HERE is set to present Chimera, a HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP) production, as part of the 2012 Under The Radar Festival. Created by Suli Holum (co-creator, performer) and Deborah Stein (co-creator, writer), Chimera is a multimedia theatrical work integrating sophisticated video into a dramatic story. This production plays January 5 – 28 in the Dorothy B. Williams Theatre at HERE (145 Sixth Avenue) as a featured presentation within HERE’s 2011-12 Season. Official Opening Night is set for Sunday, January 8 at 7:00pm.
Welcome to the world of Jennifer Samuels, who has just discovered that she is her own twin. A high-tech voyage charged with emotion and mystery, Chimera is a thought-provoking examination of medical chimerism, the phenomenon of containing two different sets of DNA within one body. Inspired by a true story, this new play journeys from the frontiers of modern science back to the roots of ancient mythology while exploring what happens when technology shatters one’s notion of identity.
Chimera was commissioned and developed through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP). It also underwent development at the Workhaus Collective in Minneapolis. Further support was provided by the Playwrights’ Center PlayLabs Festival of New Plays, the Perry Mansfield New Works Festival with support from Actors Theatre of Louisville; New Dramatists with support from the Creativity Fund, and the Swarthmore Project at Swarthmore College. An excerpt from Chimera was shown as a work-in-development in HERE’s Culturemart festival in January 2011.
Suli Holum (Co-creator, Performer) is a performer, playwright, director and choreographer based in Brooklyn. As a founding member and Artistic Director of Pig Iron Theatre Company, she established herself as a collaborative playmaker. With diverse training that includes Lecoq, Viewpoints, puppetry and various dance forms, Holum creates work that is highly physical and transformative. Acting credits include Off-Broadway: Hot ‘n’ Throbbing, Courting Vampires, Live Girls, Lebensraum; Regional: Arena Stage: Born Yesterday; Humana Festival: At the Vanishing Point, Phoenix and work with The Talking Band and The Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf. Her first original solo show, The Lollipop Project, was developed through an Independence Foundation Individual Artist Fellowship and a Shell Fellowship in Drama from the National Institute of Education in Singapore. She co-created and performed in Joseph Chaikin's collaboration with Pig Iron, Shut Eye, with text by Deborah Stein, at The Traverse Theatre (Edinburgh), Dance Theatre Workshop (NYC), the Philadelphia Live Arts Festival, the Wilma Theatre (Philadelphia), Theatre Artaud (San Francisco), and throughout Poland. She received a Drama Desk Award for her performance in Israel Horowitz's Lebensraum, and was nominated for a Helen Hayes Award for Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday at Arena Stage. Holum is a recipient of a 2011 TCG Fox Resident Actor Fellowship.
Deborah Stein’s (Co-Creator, Writer) work has been produced and developed nationally at Actors’ Theatre of Louisville, the Theatre @ Boston Court, the Guthrie, Seattle Rep, Stages Rep, the Women’s Project, the Wilma Theatre, Live Girls!, Bay Area Playwrights’ Festival, and Theatre Artaud; in New York at The Public Theatre, Dance Theatre Workshop and Ars Nova; and internationally in Poland, Ireland, Edinburgh (the Traverse) and Prague. As a playwright, producer and director, Stein has collaborated on original ensemble works and site-specific installations with artists including Joseph Chaikin, Dominique Serrand, Lear deBessonet, and most frequently the Pig Iron Theatre Company, with whom she has collaborated since 2000 on six original works and was nominated for three Barrymore Awards. Her writing is published in Theatre Forum, Play: A Journal of Plays, and The Best American Poetry of 1996. She has been a resident artist at Hedgebrook, Swarthmore College, Princeton University, and the Tofte Lake Center for the Arts. Stein has taught writing at Yale, NYU, Northeastern, St. Olaf, Parsons, and Brown University, where she received her MFA. Recipient of the 2009-2011 Bush Artist Fellowship, two Jerome Fellowships, and a 2010-2011 McKnight Advancement Grant at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis. In addition to her residency at HERE, she is a resident playwright at New Dramatists.
