We are on countdown! In just over 2 weeks we will begin a 16 show run of AGAMEMNON:REDUX in The Penthouse at The Roger Smith Hotel.

Check out this video of the cast talking about Agamemnon, you’ll get some awesome insight into the process, its a great introduction to the story, and this version of the play specifically.

We hope to see you there!
Warmest,
Danika

Enjoy!

Come and see it!  February 23-18.

BUY TICKETS HERE
Want to know more? CLICK HERE!

THE LAB is pleased to announce the upcoming production of Robert Auletta’s  AGAMEMNON:REDUX, a modern adaptation of Aeschalus’ Agamemnon. Staged in the penthouse of the Roger Smith Hotel, this play will be performed to an exclusive audience of 40 people a night for a limited run of 16 performances only.

Experiential theater in its most raw form, this famous Greek tragedy will unfold around audience members in the hotel’s intimate penthouse. One of the most unusual and private spots in the city, this space is most notable for its domed ceiling that inspired the famed architect Buckminster Fuller to design his Geodesic Dome. The distinctive room provides for a dramatic staging of the play as actors unexpectedly emerge from side rooms, back rooms and even exterior balconies, sharing the close space with the audience, bringing a fresh immediacy to this re-telling of an ancient classic.

“I’m a New Yorker, born and raised. And the clarity of language is important to me” says  Obie Award-winning playwright Robert Auletta (Peter Sellars’ AJAX and THE PERSIANS). “Language needs to be visceral. I’m trying to do something that brings the story to today’s audience and makes it accessible in the same way it may have been experienced by a Greek audience in 485 B.C.”

Director Kenneth Ryan (founding member of American Repertory Theatre) says “This is a lean, mean fighting machine performed by six actors, using a raw poetic text that brings the traditional elements of Aeschelus’ work into the vernacular of today. The Wild Bunch takes on the Greeks.”

THE LAB Presents “Actors: On Acting” The Cast of Agamemnon:Redux

Agamemnon:Redux opens Thursday February 23^rd  and runs through Sunday March 18^th, Thursdays through Sundays at 8PM. Seating is extremely limited and tickets are $18. There will be a “Tweetview” performance (open to anyone reserving their seat through Twitter) on February 21^st,  Send them a tweet! @AgaRedux

For further information visit www.agamemnonredux.com

Purchase Tickets HERE

A spectacular year summed up beautifully by our video maestro John Birsdong.

Enjoy!!

Warmest,
Matt and Danika

Video by John Birdsong

By Danika Druttman

Last Wednesday afternoon, in anticipation of Hyong Nam Ahn’s December show at The LAB, Fantastic Lonely Heart,  Matt, Birdsong and I took our first road trip together.

We hopped in a Zipcar, picked up Soojung Hyun, the Curator of the show, and made our way in the crawling Manhattan traffic, over the GW Bridge, to Hyong Nam’s studio in New Jersey.

Here is our afternoon in a nutshell:

1. Hyong Nam’s studio is a vast space. To get up there, you have to pass a rather eerie pool hall on the first floor, but just one flight further and we trailed into his space to find all his light based pieces on show, fully luminous and alight, it was magnificent.

An excellent way to kick off. 2. Hyong Nam’s very impressive, if not epic, speakers 3. Possibly a new Facebook profile photo 4. Laid out for us was a fabulous spread on a table decorated, appropriately, with Autumn leaves; sushi, salad, fruit, almond biscuits. 5. I am delighted to say, the pièce de résistance was Fantastic Lonely Heart which is in its final phases before it makes it's way to us in December. It's going to look amazing in the gallery.   It's going to look smashing!

Last Friday we celebrated the London based group AMBruno‘s show PROJECT 101, which is also The LAB’s 157th show. We were joined by a host of familiar faces as well as pasta dinner ‘first timers’, of which a a sturdy number were participating artists fresh of the plane from London. It was a lively and very merry dinner party, plenty of pasta and wine, a bucket load of Brits, topped off by an impromptu performance by the legendary Central Park performer Thoth and his consort Lila Angelique.

See the photos!

The ‘Work of Art Season 2 Premiere’ Bingo Screening Party was such a success, we are doing it again Wednesday October 19th for Episode 2!

More Bourbon. More Brownies. More BINGO!!

GET TICKETS HERE

‘Work of Art’ Episode 2 Wednesday October 19^th, 2011 at 9pm
Doors open at 8:30pm
Bingo begins at 9pm
Location: The Roger Smith Hotel
501 Lexington Ave (at 47th St)
New York NY 10017 see the map
Contact no. 212.339.2092
Or email rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com

More about ‘Work of Art’: www.bravotv.com/work-of-art

…Or Dinner Theatre Your Grandma Would Hate.

Hello Friends,

We are outrageously excited about next week’s SYNESTHESIA #1, the first in a series of elaborately directed dinners  we are producing  at the Roger Smith Hotel. It will center around a 10 course tasting menu created by Chef de Cuisine, Daniel  Mowles, and interspersed with five additional “courses” of performance  art, music, poetry, and dance.

Daniel’s menu is going to include Green Tea Truffles, Sour Cherry Jam, Tangerine, Curry Aioli, Green Apple Truffle Mignotte, Hudson Valley Foie Gras, Frisée, Scallop Tartar, Aged Cheddar Grits, Summer Peaches and American Caviar.

We had a brilliant tasting session last week,
and everything we tried was excellent!

Here’s the Oysters…

Before…   and after! 

The performances and art interactions will include the works of poet Richard Jeffrey Newman, performance art collective BabySkinGlove, Colombian/Japanese Butoh Duo LEIMAY, Australian classical guitarist Rupert Boyd, sound artist Alan Sondheim.

(Date: Wednesday September 28th, purchase tickets here)

rogersmithlife.com has all the info about the performers and details about the evening.

Tickets are $75 a head and tickets can be purchased here

For further inquiries call 212.339.2092 or email us at rogersmitharts@rogersmith.com

We hope to see some of your friendly faces there and we then plan to KNOCK YOUR SOCKS OFF!!!

See you soon!

Matt and Danika

More about Synesthesia…

Last week we celebrated the completion of our Summer show ‘Projected Drawings’, with home-made popsicles from the Roger Smith Food Cart outside the gallery on the corner of 47th and Lexington.

I’ve been called on as a physician on board airline flights three distinct times: once for a cardiac arrest in which I was performing CPR by myself on an elderly gentleman on the floor of the plane’s galley as it landed, a second time to evaluate a nearly-hysterical woman who was increasingly fearful that she was going blind during the flight, and a third time on an American Airlines flight from Honolulu to Chicago.

Approximately twenty four hours prior to this last medical emergency in the air, I had left Hong Kong after opening the art exhibition d’Asie d’Afrique at Museum 63.

The woman, in seat 39G, was experiencing increasing difficulty seeing clearly and complained that her vision was collapsing to a tunnel-like view. She also complained that she was losing sensation in her extremities, accompanied by a headache and abdominal pain. Her husband became increasingly concerned that she was progressively getting weaker and less responsive. The chief purser put out a call for doctors on board, and I rose to lend aid to the patient. Another physician, in Bermuda shorts and a bright blue Margaritaville t-shirt, and me, in camouflage shorts, flip-flops, and a black Triple 5 Soul hoodie, appeared as unlikely attendants to this patient. After a focused history-taking, physical exam and discussing differential diagnoses, our assessment was that she was most likely symptomatic due to dehydration and electrolyte imbalance secondary to gastroenteritis and diarrhea. It was found that these symptoms afflicted several other passengers on their Hawaiian holiday boat cruise. Although her initial low blood pressure and obtunded state improved after oral rehydration, our joint medical decision was to divert the flight to San Francisco to deplane and stabilize the patient with more definitive care in proper health facilities on the ground. An ambulance team greeted us upon a prioritized landing, and she was expected to quickly and fully respond to intravenous rehydration and electrolyte replacement

________________________________

Kóan Jeff Baysa is a contemporary art collector, curator, designer, writer, critic, physician, Whitney Museum Independent Study Program – Helena Rubinstein Curatorial Fellow, and a member of AICA, the association of international art critics.

On the boards of The Vera List Center for Art and Politics at The New School University, Art Omi International Artist Colony, the Asian American Art Centre, and The Center for Photography at Woodstock, he has presented lectures at the Whitney Museum of American Art, MoMA in New York, MMVR in California (organizing committee member), and is on the advisory panels for the Chelsea Art Museum in New York and the Streaming Museum, a cybersite with public exhibition spaces on all seven continents.

He is a member of the Fragrance Advisory Board, and a consultant to and associate of The Daily Brand, a multi-disciplinary communications agency based in Los Angeles headed by Colin Mangham, a fellow founding member of MOCA China. The critic-in residence for the 2006 Art Omi International Artist Colony in Ghent, New York, he received a Ford Foundation grant to lecture on contemporary curatorial practice at the Hanoi University of Culture in Vietnam and conducted a survey of contemporary art in south and north Vietnam. In March 2009, he presented lectures and conducted workshops on the curatorial process from his unique perspective as a physician, at Zayed University campuses in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates.