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Broke House

Description:
On a skeletal set webbed with video cameras, the residents of a house and their hanger-on, once a documentary filmmaker arrives to capture their lives. The characters try to recall their given roles as inevitably the foundations of their dreams collapse, and they are thrown into the desert of their own futures. Part comedy, part ritual, part love spell.

“It’s a brilliant visual metaphor for the American cycle of desire and accumulation…”
– Sarah Bay-Cheng, Performance Addict

The Performance explores the process of construction, when that process becomes sharply interrupted by historical events, and dissolves into the shapelessness of an aftermath. Those processes that were “building” previous to the play’s beginning include a life, a family, architecture, or a system of beliefs, an economy of values, and the creation of the performance itself. But when events intervene— events like collapse, upheaval, disaster, abandonment, forgetting, fear, and strife— all the raw materials and the players themselves become deformed into a new formlessness, and enter a transitional state of potentiality. Like the pause loop in a video game, Broke House takes place in this marginal time zone.

Like all of Big Art Group’s works, Broke House offers our meditation on the current states of America, which we believe have been in flux for at least as long as our ensemble has been up and running. Beyond the topical symptoms of foreclosure crises, credit crises, occupy movements, and extremist rhetoric, we suppose that the metaphorical heart of the country has been suffering, and perhaps has decided to rebuild the body that surrounds it.

“True to their name, Big Art Group’s performances are big in every possible way: prismatic visuals hurtle across a panoply of screens, dazzling with flashing colors; strange conjunctions of video imagery captured live by a battery of cameras and spliced together in real-time, ambush the eye; digital soundscapes thrum, groan, and roar at synesthesia-inducing volumes.” – Jacob Gallagher-Ross, The Drama Review

Press (pdfs):

Broke House by the Big Art Group: Queer Transgressions on the contemporary New York stage

Performance Addict

Theatre Journal, Vol. 64, No. 4

Creation:
Created by Caden Manson, Jemma Nelson, Big Art Group

Direction and Scenography by Caden Manson
Sound by Jemma Nelson
Assistant Director Kathleen Amshoff and Bradley Kal Hagen
Performed by:
David: Edward Stresen-Reuter
Manny: David Commander
RiRi: Heather Litteer
Jerry: Matthew Nasser
Virilius/Intern: Nicholas Gorham
Jennifer/Intern: Willie Mullins, Matthew Nasser
Lighting Design by Hillery Makatura
Assistant Lighting Design by Kryssy Wright
Production Manager Ana Mari de Quesada
Set by Caden Manson and Jeffrey Ralston
Special Day Glow Costumes and Masks: Caden Manson, Jeffery Ralston, Alice Pearson, David Commander, and Simone Serlanga
Video System Design by Caden Manson
Intern Simone Serlanga and Dries Vandrope

Broke House is produced by Big Art Group with support from King’s Fountain and NYSCA

Supported by James Davison, Desi Santiago, Ted Henigson, theARTcorps, Ryan Davis, Alan Cumming, joan Raspo, Drew Brody, William Lynn, Julie Tolentino, Hill Family, Ivan Gothner and Betsy Davison, Alyssa Fannick, Robert Litteer, Jen Parker-Starbuck, Sean Pierce and Lucy Pierce and Theo Kogan, paul gardner, John Issendorf, Grant Shaffer, Jill Emerson, Brian Bauman, Amy Sadao, Mambo Movers, Ryan Sorkin, Linsey Bostwick, Mikeah Ernest Jennings, Ilaria Mancia, Hillery Makatura, Justin Vivian Bond, Davis Freeman

Broke House, Photo by Ves Pitts, Pictured Heather Litteer, Matthew Nasser, and Edward Stresen-Reuter
Broke House, Photo by Ves Pitts, Pictured Heather Litteer, Matthew Nasser, and Edward Stresen-Reuter

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#brokehouse @labiennale June 22 . . . . . @caden_m #brokehouse @labiennale June 22
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@caden_manson - @mattnasser - @williefarradmullins - @neddershred - @heatherlitteer - @missnicolagorham - @davidcommander @mattatoio
#brokehouse @labiennale June22 . . . . . @caden_ma #brokehouse @labiennale June22
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@caden_manson - @mattnasser - @williefarradmullins - @neddershred - @heatherlitteer - @missnicolagorham - @davidcommander @mattatoio
#brokehouse at La Biennale di Venizia Teatro June #brokehouse at La Biennale di Venizia Teatro June 22
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@caden_manson - @mattnasser - @williefarradmullins - @neddershred - @heatherlitteer - @missnicolagorham - @davidcommander @mattatoio
#brokehouse @labiennale June 22 . . . . . @caden_m #brokehouse @labiennale June 22
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@caden_manson - @mattnasser - @williefarradmullins - @neddershred - @heatherlitteer - @missnicolagorham - @davidcommander @mattatoio
#brokehouse @labiennale June 22 . . . @caden_manso #brokehouse @labiennale June 22
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@caden_manson - @mattnasser - @williefarradmullins - @neddershred - @heatherlitteer - @missnicolagorham - @davidcommander @mattatoio
#brokehouse residency at @mattatoio begins. First #brokehouse residency at @mattatoio begins. First day! Bigartgroup is so happy to be back in Rome at this amazing international venue working on the European premier of BROKE HOUSE for @labiennale Teatro June 26 & 27. Last pic is a birthday toast to company member @missnicolagorham ! Happy birthday, superstar!
Live Video Still SOS - Customer Service Pictured @ Live Video Still
SOS - Customer Service
Pictured @neddershred 

MADISON-MORGAN
Follow these instructions. ⊗ © //INTERNET CAFÉ//

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MADISON-MORGAN
Press ⊗ F4 ⊗ F11 ⊗ DELETE ⊗ SLASH ⊗ BACKSTROKE ⊗ POWERDOWN ⊗ POWER UP ⊗ HOLD DOWN THE SHIFT KEY AND THE ALT-BACKSPACE-LEFT PARENTHESES ⊗ PUT YOUR FINGER IN THE SOCKET LICK THE DRIVE TRAY ⊗ F3 ⊗ F2 ⊗ F1 ⊗ PRESS ALL THE KEYS AT ONCE ⊗ TURN THE MONITOR OFF ⊗ AND BACK ON AGAIN ⊗

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ADDISON-AVERY-ALEXIS
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Materials: Plastic Party Beads, Plastic Gold Jewelry, Satin Ribbons, Colored Gaff Tape, Wielders Helmet, Metal Studs, Balloons
Just Announced! Big Art Group has been invited to Just Announced! Big Art Group has been invited to present BROKE HOUSE at @labiennale Teatro June 26 & 27, 2022. 

On a skeletal set webbed with video cameras, a family of characters and their hangers-on try to recall their given roles as the foundations of their dreams collapse, expelling them into a desert of their futures: part comedy, part ritual, part love spell. 

Image © Ves Pitts

#labiennaleteatro #venice #italy
Broke House “Rather than searching for ways aro Broke House

“Rather than searching for ways around death and disappointment, the queer art of failure involves the acceptance of the finite, the embrace, of the absurd, the silly, and the hopelessly goofy. Rather than resisting endings and limits, let us instead revel in and cleave to all of our own inevitable fantastic failures" 
― J. Jack Halberstam, The Queer Art of Failure
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Image ©Big Art Group
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