2023 INTERSECTION: Performance Series
New Works Span Genres, Venues, and Countries
We are pleased to announce a season of original performances that include our tenth year anniversary of presenting theater at Silo City, a return to our main stage productions with Harold Pinter’s The Homecoming, immersive sound and light experiences, performance installations on parade floats, in the theater, and at the international Prague Quadrennial of Performance Design and Space along with salon style dinner parties, public art, conversations and dance hall adventures. Continuing with our INTERSECTION: Performance Series, which launched in 2021, this season offers a diverse selection of events intersecting place, generation, identity and discipline.
This season we have identified three pillars of programming; Theater, Sound and Performance Installation, that allow us to present a wide range of artistic disciplines rooted in the power of live performance. We appreciate that the work being presented this season spans several disciplines and our goal is to provide access points so that the public can best engage with the work. To achieve this goal we will be hosting a series of artist talks to provide the public with greater context for the work and an opportunity to speak directly with the artists who create the work.
When visiting our productions on Fillmore Ave please stop in early or stay late to enjoy the historic Polonia tavern at the Adam Mickiewicz Library & Dramatic Circle or if we are at Silo City, visit our friends at Duende and enjoy a drink or meal beside the epic silos. We look forward to seeing you this season.
– Dan Shanahan, Executive Artistic Director
THEATER
Generation by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola
2013-2023, Ten years of early harvest rituals at Silo City
- August 4-13th
- Location: Silo City – 630 Ohio St. Buffalo
Torn Space returns for an all-new performance ritual among the towering grain silos that celebrates a decade of site-specific productions. Continuing with the concept of heterotopia and public park as democratic space, Generation explores borders, treatises, contracts and the power and expectations of masculinity.
Decade
Dinner party and salon as performance installation
- Coming in 2024
- Location: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
Experience an immersive dinner and performance exploring the transcendent mythology of the Silo Society.
The Homecoming by Harold Pinter
The return of Torn Space’s mainstage production, a classic script as you’ve never seen it
- November 10th – December 9th
- Location: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
Clashes of class, culture, family, and sex; the tension of what is said and left unspoken- Pinter’s celebrated play continues to sear with Torn Space’s cutting edge production.
Learn More About – The Homecoming
SOUND
middle distance: a guided calibration via Groupwork
Live audio-visual performance, and a synthesis of sense, sound and surrounding
- May 13th – 7:30pm, 8:45pm, 10:00pm
- Location: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
Buffalo-based collective Groupwork exports and adapts their underground approach to experiential design, widening the scope and slowing the pace. Known for their ecstatic curated pop-up rave experiences, Groupwork will translate their model for this Torn Space edition.
Learn More About – middle distance
The Masterwork is Haunted by Null Point
Multimedia site-specific installation confronting concert and gallery institutions
- June 23rd, 7:00pm Installation opens, 8:00pm Performance
- Location: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
Null Point presents a new program that brings together new works with innovative realizations of 1960s experimental music scores. In dialogue with contemporary art and scholarship, these performances politicize and confront the principles of concert music.
Learn More About – The Masterwork is Haunted
PERFORMANCE INSTALLATIONS
Camp Everything
Interactive performance float
- Dyngus Day – April 10th
- Pride Parade – June 4th
- Location: Various
Torn Space in partnership with the Burchfield Penney Art Center will participate in the Dyngus Day Parade and Buffalo Pride Parade with the joyous Camp Everything float designed and conceived by artist Adam Weekley. Keep an eye out for the bright pink installation and dance along with the campers throughout the city.
More than Action by Brendan Fernandes
A conversation and presentation by a special guest artist whose work is part ballet, part queer dance hall, part political protest
- May 6th – 7pm
- Location: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
Torn Space in partnership with The University at Buffalo Art Galleries hosts a salon style meal and guided conversation focused on architecture and urban planning that integrate arts and culture into neighborhood revitalization. The evening will feature selected speakers, food and open dialogue, followed by a performance created by Brendan Fernandes with a live music set, choreography and collective dance party. Brendan’s projects have shown at the 2019 Whitney Biennial (New York); the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum (New York); the Museum of Modern Art (New York); The Getty Museum (Los Angeles); the National Gallery of Canada (Ottawa); MAC (Montreal); among a great many others.
Learn More About – More than Action
The Huitlacoche Project by Alvaro Azcárraga
Unnatural Selection: Huitlacoche and the Human Quest for Control
- May 17th – 7pm
- Location: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
Torn Space collaborates with University at Buffalo’s Coalesce: Center for Biological Arts, to present a performance by Mexican artist and researcher Alvaro Azcárraga, who explores the intersection of botanical organisms and the history of scientific colonialism.
Learn More About – The Huitlacoche Project
Agents of Change
Annual collaborative presentation with Lafayette International High School students and Buffalo’s community change-makers
- June 3rd
- Location: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo
Torn Space will collaborate with Lafayette International High School, The Buffalo Niagara Medical Campus and Just Buffalo Literary Center to present a conference, public performance and art installation focused on local business leaders and entrepreneurs.
Learn More About – Agents of Change
Decade (Installation)
Torn Space’s exhibition at the Prague Quadrennial in 2023
- June 8-18th
- National Gallery Prague – Trade Fair Palace – Prague, CZ
An original gallery installation and audio walking tour that introduces the Torn Space mythology of Silo City to the global stage in the international conference for Scenography and Performance Design.
Torn Space Theater’s INTERSECTION: Performance Series is made possible with lead support from the Cullen Foundation, M&T Bank, Erie County, the City of Buffalo, Empire State Development, and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.