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JEREMY GOREN
Wistaria (2013-14)
WISTARIA PROJECT.
Home Theatre (private homes) . Hillyer Art Space at The Capital Fringe Festival . SOAK Festival 2013 & 2014 . The Gershwin Hotel . The Drilling Company
"Somewhere in this interplay of light and shadow, Wistaria points toward important questions and about American history, feminism, dick jokes, slavery, freedom, literature, fart noises, contemporary politics, deviled eggs, and much, much more." 5 stars. Best of the Capital Fringe. <DC Metro Theatre Arts>
"Overall, Wistaria is experimental, but the cast is charming and talented, polite enough that with a little encouragement they had the whole audience singing “glory, glory, hallelujah” along with them. If that kind of production isn’t your cup of tea, this isn’t one for beginners — it can be confusing, even uncomfortable, but rewarding, in that it encourages reflection and critical thought about how we each experience our political and cultural identities, whatever they may be." <DC Theatre Scene>
“[An] unconventional, refreshing theatrical experience…. an art happening in which one enters into a brave, passionate, stimulating world that forces the viewer to contemplate who they are in relation to others.” –NYTheatre.com
Wistaria is a transgressive, extra-theatrical, performance event that appears in peoples’ homes and other unexpected places. It springs from the form of an inclusive prayer meeting, inviting the audience to sing with us as we challenge our historical past and present through a hallucinatory amalgam of seminal U.S. texts, traditional song, and actions both mysterious and banal — and deviled eggs.
Wistaria was begun during a 2013-2014 LEIMAY Fellowship, CAVE, Brooklyn, NY, and through the generosity of Terra Incognita Theater.
You Will Make A Difference (2012)
An Immersive Performance Landscape.
West-Park Presbyterian Church
Drawing on diverse materials, including Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, medieval pageant plays, '90s suburbia, My So-Called Life, and the performers’ own stories, You Will Make A Difference explored our current moment. An ensemble led its audience through various spaces on several floors of the beautiful, dilapidated West-Park Presbyterian Church. Formed over an atypical, six-month process, this collaboratively devised performance invited the audience on a journey to discover where they really were. The communal ending included a small, shared meal prepared by Artist/Chef Anne Apparu, along with live fiddle music by Sarah Alden. Apparu created full meals as part of extended performances on October 20 and November 11.
Created through AliveWire Theatrics's A/M/P Residency and a LEIMAY Black Studio Fellowship.
Deviser/Director: Jeremy Goren
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Shelley Molad
Set Design: Sandy Yaklin
Lighting Design: Jess Greenberg
The Ensemble: Stephanie Eiss, Tara Elliott, Nicki Kontolefa, Jeff Kitrosser, Laura Riveros, Derek Spaldo, & Martha Frances Liv Williams
Also featuring: Ben Lambert, Claire Lebowitz, Rishika Mehrishi, Samantha Rivers Cole.
Live music: Sarah Alden
Culinary: Anne Apparu
Producers: Chana Porter & Eric Borlaug
Production Manager: Scott Rodrigue
Video Editor/Production Assoc.: Bridget Durkin
"A truly experimental and immersive experience.... Avant-garde yet deeply felt...." (Flavorpill - Editor's Pick)
Conceived and Directed by Jeremy Goren.Created by: Stephanie Eiss, Jeremy Goren, Jenna Kirk, Tommy Schell.Other performers: Derek Spaldo, Rishika Mehrishi, Casey Lange, Kyra Sims, Lemur Onkyokei, Angeli, Alexandra Zajaczkowski, Laura Bernas, Richard Sheinmel.
Mosh-Pit Daisies (2019)
The Center at West Park (NY, NY)
at Feast Your Famine: a watch-and-play
November 16, 2019
We’re at a temple ritual with mysterious song and strange actions and incantations… Then, wait- Somewhere in the Heartland, in a local living-history museum, four people are performing something. Or creating it. Or mangling it. Management tells them what to do. They sort of sometimes go along with it. They seem unconcerned about anything beyond the walls of their little theater. They don’t care lives hang in the balance… Then, wait- We’re at a temple ritual with mysterious song and strange actions and incantations…
Devised through the LEIMAY Fellowship. Conceived by: Jeremy Goren and Jenna Kirk. Performed by: Sarah Bitar, Jeremy Goren, Jenna Kirk, Kay Soricelli, and Adreyauna Jean-Louis. Directed by Jeremy Goren.
A ~100-minute stage piece for five performers, 2D-video backdrops, some musical instruments, and a rotating, bronze chair-tree, Mosh-Pit Daisies layers narratives on top of anti-narratives, interrupting realities, engaging questions of ancient matriarchal powers, modern patriarchy, myth-making, memory-making, and history-making. It swings through vastly different performance and narrative styles, inviting spectators into a mysterious fray to question together how we make (up) the stories we believe about ourselves and our societies, especially this one here and now in the USA… entangled as it is in a new stage of struggle over history and memory and, ultimately, truth.