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PRELUDE Festival 2023

PERFORMANCE

Fecund Error

Ashley Kelly Tata, Jerry Lieblich, Robert M. Johanson

Theater, Multimedia, Opera, Music, Choral

English

20 Mins + Chat

4:30PM EST

Saturday, October 21, 2023

The Tank, West 36th Street, New York, NY, USA

Fecund Error is a spoken word choral music-theater piece constructed according to a procedure of repeated mistranslations of an invented hieroglyphic alphabet. The play embodies a process of trying to speak and think that which is unspeakable and unthinkable. It is an invitation to deep listening, a ritual of unknowing.

Content / Trigger Description:

Language may break down. Pictures may be language. Gesture may be implemented.

Ashley Kelly Tata (they/ze/she/tata) makes multi-media works of theater, contemporary opera, performance, cyberformance, live music and immersive experiences. They have been called“fervently inventive,” by Ben Brantley in the New York Times, “extraordinarily powerful” by the LA Times, like something that “reaches out across the centuries and punches you in the throat” by Alexis Soloski in the New York Times and Tata’s production of Kate Soper’s Ipsa Dixit was named a notable production of the decade by Alex Ross in The New Yorker. These works have been presented in venues and festivals throughout the US and internationally including at Theatre for a New Audience, Ars Nova, PS21, LA Opera, Austin Opera, The Miller Theater, National Sawdust, EMPAC, BPAC, The Crossing the Line Festival, the Holland Festival, The Big Ears Festival, The Big Sing Festival, The Prelude Festival, The National Centre for the Performing Arts in Beijing, and the Fisher Center’s Summerscape Festival at Bard. Tata is currently Visiting Assistant Professor of Theater & Performance and Artistic Producer of Theater & Performance at Bard College, NY.

Jerry Lieblich (they/them) is the founder and lead artist of Third Ear. Their plays include D Deb Debbie Deborah (Clubbed Thumb – Critic’s Pick: NY Times, TimeOut NY), Tongue Depressor (The Public Theatre, Brooklyn College), Everything for Dawn (Experiments in Opera), Nostalgia is a Mild Form of Grief (Playwrights Horizons, Vineyard Theater), Ghost Stories (Cloud City - Critic’s Pick: TimeOut NY), Your Hair Looked Great (Abrons Arts Center), and The Barbarians (New York Theatre Workshop, Dixon Place, PRELUDE), and A Discourse on the Method… (Ensemble Studio Theatre). Their poetry has appeared Foglifter, Grist, SOLAR, Pomona Valley Review, Cold Mountain Review, and Works and Days.

Jerry has held residencies at MacDowell, Mass MOCA, Blue Mountain Center, SPACE on Ryder Farm, Millay Arts, UCROSS, NACL, and the Edward F. Albee Foundation. They have received a Martha Boschen Porter Fund Fellowship, Wallis Annenberg Helix Fellowship from Yiddishkayt, EST/Sloan Commission and the Himan Brown Creative Writing Award (twice), and are an alum of the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Page 73's I-73 Writer's Group, and Pipeline Theater’s Playlab group. BA: Yale, Philosophy; MFA: Brooklyn College (Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney, chief instigators).

Robert M. Johanson is a freelance performer/composer/director in New York City. He is a founding member of Nature Theater of Oklahoma, and has performed with them in No Dice, Poetics: a Ballet Brut, Romeo and Juliet, No President, and composed music for and performed in their epic cycle Life and Times: Episodes 1-9, and Burt Turrido: an Opera. Robert has created and composed his own pieces in collaboration with both students and professionals including Life is Hard with Von Krahl Theater and The Loon with Witness Relocation. He has worked with many companies in New York City and abroad including: Elevator Repair Service, 7 Daughters of Eve, Radiohole, The Civilians, Jim Findlay, Morgan Green, Lithuanian National Drama Theatre, and Spreafico Eckly. He is a frequent guest teacher at the Norwegian Theatre Academy, and has given workshops and master classes at Rutgers, Columbia University and MIT.

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