is a playwright and performer who thinks in collage and sees text as music. Her solo show IMMORTALITY (Edna St. Vincent Millay) won a 2005 New York Fringe Festival Overall Excellence Award. Her mini-musical HOT is part of THE AUDIENCE, a full-length collaborative musical that garnered 3 Drama Desk nominations (Transport Group). Jennifer's plays - which also include 2GETHER, DIARY OF A PROPHET,THE SWEATER GIRL and SOUNDING - have been developed/presented at Cherry Lane, Williamstown, E.S.T., Joe's Pub, The Public, New Georges, Makor Center, Voice & Vision Lab NYC, The Lark, Hypothetical, Manhattan Theater Source, Access, Working Artists, Transport Group and elsewhere. As an actor she has played many roles Off-Broadway and regionally. She is currently a resident artist at HERE. Other residencies include Voice & Vision ENVISION, Atlantic Center for the Arts, and LMCC Swing Space and Digital Performance Institute residencies for SOUNDING with Kristin Marting. SOUNDING has been honored with a 2009 Collaboration Award from the New York Coalition of Professional Women in the Arts & Media. Jennifer is an Affiliated Artist at New Georges and at Transport Group. She founded collective First Fig to encourage artists from different backgrounds to cross-pollinate. Among other projects, she has produced the First Fig series at Joe's Pub. A Mellon Fellow in the Humanities, Jennifer graduated from Harvard and received M.A. in Comparative Literature from N.Y .U

Kristin Marting (Director) 

Over the last 20 years, Kristin Marting has constructed 23 works for the stage, including 10 original hybrid works, 8 adaptations of novels & short stories and 5 classic plays. Recent projects include co-creation/direction of a collaborative alternative musical, ORPHEUS, based on the Greek myth; direction of James Scruggs's solo work DISPOSABLE MEN (winner of an NY Innovative Theatre Award) and his recent new play (RUS)H; as well as 3 prior works inspired by Ibsen texts : DEAD TECH (a collaborative, site-specific cross-media collage developed from THE MASTER BUILDER & architectural texts), POSSESSED and WHEN WE DEAD AWAKEN (both ensemble dance-theatre works with live music).

For the last 15 years, she has been developing a unique hybrid directorial/choreographic form that features a "gestural vocabulary" used both as an emotional signifier and as a choreographic element. This vocabulary, though specific to each project, is in a state of constant development with an ever-growing set of permanent gestures being added to the repertoire.She is a co-founder and the Artistic Director of HERE, where she cultivates artists and programs all events for two performance spaces--including 13 OBIE-award winners—for an annual audience of 50,000. She created and curates HARP, HERE's Artist Residency Program. For 19 years, she curated THE AMERICAN LIVING ROOM, an annual summer festival featuring over 30 new works by emerging artists; and for 8 years, QUEER@HERE, an annual festival of gay and lesbian work. She regularly serves on grant panels for TCG and the New York State Council on the Arts, among others. In 2005, she was honored with a 2005 BAX10 Award for Arts Managers.

Previously, Marting co-founded and served as co-artistic director of Tiny Mythic Theatre Company for nine years. She served as Robert Wilson's assistant for HAMLETMACHINE and SALOME, and as a director for Children's Theatre at the Berkshire Theatre Festival. She graduated from NYU with honors in 1988. She has lectured at NYU, Harvard, Columbia, and Williams College among others.