Justin Vivian Bond and More to Guest Star in La MaMa's SQUIRTS, Now thru 1/13

La MaMa ETC presents SQUIRTS: New Voices in Queer Performance, curated and hosted by Dan Fishback, tonight, January 4 - 13, 2013, at The Club at La MaMa ETC, 74 East 4th Street, NYC.

The production plays Fridays & Saturdays at 10pm, Sundays at 5:30pm. Tickets: $15 / $10 students/seniors at the box office,
or online at www.lamama.org or call 212-475-7710. For more show information, go to www.danfishback.com.

STARRING (ON EACH NIGHT): Khi Armand, Becky Eklund, Man Meat Collective, Buzz Slutzky, Chris Tyler and Santiago Venegas

GUEST STARRING (ON SELECT NIGHTS): Peggy Shaw (Fri, Jan 4), John Kelly (Sat, Jan 5), Deb Margolin (Sun, Jan 6), Marga Gomez (Fri, Jan 11), Mike Albo (Sat, Jan 12) and Justin VivIan Bond (Sun, Jan 13)

FEATURING (ON SELECT NIGHTS): Ariel Speedwagon (Fri, Jan 4), Justin Vahala (Sat, Jan 5), Yana Walton (Sun, Jan 6), Angelica Rivera (Fri, Jan 11), Shane Shane (Sat, Jan 12) and Kirya Traber (Sun, Jan 13)

Playwright and performance artist Dan Fishback rallies some of his favorite new voices from the NYC queer performance world. Ranging from comedy and cabaret to video and traditional queer performance art, these young artists take cues from their predecessors while reinventing the form through the singular weirdness of their individual visions.

Each night of SQUIRTS will also feature a guest legend - an established icon of the queer performance world. Guest stars Justin VivIan Bond, John Kelly, Peggy Shaw, Deb Margolin, Marga Gomez and Mike Albo helped create the world in which our SQUIRTS form their own voices.

While a rep company of six SQUIRTS - Chris Tyler, Buzz Slutzky, Santiago Venegas, Becky Eklund, Khi Armand, and the Man Meat Collective - will perform every night of the series, they'll also be joined by a diverse group of guest SQUIRTS -- a different one each night, from up-and-coming club performers like Shane Shane to spoken word artists like Kirya Traber.

Join two generations of queer performers as we celebrate the legacy of downtown theatrics and the precocious insanity of the millennial mind.

SQUIRTS was inspired by a dialogue between Fishback and La MaMa's Nicky Paraiso about the lineage of queer performance, and the unique power this artform has to transmit authentic, underground queer cultural memory. By showcasing younger performers in the context of their predecessors, Fishback and La MaMa hope to strengthen the world of queer performance, creating bonds between artists of all ages and resisting the generation gap caused by AIDS and gentrification. SQUIRTS is part of a growing movement to document and canonize queer historical lineage, taking its place among the Pop-Up Museum of Queer History, the AIDS Memorial Park, and documentaries about ACT UP like "United in Anger" and "How to Survive a Plague" in a mission to establish an ongoing people's history of queer life and art.

DAN FISHBACK has been writing and performing in New York City since 2003. Major works include The Material World (2012), thirtynothing (2011) and You Will Experience Silence (2009), all directed by Stephen Brackett at Dixon Place. Fishback has received grants from the Franklin Furnace Fund (2010) and the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists (2007-2009). He is a resident artist at the University of Pennsylvania (2012-2013) and at the Hemispheric Institute for Performance & Politics at NYU (2012), and has enjoyed previous residencies at BAX/Brooklyn Arts Exchange (2010-2012), Yaddo and the MacDowell Colony. Previous works include No Direction Homo (P.S. 122, 2006), Please Let Me Love You (Dixon Place, 2006), Waiting for Barbara (Galapagos Art Space, 2006), boi with an i (Collective: Unconscious, 2004), and Assholes Speak Louder Than Words (Sidewalk Cafe, 2004). Also a performing songwriter, Fishback began his music career in the East Village's anti-folk scene. His band, Cheese On Bread, has toured Europe and North America in support of their two full-length albums, "Maybe Maybe Maybe Baby" (2004) and "The Search for Colonel Mustard" (2007), the latter of which was re-issued in Japan in 2010 on Moor Works Records. As a solo artist, Fishback has released several recordings, including "Sweet Chastity" (2005, produced by César Alvarez of The Lisps), and his latest, "The Mammal Years" (2012). He was a member of the movement troupe Underthrust, which collaborated with songwriter Kimya Dawson on several performances and videos. Fishback frequently teaches workshops on performance composition and queer performance culture. He blogs at thematerialworld.tumblr.com; his regular website is www.danfishback.com.

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