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Anna Lublina

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Bukhara Peace Agency

the land speaks to me of something shared: a prayer for ancestral rhythms

From the Rhythm to the Sea

Veltroyer

Undying in Yidderland

Bukharan Peace Recipes

woven but k/not one (Jerusalem International Fellowship)

Border Ecologies (Muncie, Indiana)

Border Ecologies (Giessen, Germany)

Talk Flock

Laughter Score

Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka

Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka is an interdisciplinary performance that begins with my grandmother telling a true story—chosen by her—in Russian onstage. Her humorous anecdotes about Jewish oppression are then contemporaneously translated into gibberish, into klezmer music, and into a puppet melodrama. These retellings weave together to create a meta-conversation on the act of translation and historicization, exposing the realities of Jewish life in the Soviet Union and how those experiences transform across generations and migrations.

Created in collaboration with: Tatiana Lublina, Marianna Baker, Julia Danitz, Elena Rose Light, Julia Cavagna, Marina Gasparyan, Irina Gorovaia, Julia Gu, Julian Hernandez, Sarah White, Lim Mui

Composition by: Julia Danitz

Choreography by: Elena Rose Light

Video: https://vimeo.com/370892889/0e81cf69dd

PAST PERFORMANCE

September 26-October 6, 2019: The 14th St Y

ii. Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka, the sims

In Russian and English, Anya and Babushka struggle to communicate their Jewish identities via The Sims, a computer game simulating real life. The pair re-enact Babushka's memories of anti-semitism in the USSR, moving from joy to rage and back again. Their buried family history emerges as an imperfect patchwork of Soviet-Jewish aesthetics, melding puppetry, klezmer music, and dance theater.

Created in collaboration with: Julia Cavagna, Julia Danitz, Marina Gasparyan, Irina Gorovaia, Julia Gu, Julian Hernandez, Elena Rose Light, Lim Mui, Amy Wang

Composition: Julia Danitz

Choreography and Dramaturgy: Elena Rose Light

Video: https://vimeo.com/344462202

PAST PERFORMANCE:

May 30-June 2, 2019: St. Ann’s Warehouse Labapalooza!

June 7, 2019: Blast Off! Performance at The Old American Can Factory

May 1, 2019: A Night for Babushka at The Old American Can Factory

This project, developed as part of COJECO BluePrint Fellowship supported by COJECO and Genesis Philanthropy Group, has also engaged the Russian-speaking Jewish community through intergenerational puppetry workshops. Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka has received a work-in-progress performance at the Old American Can Factory in fall 2018 and will be presented, in part, at Labapalooza at St. Ann’s Warehouse in May 2019 and as a part of the Undiscovered Countries Blast Off! Performance on June 2019. The piece will premiere at the 14th St. Y September 26- October 6, 2019.

i. Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka, queering translation

Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka is an interdisciplinary performance rooted in the liberating potential of queer translation. Three non-Russian-speaking performers live-translate a series of impassioned anecdotes told by my Soviet Jewish grandmother. Their retellings emerge as an imperfect patchwork of interpretation incorporating dance and physical theater. Ultimately, BAb(oo)shka asks: what grows out of the fraught space of miscommunication?

Created in collaboration with: Shubrah Prakash, Bianca Lau, Anna Slate with help from Amy Wiley, Cora Walters, and Elena Rose Light

PAST PERFORMANCE:

November 16-17, 2018: Old American Can Factory, NY

July 14, 2018: BarnArts Residency (Maine)

Photos by Effy Grey

Video by Alex Romania

The Gay Science

The Gay Science (titled after Nietzsche's nihilist text) is a work of dance-theater exploring the malleability of self in all its uncanny, mediated, 21st-century iterations. This work embraces puppet aesthetics in order to explore these themes in an analog world of 2-D limbs.

Puppets and Direction by Anna Lublina

Choreography by Elena Rose Light

Music Composed by Lilly Kaplan

Performed by Julia Cavagna & José Rivera Jr.

PAST PERFORMANCE

April 5, 2019: CPR Spring Movement Festival

October 4-5: The Tank Theater (New York, NY) as a part of Puppet Playlist


Photos and Video courtesy of Sinking Ship Productions & Kathryn Butler Photography

Cruisical: A Lesbian Musical

Cruisical: A Lesbian Musical is an anachronistic musical comedy bringing together six queer women whose lives we wish had intersected over the last 150 years. Luckily, these six women—Mercedes de Acosta, Moms Mabley, Vita Sackville-West, Violet Trefusis, Virginia Woolf, and Esther Eng—find themselves magically transported to the year 2018, where they have landed on an all-inclusive lesbian cruise. Hearts and lives become entangled over piña coladas by the pool, as these women deal with petty interpersonal disputes and larger misunderstandings of 21st-century queerness. With a libretto pulling from their real-life correspondences and diaries, and a campy musical theater soundtrack informed by their respective eras, these women fall in love—and overboard—in this farcical romp. Inspired by queer theater companies Split Britches and The Five Lesbian Brothers, our collaborative team of queer women pays earnest homage to our foremothers, who lived and loved out loud at great personal risk. In Cruisical, we give them the tropical lesbian vacation they deserved.

Written by Anna Lublina & Elena Rose Light

Music Composed by Lilly Kaplan

Directed by Anna Lublina

Choreographed by Elena Rose Light

Performed by:

Esther Eng: Becca Co

Mercedes De Acosta: Julia Cavagna

Moms Mabley: Maritza Bostic

Violet Trefusis: Anna Slate

Virginia Woolf: lim mui

Vita Sackville-West: Sarah White

PAST Performance:

July 24th, 9:30pm: Dixon Place (NYC) as a part of the Hot! Festival

Photo edited by Elena Rose Light

Photos by Effy Grey

The Orca's Silver Tongue as Told by the Manager of the Only Taco Bell in Juno

The Story of the Orca’s Silver Tongue as Told by the Manager of the Only Taco Bell in Juno follows the epic tale of a whale god named Murder, the Manager of the only Taco Bell in Juno, and Frankie Bottomless, the former BFF who stole their gorgeous sparkling tongue and ran away to San Francisco. This narrative of shifting selves manifests as a transdisciplinary performance with a projected video essay, puppetry, and live choral soundscape. The cast assumes new bodies with each encounter, assembling a queer utopian world that envisions new modes for friendship, lust, and solitude.

Poem by Nina Budabin McQuown, adapted for stage by Anna Lublina, Lim Mui, Lilly Kaplan, and Nina Budabin McQuown

Music Composed by: Lilly Kaplan

Cast:

Lilly Kaplan

Lim Mui

Annie-Sage Whitehurst

Christopher Delacruz

Anqi Zhang

Victoria Rosser

Leigh Akin

Lemon Guo

Anna Slate

PAST PERFORMANCES:

January 23-24, 2018: The Tank (NYC) as a part of the Exponential Festival

July 25, 2017: Dixon Place (NYC) as a part of the Hot! Festival

June 15-22, 2017: Vital Joint (NYC) as a part of the Interrobang:New Works Festival

Previous Collaborators: Nina Budabin McQuown, Lilliana Kaplan, Ruthie Natanzon

Previous Cast:

Lim Mui

Annie-Sage Whitehurst

Christopher Delacruz

Gabby Harrison

Anqi Zhang

Photo Credit: Effy Grey and Scott Shaw

Bukhara Peace Agency

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the land speaks to me of something shared: a prayer for ancestral rhythms

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From the Rhythm to the Sea

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Veltroyer

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Undying in Yidderland

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Bukharan Peace Recipes

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woven but k/not one (Jerusalem International Fellowship)

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Border Ecologies (Muncie, Indiana)

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Border Ecologies (Giessen, Germany)

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Talk Flock

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Laughter Score

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Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka

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ii. Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka, the sims

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i. Бабушка | BAb(oo)shka, queering translation

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The Gay Science

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Cruisical: A Lesbian Musical

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The Orca's Silver Tongue as Told by the Manager of the Only Taco Bell in Juno

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Orca's Silver Tongue (1:18) photo: Scott Shaw (Chris).jpeg

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