Peter Mills Weiss + Julia Mounsey
Presented by Mabou Mines + Performance Space New York
photos: Walter Włodarczyk
An experimental theater piece about the end of an experimental theater.
As one-time proprietors of Brooklyn’s late and much lamented DIY space Life World, Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey have already lived through the artist’s pain of building up and then losing a scene. A long goodbye to an imaginary experimental theater that takes the form of experimental theater itself, Open Mic Night’s recursions and subversions reveal the easy fellowship that comes from mixing dark rooms, cheap beer, and a small crowd facing the same direction. This pressure cooker of tension, risk, and awkward engagement teases wisdom and community as a reward, but is that the carrot or the stick? In the end, Open Mic Night is less stand up crowd work than it is an elegiac to the black box as Proustian madeleine. Or maybe it’s just your chance to finally shout out your BFF to the tune of Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together?” If you want to know what it’s really about, I guess you just had to be there. Will you be there?
SCHEDULE
Friday, January 5 @ 7:30 pm
Saturday, January 6 @ 7:30 pm
Sunday, January 7 @ 5:00 pm
Tuesday, January 9 @ 7:30 pm
Wednesday, January 10 @ 7:30 pm
Thursday, January 11 @ 7:00 pm
Friday, January 12 @ 7:00 pm
Saturday, January 13 @ 7:00 pm
Sunday, January 14 @ 5:00 pm
Tuesday, January 16 @ 7:30 pm
Wednesday, January 17 @ 7:30 pm
Thursday, January 18 @ 4:00 pm
Thursday, January 18 @ 7:30 pm
Run time: 50 minutes
CREDITS
Created and Performed by Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey
Production Designer: Kate McGee
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
We are Peter Mills Weiss and Julia Mounsey. We collaborate together. Our work wrestles with questions of cruelty, authenticity, deception, entertainment, and power. We value simple language, functional design, autobiography, and vulnerability. Our work has been presented at Under the Radar at the Public Theater, La MaMa, JACK, Soho Rep, the Deutches Schauspielhaus in Hamburg, and the Radikal Jung festival at the München Volkstheater in Munich. We were both members of the 2017-2019 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, the 2017-2018 Devised Theater Working Group at the Public Theater, and were Baryshnikov Arts Center Resident Artists in 2019. Julia has worked with New York City Players, Soho Rep, and was an Assistant Director on Young Jean Lee’s Straight White Men. Peter has performed for or collaborated with artists such as 600 Highwaymen, The Wooster Group and Richard Foreman. Our play while you were partying was a New York Times Critics pick in 2021, and was a finalist for New York Drama Critic’s Circle Award.