Thu January 31 – Sat February 9
Generous Company’s GUMBO returns to Theatre Project January 31 through February 9, 2013. This festival will consist of presentations of more than 25 new works in various stages of development over two weeks.
GUMBO, a festival of new work from theatre, visual arts, and music, is a two week hot house to nurture and generate artistic responses to recent conversations about the brain, perception, and creativity. Generous Company has challenged visual artists, musicians, and playwrights to view or read one accessible conversation/chapter on the artistic brain and then create a piece of work in response. We will be showcasing 20 new short plays written by playwright alumni of WordBRIDGE Playwrights Laboratory in response to this challenge as well as a host of visual and musical artists.
Artists at GUMBO 2013 will be gaining inspiration from the work of Nobel Prize winning neurobiologist Dr. Eric Kandel. Kandel’s groundbreaking books In Search of Memory: The Emergence of a New Science of the Mind (2007) and The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind, and Brain, from Vienna 1900 to the Present (2012) present stunning new portraits of how the human brain creates memories and how the brain responds to art. In Search of Memory presents Kandel’s mandate that these groundbreaking discoveries into the biology of the brain should be made accessible to non-scientists. The Age of Insight extends this idea to artists by proposing “Knowing Ourselves: The New Dialogue Between Art and Science” as the concluding chapter. Through these two books as well as a host of discussions and lectures with several of his colleagues available online Kandel has extended an invitation from the field of neurobiology and Generous Company and their colleagues will find a way to respond in their own forms.
In addition to presentations of visual artists, musicians, and playwrights, Generous Company will present workshop production of a new devised work The Beholder’s Share. Generous Company’s diverse company including specializations in mathematics, psychology, visual, multimedia, and performing arts will allow Generous Company to engage Kandel’s ideas in a way that can provoke the audience’s understanding of perception on an intellectual and biological level, as well as being a theatrically engaging evening of work.
(The Beholder’s Share has been made possible by support from the William G. Baker, Mr. Memorial Fund, creator of the Baker Artist Awards www.BakerArtistAwards.org.)
