International Culture Lab (ICL) and Coney Island USA (CIUSA) have formed an ensemble of dancers, performance artists, actors, musicians, and visual artists who are devising an original evening of theater and art.

This project is inspired by Jean Genet's classic play, The Balcony. Blurring the lines between reality and fantasy, Genet’s work explores themes of power, patriarchy, identity, and illusion. It posits that theater is the prime metaphor for our politics, for the masks we wear in society, and for the very nature of our human condition. 

 

In our production, characters in "Madame Irma's House of Illusions" present an immersive theater experience throughout the expansive Coney Island USA facility -- the Sideshow Stage, the Freak Bar, the Museum, and the Annex, including the interior and exterior passageways between these sites.

 

Beyond the mainstage performances, the ensemble is fabricating performance/art installations or "brothel rooms."  Each performer has devised a persona and a scenario that creatively explores their shadow self. Audiences are invited to peer in on the fantasies of Madame Irma's working girls. 

 

These personas have also created art -- both objects and services -- that are offered one-on-one to individual theatergoers via a menu for an additional charge.

 

Artist as "escort." Art patron as client, voyeur, and speculator on art$value. 

 

Ritual Cabaret Art Brothel takes Genet's timeless work and interprets it for a contemporary audience that routinely traverses misinformation, alternative realities, subverted assumptions about gender and power, TV-star heads of state, and carefully crafted profiles such as on social media and dating apps. As Madame Irma instructs the audience on leaving her House of Illusions, “You must now go home, where everything - you can be quite sure - will be falser than here.”

Production dates:  Fri-Sun, March 15, 16, & 17, 2024

To bring Ritual Cabaret Art Brothel to audiences in March, we need your help!

We began our project in the fall of 2023 with the support of an IndieSpace "Pay Your People Grant." In fabricating the immersive environment, we are promoting an ethical approach to art making. That is, artists are choosing their materials and costumes from the extensive upcycled stock of CIUSA and ICL, from performers' personal inventory, as well as from trips to Materials For the Arts.

As a result...

EVERY DONATION TO THIS CAMPAIGN WILL GO TOWARDS PAYING OUR MANY COLLABORATING ARTISTS FOR THEIR TIME AND MATERIALS.

This production has the potential of being performed at other venues. Toward that ultimate goal, we want to be able to compensate our incredibly creative and dedicated artists that are going above and beyond to create an utterly unique artistic/theatrical experience.

We hope you will join us!!

Primary creative team:

Nick Fracaro In 1981 he co-founded Thieves Theater (named in honor of J. Genet), for which he directed Peter Weiss’s Marat/Sade at Toronto's Theatre Centre and the world premiere of R.W. Fassbinder's Trash, the City and Death in New York. Thieves Theatre was renamed International Culture Lab in 2007. He was a founding member of RAT, an international coalition of theater workers dedicated to sharing resources and ways of working, for which he organized conferences in New York, Philadelphia and Rosario, Argentina. He holds a BA from Illinois Benedictine College (IL) and an MA in Literature and Creative Writing from The University of Illinois at Chicago.

Gabriele Schafer In 1981 she co-founded ICL predecessor Thieves Theatre, which produced the world premiere of R.W. Fassbinder's controversial Trash, the City and Death in her translation. In Germany she has acted at Hamburg's Thalia Theater, Theater Rampe and Theaterhaus Stuttgart. Other theater acting credits include New York's Public Theater, Seattle's Annex Theater, the Wellington NZ and Los Angeles fringe festivals, and the Yale Repertory Theater. In 2005 and 2007 she was producer of the CAVE New York Butoh Festival. She holds a BA in Theater and Criminal Justice from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and an MFA in acting from the Yale School of Drama.

Collaborating Artists
Aida Miro, Alessia Secli, Alex Law, Alix Martin, Amy Berk, Anjoli Chadha, Charlotte Hendrickson, Emma Pesin, Erika Hassan, Bob Lyness, Iren Kamyshev, Jenno Snyder, Jenya Romanovich, Julie Hunkert, Kate Dale, Katharine Doughty, Liz Leighton, Luna Giovenella, Rachel Finan, Si Golraine, Wharton Tract, Zoe Tirado 

(Ensemble bios)

The history of Coney Island Ritual Cabaret, now in its seventh year, is informed by dancer/ choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata who co-originated butoh in the 1960's in an effort to defy and subvert authority, including conventional notions of dance, thereby seeking transformation -- on the personal, societal and human level. Hijikata embraced the zeitgeist of Tokyo's underground and the Europe-influenced avant-garde arts scene comprised of neo-Dadaism, Fluxus, German Expressionism, Surrealism, and Existentialism. During the day, he trained his dancers by inventing body rituals towards a revolutionary dance form. At night the group then experimented with bringing their daytime explorations into the competitive marketplace of cabaret/burlesque. Inspired by this historical reference, in 2016 ICL founded a butoh-, theatre- and performing-arts festival at Coney Island USA. After three years of directing ensemble workshops and performances for the Festival, Mexico-based Diego Piñón (of Body Ritual Movement) coined the term Ritual Cabaret for work that sought to marry ritualistic physical theater with cabaret, burlesque and sideshow on the CIUSA stage.