A.P.E. at Hawley Street
Current and Upcoming Programming 2019
A.P.E.@Hawley provides, to artists and researchers, affordable access to the dance studio, Flex Space, Mezzanine and Black Box (unfinished) at 33 Hawley. Our programming and rental structure strives to create the conditions for rich exploration and a maximizing of creative potential. We encourage inquiry-based processes and the open exchange of ideas towards the development of new, experimental, and challenging projects and works. A.P.E. reviews proposals and inquiries on a first come/first serve basis.
If you are interested in proposing a project or renting space at 33 Hawley Street please contact A.P.E.
If you are interested in proposing a project or renting space at 33 Hawley Street please contact A.P.E.
Current and Upcoming Events & Projects
THEATER: THE FEVER by Wallace Shawn,Winner of the Obie Award for Best Play, 1991.
Friday and Saturday, March 22, 23 at 7 P.M.
Performed by Peter B. Schmitz, Directed by John Hellweg
Tickets: $15 General, $10 Students/Seniors: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4106879
or at the door.
Box office will open at 6:15 p.m. Seating limited to 25.
The Fever, awarded an Obie for Best American Play in 1991, is being performed by Peter B. Schmitz, and directed by John Hellweg at the Northampton Community Arts Trust building at 33 Hawley St. on March 22nd and 23rd at 7pm.
Written between 1985 and 1990, The Fever reflects an intensive and personally transformative focus by Wallace Shawn on the United States’ relationship to Latin America. In the late 1980s he travelled to Nicaragua to witness the struggles and achievements of the Sandinista revolution. He travelled to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to speak to people who were affected by repressive regimes and by the anti-communist campaigns of the Reagan administration. “That all fed into my point of view becoming really different from the point of view of a lot of my friends.”
Shawn writes: “I was piecing all this together, which is the only way The Fever could have been written, only by someone who was politically ignorant and then learned a few things. I know that so many people have come to similar understandings. …The organizing principal of The Fever was that it wouldn’t be theater, it was just a guy - or it could have been a woman - going to someone’s house and presenting a monologue that was in the form of a play but that in many ways had more in common with a sermon. I always pictured that the first person to do this would be me. I wanted others to do it. … In other words The Fever was theater, and it also wasn’t. The story I’m telling is made up, and there’s a made-up character, so it’s a work of fiction. It follows the rules of a play. But I, the author, actually mean the things the character says.”
“I made a very conscious decision in writing The Fever - and anybody is welcome to laugh, but it was actually quite a painful thing to do - that I was trying to put down what I believed...If my play has a thesis, it’s making the claim that the oppression of the poor is carried out in order to enable the rich to be rich and have a pleasant life. That’s a factual matter. I’m either right or I’m wrong.”
Robert Egan, artistic director of the CTG/Mark Taper Forum, writes, “He’s an authentically provocative playwright. His belief is that residing in all of us is a voice of morality, justice and compassion for others in our species regardless of race or economics, and he’s obsessed with what it means when we dislocate ourselves from that voice.”
“Mr. Shawn exposes the contradictions and compromises of the urban liberal mind with a mercilessness that is sly and at times hilarious” (N.Y. Times)
Bio: John Hellweg, Professor Emeritus of Theatre at Smith College, has performed
in principal roles in over fifty productions, most recently with the Talking Band (Flip/Side, and with the Ensemble for the Romantic Century (Peggy Guggenheim Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors; and Toscanini: Too much of the Absolute in my heart; and Jekyll & Hyde). He has directed productions in both academic and professional venues. Most recently, he directed the Off-Off-Broadway production of Unravellings and Catastrophes: Four Short Playsby Jeffery Stingerstein.
Bio: Peter Schmitz has been making a mess for over 30 years in theater, dance and film/video. As a professional dancer/choreographer, Peter has worked throughout the United States, Amsterdam, Germany, France, England, New Zealand and recently in Ankara, Turkey. He was a founding member of Dance Gallery, a small modern dance company, a member of Creach/Co in New York City for over 8 years, and has performed in the works of Wendy Woodson, Ann Carlson, Richard Colton/Amy Spencer. He has choreographed for New World Theatre, Medicine Show Theater and Potomac Theater Project and is a member of Actors Equity.
Friday and Saturday, March 22, 23 at 7 P.M.
Performed by Peter B. Schmitz, Directed by John Hellweg
Tickets: $15 General, $10 Students/Seniors: https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/4106879
or at the door.
Box office will open at 6:15 p.m. Seating limited to 25.
The Fever, awarded an Obie for Best American Play in 1991, is being performed by Peter B. Schmitz, and directed by John Hellweg at the Northampton Community Arts Trust building at 33 Hawley St. on March 22nd and 23rd at 7pm.
Written between 1985 and 1990, The Fever reflects an intensive and personally transformative focus by Wallace Shawn on the United States’ relationship to Latin America. In the late 1980s he travelled to Nicaragua to witness the struggles and achievements of the Sandinista revolution. He travelled to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador to speak to people who were affected by repressive regimes and by the anti-communist campaigns of the Reagan administration. “That all fed into my point of view becoming really different from the point of view of a lot of my friends.”
Shawn writes: “I was piecing all this together, which is the only way The Fever could have been written, only by someone who was politically ignorant and then learned a few things. I know that so many people have come to similar understandings. …The organizing principal of The Fever was that it wouldn’t be theater, it was just a guy - or it could have been a woman - going to someone’s house and presenting a monologue that was in the form of a play but that in many ways had more in common with a sermon. I always pictured that the first person to do this would be me. I wanted others to do it. … In other words The Fever was theater, and it also wasn’t. The story I’m telling is made up, and there’s a made-up character, so it’s a work of fiction. It follows the rules of a play. But I, the author, actually mean the things the character says.”
“I made a very conscious decision in writing The Fever - and anybody is welcome to laugh, but it was actually quite a painful thing to do - that I was trying to put down what I believed...If my play has a thesis, it’s making the claim that the oppression of the poor is carried out in order to enable the rich to be rich and have a pleasant life. That’s a factual matter. I’m either right or I’m wrong.”
Robert Egan, artistic director of the CTG/Mark Taper Forum, writes, “He’s an authentically provocative playwright. His belief is that residing in all of us is a voice of morality, justice and compassion for others in our species regardless of race or economics, and he’s obsessed with what it means when we dislocate ourselves from that voice.”
“Mr. Shawn exposes the contradictions and compromises of the urban liberal mind with a mercilessness that is sly and at times hilarious” (N.Y. Times)
Bio: John Hellweg, Professor Emeritus of Theatre at Smith College, has performed
in principal roles in over fifty productions, most recently with the Talking Band (Flip/Side, and with the Ensemble for the Romantic Century (Peggy Guggenheim Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors; and Toscanini: Too much of the Absolute in my heart; and Jekyll & Hyde). He has directed productions in both academic and professional venues. Most recently, he directed the Off-Off-Broadway production of Unravellings and Catastrophes: Four Short Playsby Jeffery Stingerstein.
Bio: Peter Schmitz has been making a mess for over 30 years in theater, dance and film/video. As a professional dancer/choreographer, Peter has worked throughout the United States, Amsterdam, Germany, France, England, New Zealand and recently in Ankara, Turkey. He was a founding member of Dance Gallery, a small modern dance company, a member of Creach/Co in New York City for over 8 years, and has performed in the works of Wendy Woodson, Ann Carlson, Richard Colton/Amy Spencer. He has choreographed for New World Theatre, Medicine Show Theater and Potomac Theater Project and is a member of Actors Equity.
READING: Poetry and the Arts: A Poetry Reading
Group 18
Sunday, March 24: 5 pm.
Suggested donation $5-$10.
This first A.P.E.-sponsored poetry reading at 33 Hawley Street will be offered by a group of distinguished Valley poets who have been meeting weekly to respond to each other’s work for over twenty-five years. Readers include Doug Anderson, Bob Coles, Rosalyn Driscoll, Paul Jacobsen, Margaret Lloyd, Henry Lyman, Rich Michelson and Anne Woodhull.
Named affectionately (if not poetically) Group 18 for the number of the home where they first gathered, the group was founded in Northampton in 1986 by Linda Gregg and Jim Finnegan, with Jack Gilbert as one of its original and long-standing mentors.
The anthology Open Field: Poems from Group 18, published in 2011, celebrates the writing of past and present members of the group. Other books by members of the group will be available for purchase following the reading: Rich Michelson, Doug Anderson, Anne Woodhull, Margaret Lloyd, and Rosalyn Driscoll.
The poets will read poems related to various forms of art and performance to honor the three art partners at Hawley Street (Available Potential Enterprises (APE), Northampton Center for the Arts (NCFA), and Northampton Community Television (NCTV). Refreshments will follow the reading.
DANCE EVENT: SPRING COMMUNITY UNDERSCORE
Date to be announced
Facilitated by Nancy Stark Smith with live music by Mike Vargas
The Underscore is a long-form dance improvisation structure developed by Nancy Stark Smith. It has been evolving since 1990 and is practiced all over the globe. The form includes the dance form Contact Improvisation and allows for a full spectrum of energetic and physical states progressing from rest to active dancing and back to rest and reflection.
The four hours will include periods of very small, private, and quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing. The 20+ phases of the score—each with a name and a graphic symbol—create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame, they are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships—with themselves, each other, the group, the sound, and the environment. Each Underscore is unique.
Nancy has been facilitating Community Seasonal Underscore practices in Northampton for many years. The Community Underscore is a participatory event for dancers with previous experience in Contact Improvisation, an interest in improvisation and composition, who have attended at least one one-hour talk-through of the score. Patrick Crowley, a longtime Underscore practitioner and facilitator, will be offering the talk-through for this Community Underscore.
Date to be announced
Facilitated by Nancy Stark Smith with live music by Mike Vargas
The Underscore is a long-form dance improvisation structure developed by Nancy Stark Smith. It has been evolving since 1990 and is practiced all over the globe. The form includes the dance form Contact Improvisation and allows for a full spectrum of energetic and physical states progressing from rest to active dancing and back to rest and reflection.
The four hours will include periods of very small, private, and quiet internal activity and other times of higher energy and interactive dancing. The 20+ phases of the score—each with a name and a graphic symbol—create a general map for the dancers. Within that frame, they are free to create their own movements, dynamics, and relationships—with themselves, each other, the group, the sound, and the environment. Each Underscore is unique.
Nancy has been facilitating Community Seasonal Underscore practices in Northampton for many years. The Community Underscore is a participatory event for dancers with previous experience in Contact Improvisation, an interest in improvisation and composition, who have attended at least one one-hour talk-through of the score. Patrick Crowley, a longtime Underscore practitioner and facilitator, will be offering the talk-through for this Community Underscore.
MUSIC: Serious Play presents Jonny Rodgers and CINDERTALK
Friday and Saturday, April 26 and April 27 @ 8 PM
composer/ glass musician/ songwriter
Tickets at Brown Paper Tickets or at the door.
Jonny is collaborating with Serious Play as part of the new ensemble project MOVING WATER, presently in development. Please join Serious Play in welcoming Jonny Rodgers to our community and sharing his extraordinary music.
Jonny is a renowned glass musician, composer and performer. He has toured for years as an indie musician, writing songs that blend neoclassical, indie-folk and electronic music.
March- April -Serious Play MOVING WATER PROJECT- 3 EXPLORATORY SATURDAY WORKSHOPS with SP artistic director Sheryl Stoodley and visual artist Rosalyn Driscoll. Serious Play Eastworks Studio space- #233 (free parking)
More info contact: seriousplaytheatre@gmail.com
PRACTICING PRESENCE FESTIVAL
MAY 24-26, 2019
THREE DAYS OF ADVENTUROUS MOVING AND MAKING.
CONNECTING CONTEMPLATIVE AND SOMATIC PRACTICES WITH
ARTICULATE DANCING IN NORTHAMPTON, MA.
WITH
PAUL MATTESON
PETER SCHMITZ
ANDREA OLSEN
JENNIFER POLINS
SCOTTY HARDWIG
FULL SCHEDULE, REGISTRATION & MORE INFO
MAY 24-26, 2019
THREE DAYS OF ADVENTUROUS MOVING AND MAKING.
CONNECTING CONTEMPLATIVE AND SOMATIC PRACTICES WITH
ARTICULATE DANCING IN NORTHAMPTON, MA.
WITH
PAUL MATTESON
PETER SCHMITZ
ANDREA OLSEN
JENNIFER POLINS
SCOTTY HARDWIG
FULL SCHEDULE, REGISTRATION & MORE INFO