To Visit the Installation: Sundays 1-5pm (Jan. 10-31)

Los Angeles, CA - Nasty, poetic, and surprisingly funny, BAD THING is a unique amalgamation of theater, installation, performance and painting. BAD THING circles around the body of American violence, exploring ideas of Western guilt and pleasure in a series of shifting scenarios that are often grotesquely humorous, sometimes tender, always distressingly familiar. This dark performance features six characters (a hallucinating conquistador, a brutally sadistic monk, a paranoid hidalgo, a grotesquely obsequious servant, and Jesus Christ in the guise of a fox) and six paintings that explore and complicate archetypal themes of dominance, submission, boredom, paranoia, and transcendence. BAD THING takes inspiration from17th century Spanish playwright Lope de Vega’s story of a repentant sadistic noble La Fianza Satisfecha, the diaries of Spanish conquistador-turned-healer Cabeza de Vaca, and Eduardo Galeano’s classic Open Veins of Latin America.

Audiences sit close to the action in an installation of Hartman’s crypto-religious paintings ensconced in a lumpy architecture of bloated Spanish colonial facades. What unfolds is a poetic narrative of sound, dialogue, silence, and image deftly articulated by performance, sound and visual artists. BAD THING features performance artists Franc Baliton, Rochelle Fabb, Simone Gad, Michael Morrissey, visual artist Candice Lin, and artist-musician Claire Cronin. The sound is scored by artist Adam Overton.

BAD THING runs two nights only, Friday January 22 and Saturday, January 23rd, 2010 at Sea and Space Explorations at 4755 York Blvd in Highland Park. Admission is FREE. Reservations are recommended, as space is limited. Performance begins at 8pm sharp and will last just under an hour. No late admittance. For more info visit www.seaandspace.org or call (323) 982-0854.

Note: BAD THING contains very graphic language and is not suitable for children.

WHAT: BAD THING - A Performance play and installation
WHEN: Friday January 22, 2010, 8pm sharp (no late admittance)
             Saturday, January 23, 2010, 8pm (no late admittance)
WHERE: Sea and Space Explorations, 4755 York Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90042
INFO: www.seaandspace.org or (323) 982-0854

Admission is FREE.
Not suitable for children or the light of heart; very graphic language


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Biographies

PAINTER-DIRECTOR
Asher Hartman

Asher Hartman is a painter, performance installation artist, and filmmaker. Hartman’s work has been exhibited extensively in Los Angeles and elsewhere including at the Whitney Biennial in collaboration with Curious Notch and Charles Long, the Beijing Open Performance Festival, the Images Festival, (Toronto), the Cultural Center of the Philippines (Manila), Recontres International (Paris/Berlin), MIX/NYC, and in solo and collaborative exhibitions at Sea and Space Explorations, LACE, Track 16, The Museum of Jurassic Technology, Highways Performance Space, and New Image Art. He has curated a number of exhibitions including “Defense” at the Sweeney Art Gallery in Riverside, “Until We Come to One that Reminds Us,” (with Amy Green) at Monte Vista Projects, Los Angeles, and “Instruments of Risk” (with Carol McDowell) at Sea and Space Explorations. He served as co-director of Crazy Space, a gallery for experimental art and durational performance in Santa Monica, from 2000 to 2005 and teaches at the University of California, Riverside. Hartman received his BA from UCLA and MFA from CalArts.  www.asherhartman.com

SONIC ACCOMPANIMENT
Adam Overton

Adam Overton is an artist, composer, performer, teacher and massage therapist living in los angeles, and is currently involved with a variety of non-profit artist spaces including Sea and Space Explorations, Machine Project, and the wulf. He teaches at Otis College of Art, College of the Canyons, and other institutions of higher learning.

CAST – Leonido, a young nobleman
Franc Baliton

Franc Baliton is a performance and installation artist who has written and performed numerous solo pieces, including works with the Rachel Rosenthal Company. Additionally,  with his partner/collaborator, Michael Morrissey, he created works that include “It is Decidedly So,” “But Beautiful,” “Who Dreams the Dream” and “The Ties that Bind (Come Rain or Come Shine),” pieces for “Fairy” (Lauren Hartman, director), “Give and Take,” (Highways Performance Space). He has appeared with Empire of Teeth in Michael Sakamoto’s “Dr. Chi,” Rochelle Fabb’s “The Last Waltz,” and Empire’s presentation in Suzan Lori Park’s 365 Plays/365 Days. He performed with the Fabulous Monsters (“Voluptuous Madness,” “Psych Cabaret”) and with Keegan & Lloyd. He is a classically trained dancer who has received  several commissions from the Japan American National Museum and other venues.

CAST -  Philosopher
Claire Cronin

Claire Cronin makes drawings, paintings, performances and songs.  Her work is usually an attempt to contact psychic worlds and express religious longing.  In her past life, she was a monastic in a very strict order of ascetic nuns.  She was born in the 80's and lives in Los Angeles.

CAST -  Tizon, a servant
Simone Gad

Veteran performance and visual artist Simone Gad has exhibited and performed internationally in the New York, San Francisco, and LA performance scene since the 1980's. Her paintings have been exhibited widely including exhibitions in Belgium, Germany, Austria and Spain and she has performed in places such as The Knitting Factory, Dixon Place, the Nuyorican Poetry Club, Track 16 and Crazyspace. An actor since the age of 4, Simone has co-starred and guest-starred in films and television including Days of Our Lives, The Bold and the Beautiful, The Munsters Today Show, Speed and Lucinda/Serena/Marca Get High. She is a 6 time grant recipient and is represented by L2K Kontemporary in Los Angeles and Jack Fischer Gallery in San Francisco.

CAST – Jesus Christ
Candice Lin

Candice Lin received her MFA in New Genres at the San Francisco Art Institute in 2004 and her double BA in Visual Arts and Art Semiotics at Brown University in 2001. Lin's work has been exhibited widely in Los Angeles, including Chung King Project, Luckman Gallery at California State University Los Angeles, Guggenheim Gallery at Chapman College,  China Art Objects, the Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Happy Lion, Armory Center for the Arts, Lizabeth Oliveria Gallery, Betalevel, and the Los Angeles Tom Bradley Airport.  Lin has also exhibited at the New York Underground Film Festival, Lisa Dent Gallery (SF), Milliken Gallery (Stockholm), Valenzuela Y Klenner Arte Contemporaneo (Bogota), and at Kino Lab at the Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw).  She is a cofounder and director of the artist space, Monte Vista in East Los Angeles and has taught drawing and printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, Self-Help Graphics, and Chaffey College. Lin was awarded an artist residency at CESTA (Czech Republic) in 2004 and a 2009 Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship.

CAST – Cabeza de Vaca, an explorer
Michael Morrissey

Michael Morrissey has been performing for over 20 years in various venues across the U.S. and internationally. He was founding member of Al’s National Theater, and has performed in Los Angeles with the Actor’s Gang (“Porno”), The Fabulous Monsters (“Voluptuous Madness”) and Bottom’s Dream (“Erotic Curtsies”), and Empire of Teeth (“The Crook,” “365 Days/365 Plays”). He is a member of the Rachel Rosenthal Company, with which he has toured extensively. His original work, “Sacred Rabbit” was presented at Espace DbD in Los Angeles. He has reared numerous installations with his partner Franc Baliton.  Morrissey holds an MFA from CalArts.

CAST – Monk
Rochelle Fabb

Rochelle Fabb is an award winning contemporary artist as well as a Producer/Writer/Director/Lighting Designer/Performer and Publicist working in theater, dance, art and television. Her mercurial, fantastical pieces range from solo performances to large scale, site-specific works incorporating installation and performance. Exhibition and performances include works at LACMA, Track 16, LA Theater Center, The Knitting Factory, Miles Playhouse, The 13th Annual New Genres Fest (Tulsa), Mobius, Boston, RAW Tempel, Berlin, Theatre Nogent, Marnay sur Seine, France, Ex-Teresa Int'l Festival (Mexico City), Cleveland Performance Art Festival, Espace DbD, and numerous productions at Highways Performance Space and Crazy Space in Santa Monica. She served as Co-Founder and Co-Director of Empire of Teeth, an artist collective developing new interdisciplinary performance works incorporating a broad range of media, and as a co-director of Crazy Space in Santa Monica. Her conventional theater credits include starring roles as: Martha in Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, Alice in Alice in Wonderland, Mrs. Kendal in The Elephant Man, and Lizzie in The Rope Dancers.

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