In conjunction with weekend performances of Torn Space's production of

Burden

Written & directed by Dan Shanahan & Melissa Meola - Part of the 2016 Response Performance Festival August 18-21, Silo City, 20 Childs Street (now Silo City Way), Buffalo, NY


BURDEN is Torn Space's fourth and newest performance installation for Silo City. The project is being designed for Marine A, a vast grain elevator with 120-foot-tall interconnecting concrete silos, as well as the S.S. Columbia—a National Historic Landmark—and the last surviving passenger ship of its kind. The project will draw upon the work of George Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue," the fashion of chanteuse entertainers, the perceived luxury of Ralph Lauren, and reflections on sympathy and burden. The production will transform Marine A into an immersive experience of light, sound, and cinema, while the S.S. Columbia will provide a stunning opportunity to experience not only a historic vessel with its original ballroom, but also the surrounding waterways. Audience members will experience an intimate and controlled tour highlighting Marine A, the surrounding landscape, and the first and second floors of the ship.

Bonnie Marranca, Saturday afternoon's visiting lecturer in Hallwalls Cinema, is founding publisher and editor of the Obie-Award winning PAJ Publications and PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, which celebrates its 40th year in 2016. Her essays are collected in Performance Histories, Ecologies of Theatre, and Theatrewritings. She has also edited several anthologies, including New Europe: Plays from the Continent, Conversations on Art and Performance, Interculturalism and Performance, Plays for the End of the Century, and The Theatre of Images. Her most recent book is Conversations with Meredith Monk. A Guggenheim Fellow and Fulbright Senior Scholar, Marranca has taught and lectured in many universities here and abroad, including Princeton, Duke, Columbia, NYU, UC San Diego, Free University (Berlin), Autonomous University (Barcelona), and University of Bucharest. She is a recent recipient of the Leverhulme Trust Visiting Professorship at Queen Mary/University of London. In 2011, she received the Association for Theatre in Higher Education Excellence in Editing Award for Sustained Achievement. Bonnie Marranca is Professor of Theatre at The New School for Liberal Arts/Eugene Lang College.