Experimental Text Festival

The Ontological-Hysteric Theater Incubator presents the Experimental Text Festival, a four-night multi-arts event designed to promote interest in new forms of notation and unorthodox methods of making and presenting work. The festival, featuring six short theatrical performances, is curated by Sally Oswald and Jennifer Tsuei and features new work by artists Bronwen Bitetti, Karinne Keithley, Tan Lin, Rachelle Knowles, Johanna Linsley, Ruth Margraff, and Jason Szalla. Arthur C. Danto is scheduled to participate in Szalla’s work on an undicsclosed night of the festival.

The program brings together artists from across the downtown scenes. Featured artists include downtown and international veteran Ruth Margraff (Café Antarsia and Wellspring), director Brooke O’Harra (Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf), poet Tan Lin (BlipSoak01), and visual artist Jason Szalla (Ideas and Observations). Works by visual artist Rachelle Knowles, playwright Jenny Levison, sound and performance artist Johanna Linsley (UnionDocs), and visionary theater artists Bronwen Bitetti and Karinne Keithley are also on the bill.

Started in 2007 by co-curators and playwrights Sally Oswald (Co-Editor of Play: A Journal of Plays) and Jennifer Tsuei (Fantasias for the Immoderate – OHT), the festival features short form works by established and emerging artists who have gathered over a few months to discuss issues around working with experimental texts. Participants were chosen from Poetry, Visual Art, Theater, Dance, and Film for their graphically dynamic, alternately oriented, unusually notated, or formally rebellious texts that called for new approaches to staging and performance.