Llontop

Anonymous Ensemble’s Llontop celebrates indigenous Quechua culture and language and features the song poems of Quechua poet Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco. The piece is an intricately interactive installation of Peruvian heirlooms and a live film performance for both in-person and virtual audiences.

For the development of Llontop, the core members of Anonymous Ensemble (Lucrecia Briceño, Eamonn Farrell, Liz Davito, and Jessica Weinstein) are joined by director Ashley Tata, composer Paul Pinto, and poet Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco. Irma is a Peruvian Quechua language poet and digital language activist who came to the United States via a fellowship at Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian.

The form of the piece is an evening-length, real space, and live streaming performance that layers music, poetry, and intricate media programming. The physical environment of the performance is an installation of objects that were handed down to Eamonn from his Peruvian grandmother that includes a collection of purportedly pre-Columbian pottery. The audience is invited to use their own mobile devices to frame and “recognize” specific machine learned views of the objects that will then trigger podcast-style audio content to stream to the audience member via headphones for an individualized audio journey through the installation. This interactive content serves to contextualize Irma’s poetry in the performance portion of the work.

photo by Bob McDonald

Irma Alvarez-Ccoscco’s haunting song poems are set in specific moments in Quechua history from the brutal conquest of the Incas in 1532 through the eighteenth century indigenous uprising of Tupac Amaru II, and on up to the present. The dates for each poem are presented to the audience through luminescent khipus, the pre-conquest Andean technology that used a complex system of knotted cords to store data. The poems are performed using Anonymous Ensemble’s signature “live film” aesthetic with live mixing of multiple camera feeds, live projections, a lush soundscape, and a simultaneous live stream of the performance to online audiences throughout the world.

Screenshot from Zoom broadcast of workshop performance of Llontop at Mayday Space, December 2021

Download Full Llontop Info Sheet

Luminescent khipus depict dates of poems using the Andean system of data storage

Llontop was made possible with funding by the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Theater Project, with lead funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and additional support from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, by Net/TEN, and by the A.R.T./New York Small Theatres Fund with Production design support provided by the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund, a program of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York). The production has been developed through generous residencies at Royal Family Theater, Coffey Studios, Mayday Space, Eastern Mennonite University, The Princeton Quechua Workshop, The Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology at Connecticut College, and two ASAP Residencies at Pregones/PRTT.

Flight

With Flight, Anonymous Ensemble creates a new form of theatrical space that is live, interactive, and global in scope. Flight brings together performers and audiences in real space and from anywhere in the world with internet access in order to investigate expansive global issues and tiny revelatory moments in real time. Within a stylized visual and narrative framework, we visit people around the world, in their own homes, with their own worldviews and their own words. Carefully blending reality and fiction, Flight creates an experience that is both engaging and transformative. Flight is a performance, a community event, and a conversation.

Live Flight Webcasts:
Nov. 3, 2019 @8:30PM ET – NYC, Melbourne, Chicago, Baltimore
Dec. 8, 2019 @1pm ET – NYC, Melbourne, Athens, Paris, Charlottesville
Feb. 2, 2020 @2pm ET – NYC, Melbourne, Barcelona, Charlottesville, Allentown
March 1, 2020 @4pm ET – NYC, Melbourne, Beirut, Charlottesville
March 22, 2020 @5pm ET – NYC, Melbourne, Marin, Columbus, Pittsfield, Harrisonburg
May 3, 2020 @5pm ET – NYC, Melbourne, Tokyo, London, Lima, Rabat
June 14, 2020 @11AM ET – NYC, Melbourne, Lima, Mumbai, Singapore
September 19, 2020 @10AM ET – NYC, Singapore, Harrisonburg, Clermont-Ferrand, Dar es Salaam, Melbourne, and Ann Arbor.
October 16, 2021 @1PM ET – with HERE in NYC, Bogota, Melbourne, and Copenhagen
January 22, 2021 @5PM ET – with Pregones in The Bronx, San Juan, and Santiago
March 20, 2021 @1PM ET – with University of Buffalo, Kitwe, London, NYC, and Harrisonburg
April 23, 2021, @7PM ET, Bogota, Lima, London, and NYC
March 6, 2022, @11AM ET, Dar es Salaam, Harrisonburg, and NYC
June 8, 2022, @9PM ET, with FiveMyles, Brooklyn, Hong Kong, Los Angeles

Flight was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and by the New England Foundation for the Arts.


Songs from a Tall Room

In a tall room with a tall desk, a tall chair, and tall moving image windows, a very tall singer-songwriter, whimsical and in her pajamas, reflects on past and present moments.
Audiences will be seated outdoors looking in. Created and performed by Jessica Weinstein
In collaboration with Eamonn Farrell, Lucrecia Briceño and Anonymous Ensemble
Featuring musicians Tiappa Klimovitsky and Mojo Lorwin

Performed:
Friday September 10, 6pm
Saturday September 11, 6pm
Sunday September 12, 4pm

FiveMyles, 558 St. John’s Place, Brooklyn NY

Songs from a Tall Room was made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.

The Future

The Future is a live immersive theater event in which an ensemble of curious beings encounter an audience of humans in real space and time. With the audience in headsets and microphones, every performance unfolds as a multimedia, music-filled, interactive event that is unique to each audience member. The Future invites the audience to share and explore their own beliefs about self, society, the environment, and the future of humankind.

In current repertoire
229 Front St, A Chashama Space, NYC, Premiere, January, 2019
Process Series, UNC, Chapel Hill, Residency, February, 2018

LIEBE LOVE AMOUR!

LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! is a live film love affair with an audience. The show’s star, Tall Hilda, draws the audience into a cinematic adventure framed by the gorgeous imagery of silent film director, Erich Von Stroheim. With an original score and virtuosic real-time video and sound editing, LIEBE LOVE AMOUR! seamlessly combines the performances of Golden Age Hollywood personalities such as Gloria Swanson with live performers and even select audience members. Presented at The New Ohio, Duke University, Wesleyan University, The New Orleans Fringe, and The Center at West Park.

In current repertoire
The Center At West Park, NYC, Performances, January, 2018
NC Stage, Asheville, Performances July, 2014
Wesleyan University, Performance and Workshops, September, 2012
Duke University, Performance and Workshops, September, 2012
New Orleans Fringe Festival, Performances, November, 2012
New Ohio Theatre, NYC, Premiere, August, 2012
HERE Arts Center, NYC, Workshop Performances, March, 2012

Turing

Turing is an opera about the life of Alan Turing as imagined by a digital mind that his work engendered. With music is by Willian Antoniou, the opera depicts Turing’s intelligence work during World War II as he masterminds a machine that becomes capable of decoding nearly every piece of intercepted German intelligence. It also dramatizes Turing’s brief love affair that lead to his conviction for homosexual acts and his subsequent suicide. The meta-digital form of the work celebrates Turing’s vision for the future of machine intelligence

National Sawdust, NYC, Concert, October, 2017
National Opera of Greece, Athens, Performances, June, 2011
Current repertoire

Ship of Fools

A collision of puppetry, movement, and live vocals with an electric political charge, Ship of Fools reflects and distorts the supposed relationship between women and madness. Drawing inspiration from poignant words and powerful moments ranging from Marilyn Monroe’s diary entries to acceptance speeches by female celebrities, and with only 20 seats available per night, Ship of Fools is a uniquely intimate, topsy-turvy journey that unabashedly spotlights powerful women’s voices. Presented at HERE Arts Center the month running up to the 2016 Presidential Election.

HERE Arts Center, NYC, Premiere, October, 2016
HERE Arts Center, NYC, Workshop Performances, 2013-2016

Braid

Performing on stilts as Ellipsa MG, a ten foot tall singer-songwriter alter ego who was revealed to her in a dream, Jessica uses her narrative to investigate the intersection of biography and the fiction we create.

FiveMyles, NYC, Installation and Performance, February, 2016
NC Stage, Asheville, Installation and performance, July, 2015
Montgomery Gardens, NYC, Workshop Performance, June, 2015

I Land

A performance event in which Anonymous Ensemble invites the audience to spend an evening on an island far from their daily lives, yet mysteriously inhabited by their inner lives. Straddling the line between a theatre show and a participatory event, this completely spontaneous, yet meticulously crafted piece investigates the evolution of our imaginations as we lead the audience on an expedition into an uncharted terrain of commonplace fantasies and wildly improbable realities.

Incubator Arts, Performance and Installation, February, 2014
Princeton University, Residency, November, 2013
New Ohio Theatre, NYC Ice Factory Festival, August, 2013
NC Stage, Asheville, Residency and performances July, 2013

The Return

The Return is a Rebetiko music adaptation of Euripides’s The Bacchae and is intercultural in both form and content.  Setting the narrative of the ancient play in Athens in the early 1990s, and interpreting the character of Dionysus as an enigmatic, Greek-American rock star named Acolyte, the piece explores issues of cultural colonialism, marginalization, appropriation, and xenophobia. Acolyte was born in Greece by a Greek mother and an American father.  But after his mother’s mysterious death, he disappeared and was raised in Queens, New York.  Acolyte’s pop music is heavily influenced by the Astorian Greek Rebetiko of his youth, the “Blues of Greece,” which he blends with American garage rock. When he returns to Athens for a concert tour, he stokes a cultural revolution.

Theatro Roes, Athens, Performances, March, 2011
Theatro Chora, Athens, Workshop, June, 2010