Revolving Door

In celebration of our 40th year, The Space at Irondale is opening its doors to groups/artists who demonstrate a clear project, vision, and commitment to our community.

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‍Revolving Door is a 1-week program in which The Space at Irondale will be offered FREE OF CHARGE to community members to cultivate their art. Each selected group will have 8 hours over the course of 3 days to research, experiment, rehearse, and tech in our beautiful theatre culminating in two performances in rep with the other chosen artists.

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2023 RESIDENT ARTISTS:

Jack Saleeby - The Butterflies is a short play about queer resilience, transformation, and staying alive. Confined by Vladimir: Sonya, Ivan, and Vanya must hold onto each other in order to see color. “The Butterflies” aims to deconstruct the obstacles queer folx are forced to endure and examine and question them in their most basic purest form. Why are we forced to be something we are not? Who forces us? How do we fly?

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Christine Sloan Stoddard Sánchez /Quail Bell Productions - Cleansing/Limpia is a choreo-poem performance involving poetry, song, dance, and spoken word in a ritual meant to represent a new year cleansing for our community. In Latin cultures, a limpia, also known as a limpieza, is a ritualistic cleansing for the body and soul, often with deep spiritual symbolism. This limpia will bring joy and playfulness after another difficult year full of much pain, as we look forward to the gifts of the new year. The troupe will feature about half a dozen performers from under-represented backgrounds.

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Robbie Saenz de Viteri / Monica Bill Barnes & Company - Monica Bill Barnes choreographs and performs but doesn't call herself a dancer. Robbie Saenz de Viteri writes and insists he's not performing even when he's talking on stage. Together, they make performances that combine their shared interests in the underlying comedy at work in our lives and make shows that hope to find something sacred in the mundane. They cross genres between dance, theater, storytelling, creative nonfiction, feminist treatises, and comedy. This piece attempts to wind the threads of memory, aging, and the female perspective into a new experience that builds a temporary moment of joy from our collective experience of absence.

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Peter Charney - The Celestial Plays is a triptych of short movements for two performers inspired by the sun, the moon, and the stars. ‍

Part I. Painting Suns - siblings confront their relationship while finishing an art commission 

Part II. Only the Moon - soulmates experience the complete cycle of love

Part III. The Starkeepers - coworkers collect the wishes made on stars before the sun rises

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Violeta Picayo & Emily Zemba - HER SLEEPING NATION (a new play-in-progress by Emily Zemba) is a retelling of Washington Irving’s Rip Van Winkle, from the perspective of Dame Van Winkle – the wife that Rip Van Winkle left behind. A wild theatrical experience about time, tea, coffee, war, women, and an overturning of American Identity. Directed by Violeta Picayo.

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PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Friday, Jan 27

1-2 PM Her Sleeping Nation
2-3 PM The Celestial Plays
3-4 PM Monica Bill Barnes & Co.
(4-6:30 Dinner break)
6:30-7:30 PM The Butterflies
7:30-8:30 PM Cleansing/Limpia‍

Saturday, Jan 28

3-4 PM The Celestial Plays
4-5 PM Cleansing/Limpia
(5-6 Short Break)
6-7 PM Monica Bill Barnes & Co.
7-8 PM The Butterflies
8-9 PM Her Sleeping Nation
9-10 PM Cocktail Hour. Congratulatory/Meet & greet/Networking. Open to artists & audiences.

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Irondale is dedicated to providing citizen artists with a space to express, cultivate, and present new and developing work that speaks to the cultural zeitgeist of the community.