Torn Space Theater’s RESPONSE: PERFORMANCE SERIES returns for its sixth year with all world-premiere performances.
Torn Space Theater is launching a new season of original works designed for outdoor experiences in 2021 focusing on community, our Broadway Fillmore neighborhood and Silo City. Works developed within this series will bring audiences to performance spaces in our newly-renovated home at the Adam Mickiewicz Library and Dramatic Circle, the surrounding lots, Artpark, and back to Silo City with artists collaborating to explore new forms of contemporary performance and creative placemaking. All performances will conform to NYS health and safety guidelines with respect to COVID-19*. The 2021 season includes a Public Art and Social Justice Research Project with Lafayette International High School, Agents of Change (installation running throughout the summer with a public performance event on June 5); Intersection/Prototype (June 18, 20, July 16-18), a prototype performance installation by Torn Space; the world premiere of the postponed music and video experience by Kenneth Collins of Temporary Distortion entitled Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue (July 16-18); and Torn Space’s newest site-specific work for Silo City, and the sun sets in golden circles (August 6-22).
Agents of Change
A community collaboration between Torn Space Theater, Just Buffalo Literary Center and Lafayette International High School.
Dates: Live event June 5, public mural installation ongoing through summer 2021
Venue: Live event – Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212; Mural Installation – Brayton St. and West Utica in the Five Points District
Tickets: Free, Reservations required
Agents of Change is an outreach project with a focus on education, community involvement in both the East and West sides of Buffalo, performance, public art and storytelling. It is a collaboration between Lafayette International High School, Just Buffalo Literary Center and Torn Space. Agents of Change provides the community access to the arts, highlights local community members, and activates businesses and architectural assets in Buffalo neighborhoods. The students will be creating a semi-permanent public installation on Buffalo’s West side in the Five Points neighborhood. The portraits will be displayed at Torn Space for a performance installation open to the public free of charge bridging communities and city organizations.
Site-based work designed for Artpark and the Broadway-Fillmore neighborhood
Intersection/Prototype
By Torn Space Theater
Dates: June 18 and 20 at Artpark, July 16-18 at Torn Space, 8:00 PM
Venues: Artpark – 450 S. 4th St. Lewiston, NY 14092, Torn Space – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
Tickets: $15, tickets for Artpark performance may be found here. Tickets sold separately for Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue at Torn Space.
Intersection/Prototype is a site-based performance installation designed for the color field open space of Niagara 1979 on the grounds of Artpark and for open green space behind Torn Space Theater. Audiences are encouraged to bring their own chairs and blankets for show seating. Co-produced by: 
Torn Space will collaborate with a local Bengali cricket team and to stage a live cricket match at dusk. As the sun begins to set, theatrical lightening and a designed soundscape with pre-recorded text will become integrated with the game, altering the context and positioning the game within a designed performance environment. As the game progresses and night arrives, selected automobiles will enter into a choreographed routine highlighting the ceremonial color field of Niagara 1979, where headlights and machines engage with the surrounding landscape. This performance will then be re-staged on an open city lot behind Torn Space and be presented prior to audiences entering Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue.
World-premiere by Kenneth Collins of the acclaimed company Temporary Distortion.
Five Songs for Fillmore Avenue
By Kenneth Collins | A Torn Space Theater Residency
Dates: July 16-18, 9:00 PM
Venue: Torn Space Theater – 612 Fillmore Ave. Buffalo, NY 14212
Tickets: $15 Tickets sold separately for Intersection Prototype.
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. Video of his performances will be projected onto the side of the garage with video by Brian C. Milbrand and lights by Buffalo’s Eclectric Oil and Light. 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. This project will be available as a digital experience, a recorded album, and as a distanced, live outdoors performance in the courtyard of the Torn Space design studio.
Torn Space Theater’s annual early harvest ritual at Silo City
and the sun sets in golden circles
By Torn Space Theater
Dates: August 6-22, Friday-Sunday, rain dates each following Monday: 8/9, 8/16, 8/23, All shows 7:30 PM
Location: Silo City – 85 Silo City Row Buffalo, NY 14203
Tickets: $30
Every Summer since 2013, Torn Space has designed a site-based performance on the grounds of the expansive and majestic Silo City. This year TST explores new terrain with their original work, and the sun sets in golden circles.
Engage in competition and cooperation with the society and the community as Torn Space repositions field day events and confronts the questions:
Where do we come from?
Why are we here?
Where are we going?