Notice: Dates for the below shows (part of the Response: Performance Series) have been affected by COVID-19. We will announce alternative dates at a later time.

Torn Space Theater’s RESPONSE: PERFORMANCE SERIES returns for its fifth year with the programming series NEIGHBORHOOD.

The 2020 season includes the development of a personal auditory experience, Passage, and Silence, an intimate performance of Torn Space mythology for Silo City accompanied by a ceremonial meal. Performances postponed due to the effects of COVID-19 include music and video experience by Kenneth Collins of Temporary Distortion entitled Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue, Camp Everything, a performance installation on a Buffalo Pride Parade float in collaboration with Adam Weekley and the Burchfield Penney Art Center, and INTERSECTION I, a large-scale site-specific performance designed for the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood. We look forward to presenting these works in the future when it is safe to do so.

Outdoor performance among the grassy meadows of Silo City, designed for social distancing.

SILENCE
Torn Space Theater

Dates: July 31-August 2, August 7-9, 14-16 2020 (pending phase 4 NYS re-opening guidance)
Venue: 85 Silo City Row Buffalo, NY 14203
Tickets: $30, Limited capacity

Tickets Available Soon

Torn Space implements the restrictions of pandemic social distancing and PPE use to design a new walk-through outdoor installation. Contactless pre-registration and auditory guidance within the performance will make for a solitary experience among a small audience with specially-designed masks that draw viewers into the ritual. Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola revisit figures in the Torn Space mythology in this latest Silo City experience amidst a new state of social gathering.

“Close the door of words that the window of your heart may open. To see what cannot be seen turn your eyes inward and listen, in silence.” ~ Rumi  

Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue
By Kenneth Collins | A Torn Space Theater Residency

Dates: TBD
Venue: AMLDC 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
Tickets: $25

Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue is the world-premiere of a new site-specific performance that combines theatre, cinema, and live music. Buffalo-based musician, John Toohill (Night Slaves; Radiation Risks; Alpha Hopper) takes over a converted gas mart on Fillmore Avenue with a box full of tapes loops and a new live band to attempt to understand his place in the universe through deep listening and cultural deprograming. Live-feed video of his performances will be projected onto the side of the garage nightly, with video by Brian C. Milbrand and lights by Buffalo’s Eclectric Oil and Light. This production will be the first performance in a new site-based series of works by Torn Space entitled NEIGHBORHOOD. Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue is being written, directed, and designed by Kenneth Collins, the Artistic Director of New York City’s Temporary Distortion (“The hallmark of this company is a tight integration of style and substance.” – The New York Times), as part of a Creative Arts Initiative residency at the University at Buffalo.

Artist Biography

Kenneth Collins is an interdisciplinary artist living in New York City and working internationally, specializing in theatrical design and postdramatic performance.

He is the founder and Artistic Director of Temporary Distortion, a genre-bending performance group whose work explores the potential tensions and overlaps found between practices in visual art, theater, cinema, and music. He works across and between disciplines to create installation-based performances, visual art, films, albums, and works for the stage.

His work with Temporary Distortion has been seen in the United States, Canada, Europe, Eastern Europe, Russia, Japan, South Korea, and Australia.

About Temporary Distortion

Temporary Distortion explores the potential tensions and overlaps found between practices in visual art, theater, cinema, and music. The group works across and between disciplines to create performances, installations, films, albums, and works for the stage that have been shown in over 25 cities in Australia, Austria, Canada, the Czech Republic, France, Greece, Hungary, Japan, Russia, South Korea, Switzerland, and the United States.

Interdisciplinary artist Kenneth Collins formed Temporary Distortion in 2002 when he began staging intimate performances in claustrophobic, life-size shadow boxes in New York City. Temporary Distortion’s recent work has focused on long-duration, installation-based performances featuring live music, during which spectators are encouraged to come and go throughout all-night events.

Temporary Distortion is based in New York City, where its work has been presented at The Baryshnikov Arts Center, The Chocolate Factory, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater and Performance Space 122. The Company’s work has also been presented internationally at: Brisbane Powerhouse (Brisbane, AU), Exit Festival (Paris, FR), Gare Saint-Sauveur (Lille, FR), LiFE (Saint-Nazaire, FR), Mois Multi (Quebec City, CA), On the Boards (Seattle, WA), Prague Quadrennial (Prague, CZ), Salzburg Festival (Salzburg, AT), SPAC (Shizuoka, JP), Théâtre de l’Agora (Évry, FR), Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse, FR), Theatre Junction (Calgary, CA), Theatre National de Toulouse (Toulouse, FR), Trafó (Budapest, HU), Usine-C (Montreal, CA), and Via Festival (Maubeuge, FR).

Articles discussing Temporary Distortion’s work have been published in Contemporary Theatre Review, The Drama Review, The New York Times, TheatreForum, Live Design, Real Time Arts, and The Brooklyn Rail, with an upcoming profile in Chance Magazine.

Site-based work written for the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood

INTERSECTION I
Torn Space Theater

Dates: TBD 2021
Venue: AMLDC 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
Tickets: $30

An original Torn Space site-specific performance written and directed by Dan Shanahan and Melissa Meola encompasses the Broadway-Fillmore area. In bleacher seating on a grassy field out behind Torn Space, audiences view fragmented scenes of life playing out against the backdrop of actual streets, an auto repair shop, empty lots, fields, and a church. It is evening but there is a feeling that it is morning. People are waking up, starting the day, turning on the light in a bedroom, saying goodby; leaving and not returning to where they started but arriving in a new place.