What do people do when drastic change demands action? Climate change, budget crisis, and time capsules spin a Midwest community through multiple possible futures in the quest for a relationship to water, energy, and food that can survive into future generations. None of them are easy… and all of them could happen.
Don’t miss the world premiere of
AquaTown:a future hydrohistory
June 10-12, 2010 at 8pm and June 13 at 7pm
Independent Media Center (Post Office Building)
202 S. Broadway Urbana, IL
Tickets:
$12 adult, $6 youth under 19.
$2 discount for seniors and arriving-not-by-car
Thursday: free admission
Call (217) 689-0111 for reservations.
Catch pieces of our process on our blog!
Andrew Heathwaite, Ash Devine, Astarté Howell
Ensemble Actors:
Ash Devine
Andrew Heathwaite
Astarté Howell
Musicians:
Jacob Barton, James Burton, Jason Finkelman, Denny Genovese
Crew:
Lighting Design: Matthew Eberle * Projections & Puppets: Carly Nix
Costumes: Ash Devine * Projector Operator: Jeanine Meyer
Lighting Operator: Matthew Eberle * Stage Manager: Carly Nix
House Manager: Sarah Haas
Poster Illustration: Annie Danger * Poster design: Chris Hampson
Production:
Producer: Andrea del Moral * Co-producer: elizaBeth Simpson
Ensemble Actors
Ash Devine (Ensemble Actor) has a BA in Theater and Community Arts from UNC-Asheville, and studied with the Geshundheit! Institute and Patch Adams. Originally from Blacksburg, VA, Ash now tours nursing homes and community settings to facilitate participatory music and clowning. In the works is an “educational clown tour” with other grassroots artists to combine musical and collaborative performance with community outreach programs for youth. Her debut album “bird must fly” was released in January 2010. Find out more or listen to her music at www.myspace.com/ashdevinemusic.
Andrew Heathwaite (Ensemble Actor) composes music, language and situations, with special interests in Performance in Everyday Life, cybernetics, puppetry, social design, song-writing, and microtonal pedagogy. In 2009, he collaborated in founding Oddmusic Urbana-Champaign, a compositional co-op and musical instrument library based out of the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center and focused on community-building around underrepresented musics. Since 2008, much of his work in composition and performance has been in collaboration with the School for Designing a Society. Prior to that, he studied music education at the Crane School of Music in Potsdam, New York.
Astarté Howell (Ensemble Actor) is a sophomore at the University of Illinois in the Theatre Studies Department. She was an assistant director on The Hip-Hop Project: Insight to the Hip-Hop Generation at the Krannert Center for Performing. She was also in Spot Theatre and Impulse 24/7 at the Armory Free Theatre. She is glad to be a part of AquaTown and would like to thank her family for all the love and support.
Musicians
Jacob Barton (musical director, musician) is a composer and multi-instrumentalist whose work focuses on microtonal practice and theory. Jacob studied composition at Rice University, where he instigated the Seventeen Tone Piano Project concert series. At the School for Designing a Society, Jacob co-invented the udderbot (a slide woodwind instrument) and began experimenting with composing in the domain of everyday life. A resident of Urbana, Jacob co-founded Oddmusic-UC, a compositional co-op and instrument library at the Independent Media Center, where Jacob currently volunteers as a member of AmeriCorps.
James Burton (percussion) likes to play music. He studied music composition and performance at the University of California, San Diego. Some of his favorite long-term collaborations include Skeleton Key Orchestra, The Taco Shop Poets, The Drinks, Something Strange Is Afoot. James always enjoys exploring new ways to interact with other musicians/artists/people, and currently he’s excited to be a participant in AquaTown.
Philadelphia-born percussionist Jason Finkelman (live laptop) specializes in the berimbau, an Afro-Brazilian musical bow, and performs on a wide variety of African and Brazilian instruments, many handcrafted by Adimu Kuumba. His artistic concerns focus primarily on the performance of improvised music and composition for dance, theater, and film. In recent years Jason has been exploring the use of live laptop electronics, as featured in AquaTown. He leads the Urbana Champaign-based projects Ferrocene3 and Nu Orbit Ensemble, is a member of the didjeridu led, groove oriented rock band Tree Thump, and is a founding member of the New York-based ambient, avant world trio Straylight.
Denny Genovese (musician) tunes his musical instruments to an ancient scale which he has augmented to accommodate the increased sophistication of contemporary life. A graduate of New College of Sarasota, Florida, he has studied privately with Erv Wilson, Ivor Darreg, John Chalmers Jr., Jonathan Glasier, Ralph David Hill and George Secor. Denny is president of the World Harmony Project Inc. (www.WorldHarmonyProject.com), a nonprofit cultural and educational organization, devoted to the development and proliferation of music and instruments in the Extended Just Intonation tuning system. The instruments he plays for AquaTown include Hawaiian Lap Steel Guitar, Starrboard, Fipple pipes, Psaltry, Electric Mbira, Slide whistle, and Harmonica.
Production
Carly Nix (puppet and projector illustrations, stage manager) is a multimedia everythingist with a particular focuses in non-commercial radio. Her recent theatrical interests include creating new aural and visual landscapes wherein new contexts can be explored, and shadow puppets.
elizaBeth Simpson (Performer, Co-Producer) provides organizational direction for CSPP. She has been doing performance art incorporating vocal composition, puppetry, fire spinning, street theater, and storytelling since 1994. She specializes in projects that engender collaboration with multiple artists, especially with people who would not call themselves “Artists.” Having had the opportunity to study Theater of the Oppressed on multiple occasions with Augusto Boal and Story Circles with John O’Neal (Free Southern Theater), elizaBeth teaches creative anti- oppression workshops throughout the country in academic and community settings. Recent accomplishments including a position as Activist-In-Residence at Goddard College in 2006, receipt of the Heinz von Foerster Prize in 2007, and recipient of the Here and Now grant from the Urbana Public Arts program.
Andrea del Moral (Director, Producer) originally from Seattle, resides in Berkeley, California. She co-founded CSPP in 2005 and has created, performed, and/or produced 9 dance and physical theatre pieces with CSPP collaborators. The most recent of these is the play Take This House (and Float It Away) with K. Qilo Matzen, which toured, along with pieces by Jacob Barton and elizaBeth Simpson, throughout the upper Midwest in 2009. Her work is influenced by a commitment to environmental justice and collective empowerment, and training in Skinner Releasing Technique, improvisational dance and theatre, contemporary dance, clowning, writing, and somatic healing. She prefers lists to dualities.
*illustration by Annie Danger, 2010
thank you to our local business sponsors in Urbana:
and
AquaTown is paid for in part by the City of Urbana Arts Grant 
