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Dream-Like Sea of Birds Lands at Mass MoCA April 4th

Remixing the Visual and Performing Arts

By: - Mar 31, 2009

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This weekend, Sea of Birds intends to transport audiences into a fantastical world, exploring history, memory, and the power of imagination through a blend of the visual and performing arts. The unusual multi-media work arrives at the Hunter Theater of Mass MoCA on Saturday, April 4, with performances at 4 and 8 PM.  In addition to the two performances, Mundheim and her cast will open their set for children to explore and add to in a workshop setting on Saturday, April 4, at noon. You can watch a preview video of this work for some insights into its hypnotic and compelling artistry.

Theater artist Sebastienne Mundheim's Sea of Birds is her eighteenth original creation. It blends a child's memories of an Eastern European displacement camp in wartime with fantasy characters from an American child's imagination.  Using delicate paper sculpture animated by dancers and a rich, lyrical form of storytelling unique to the artist, Mundheim creates a living, three-dimensional storybook complete with a sonic landscape provided by live musicians.

Tickets for Sea of Birds are $13 for adults and $10 for students with ID. As always, Mass MoCA members receive a 10% discount on tickets to the performance.  Tickets are available through the Mass MoCA Box Office located off Marshall Street in North Adams from 11 A.M. until 5 P.M. (closed Tuesdays).  Tickets can also be charged by phone by calling 413.662.2111 during Box Office hours or purchased online.

Michael Zuckerman of the University of Pennsylvania notes, "Sebastienne is a brilliant performance artist, a genuine visionary. No one else is doing anything like her fusion of movement, puppets, props, narration, and music, least of all when the subjects are very difficult artists and abstract ideas. ...Kids are entranced, and grown-ups are lifted. The performances move with a kind of magic that is captivating..."

The Sea of Birds project began with the story of Mundheim's mother who had to leave behind her childhood home of Latvia during World War II. The artist explains, "I always think of my mother as a storyteller who created a portrait of this place that she left. I wanted to integrate these two things: my mother's story of leaving Latvia and my own fantasy characters." The interweaving of these two worlds brought Sea of Birds other characters to life including Ivars the Butterfly Catcher, Guna of the Birch Trees, and Gregor the Tormented Meadow Dweller, all of whom live in a shifting, projected sea of blue and black birds. Seeped in her own history, Mundheim uses the piece to explore the power and pleasure of the storyteller, including the ever-changing series of characters that become part of the storyteller's cast.

Sea of Birds' team of collaborators includes composer James Sugg, choreographer Kate Watson-Wallace, and lighting designer Mike Riggs who worked together to transport the audience into Mundheim's intense dream world.  Adding to the overall sensation of the production is the physical playing space, which is a dome-like structure built of bamboo, tracing paper, cheese cloth, and jute. The artist describes her inspiration for the set noting, "I had a dream where there's this dome that's filled with these yellow flowers, and so I immediately ran out to make one as fast as I could before I forgot it. And then it became the organizing principal for the show."

The presentation is made possible with support from the NEFA Expeditions program funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the six New England state arts agencies and the Argosy Foundation Contemporary Music Fund.

Sebastienne Mundheim is a writer, director, designer, performer, educator, and recently filmmaker. She has created 17 original performances commissioned by institutions including the University of Pennsylvania, The Rosenbach Museum and Library, The Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Franklin and Marshall College. She is known for synthesizing complex, sophisticated academic content into lyrical educational performances geared toward young audiences, but appealing to all ages.

Previous performances include: Were the Sunny Sombreros Somber Somehow: Stories of 20th Century Mexican Revolutionary Painters, Giorgio de Chirico and the Myth of Ariadnem, Under the Hat: Life and Works of Poet Marianne Moore, A Potable Joyce: A Watered-down Version of Ulysses, the Story of James Joyce and his Manuscript, and Currently Franklin: the Story of a Paper Boy. She has collaborated with other visual and performing artists including: Whit McLaughlin, New Paradise Laboratories, Thaddeus Phillips, Lucidity Suitcase, Madi DiStefano, Brat Productions, Kate-Watson Wallace, Agita Dance, and the Reactionaries.

Mundheim has also been a community artist/educator since 1992, creating programming through the Fleisher Art Memorial, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Young Audiences, Big Picture Alliance, and many other organizations and schools in Philadelphia and New Orleans. Sebastienne received her BA/BFA from the University of Pennsylvania in 1990 and her EdM from Harvard in 2000.

Mass MoCA, the largest center for contemporary visual and performing arts in the United States, is located off Marshall Street in North Adams on a 13-acre campus of renovated 19th-century factory buildings.

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