Acclaimed Off-Broadway Passionate company concludes its innovative 21st season of Listen/Now audio theater reimagining classic radio drama on Friday, May 21, starting at 7 p.m., with the world premiere of Adventurer. The recently commissioned work by Melissa Li and Kit Yan (the award-winning New York-based Queer Asian-American creative team who wrote Canceled — an effervescent and resonant high school musical about cancel culture — for the company’s 2019 Keen Teens program), speaks to today’s world with its provocative and entertaining pop culture sensibility.
Directed by Morgan Green, the podcast within a podcast takes listeners on an unforgettable journey to the uncharted destination of an uninhabited island off the coast of southern China, via the eponymous fictional audio platform Adventurephile. The promise is that this trip is going to be so good, it’s scary! Featuring the voices of Stephanie Mieko Cohen, Emiko Dunn, Kennedy Kanagawa and Zachary Noah Piser, the Keen production is directed by Norman Anthony Small and engineered by Garrett Schultz, with sound design by Fan Zhang and musical direction by Mona Seyed- Bolorforosh. , and music mixing by Jay Eigenmann.
Adventurer debuts for free Friday, May 21 at 7 p.m. on The Keen Company websiteFacebook pageand YouTube channel, and is available on popular podcasting apps like Apple, Google, Spotify, Stitcher, TuneIn, etc. Full transcripts are also available for deaf and hard of hearing customers.
On Sunday May 23, Dzieci Theater – an experimental ensemble dedicated to a search for the sacred through theater (and whose name means “Children” in Polish) – will present a free livestream of The Magicians’ Struggle. Described by the company as “a fiery reimagining” of the 1904 ballet script by Armenian-born philosopher, mystic, spiritual teacher and composer GI Gurdjieff, the new 45-minute version will not contain ballet, but will focus on the story message.
Although never performed in its entirety, Gurdjieff worked on the piece for more than three decades, and the homily delivered at the high requiem mass of his 1949 funeral in Paris concluded with a quote from the ballet: “God and all his angels keep us from doing evil by helping us always and everywhere to remember ourselves.
The Magicians’ Struggle live streams Sunday, May 23, 7 p.m., on Dzieci’s YouTube channel. Viewing is free and registration is not required. An open discussion will follow the performance; donations are welcome. To see, go in line.
