Last Audience

2019

A performer stands with hands clasped in front of his face near a group huddled with arms around each other. Photo by Simon Courchel.

Two rows of people stand across from each other, arms outstretched, in acts of supplication. Photo by Simon Courchel.

A person in a long black robe with a red collar stands among a group who hold cardboard eyes or small lights. Photo by Maria Baranova.

Three people wave sheets of mylar on a stage while a group sits in front of them. Photo by Maria Baranova.

A group of people holding white paper scripts and engaged in an action together stand in a theater space. Photo by Maria Baranova.

“That unique group of people gathered that will never again be together. This is their only and final experience as a group. The flash community. They are it. The piece is unique to them. There are no others. The work ceases to exist when they as an audience cease to be.”

— Yanira Castro in an interview with Kathryn Yu for No Proscenium, “a canary torsi Explores the Requiem in Last Audience”

Enacted specifically and uniquely with and by each audience, Last Audience was a live laboratory for the communal work of conjuring. Composed of a set of unique scores written for each performance, the piece grappled with agency and manipulation, negotiating the individual and the collective inside a theatrical context. Last Audience draws on themes of judgment and democratic formation from requiems and Greek classical tragedy to move inside the unstable space between the perfunctory and the transformative.

Last Audience premiered at New York Live Arts and was honored with a 2020 New York Dance and Performance (aka “Bessie”) Award.

Read the context notes for Last Audience by Tara Sheena

Team

Director, Choreographer, Writer: Yanira Castro

Performance Facilitators & Collaborators: Yanira Castro, devynn emory, Kathy Couch, David Thomson

Soloists: Leslie Cuyjet, Kirsten Michelle Schnittker, Pamela Vail

Lighting Designer: Kathy Couch

Composer/Performer: Stephan Moore

Dramaturg: Susan Mar Landau

Costume Designer for Soloists: Miodrag Guberinic

Stage Manager: LD DeArmon

Assistant Director: Simon Courchel

Marketing Assistant: Tara Sheena

COMMUNE Food and Event Facilitator: Athena Kokoronis

COMMUNE Guest Artist Organizer: Tara Sheena

COMMUNE Guest Artists: Tara Sheena, Helen Betya Rubinstein, Stephanie Acosta, Tina Wang, André Daughtry

COMMUNE Dessert Makers: Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Athena Kokoronis, Stephanie Acosta, Martita Abril, Darrin Wright

Premiere

New York Live Arts, October 16–20, 2019

Press

Interview with Kathryn Yu in No Proscenium, “a canary torsi Explores the Requiem in ‘Last Audience’”

Funding

The creation of Last Audience was made possible, in part, by a New York Live Arts Live Feed creative residency program, which supports and nurtures the development of new work with residencies and commissions generated over two years. Lead support of Live Feed is generously provided by Partners for New Performance and Rockefeller Brothers Fund.

Last Audience was also made possible by the generous support of The MAP Fund, supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; a NYSCA Individual Artists’ Theatre Artist Commission made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature; and by a grant from New Music USA, made possible by annual program support and/or endowment gifts from Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, Howard Gilman Foundation, Helen F. Whitaker Fund, The Aaron Copland Fund for Music, Inc., The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Baisley Powell Elebash Fund, The Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation.

The development of Last Audience was made possible, in part, with artist residencies at Yaddo, Marble House Project, Headlong, and a production residency at Amherst College.

Video

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