The Playwrights Database
KAREN CHRISTOPHER
Nationality: USA
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Literary Agent: n/a
Karen Christopher is a collaborative performance deviser, performer, and teacher. Her company, Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects, is currently engaged in creating a series of duet performances. She was a member of Chicago-based Goat Island performance group for 20 years until the group disbanded in 2009. She now lives in London, working to define a practice which continues in a collaborative and plural mode. This work includes a search for points of intersection and startling combinations that surprise and awaken the mind allowing people to experience shifts of understanding and awareness within the community of the performance event. Shes listening for the unnoticed, the almost invisible, and the very quiet. Karen is an Honorary Fellow of University College Falmouth, and Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Arts, Birkbeck, University of London, and Visiting Artist in the Department of Drama, Theatre and Peformance at University of Roehampton. Until recently she taught part-time on the MA-Advanced Theatre Practice course at Central School of Speech & Drama.
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below is a list of Karen Christopher's plays - click on a Play Title for more information
Control Signal Miles and Miles Seven Falls So BelowControl Signal
Synopsis:
The piece explores invisible influences and the inexplicable connections we feel but fail to acknowledge. It explores our irresistible urge to impose our will upon our immediate surroundings; upon nature. We are tied to each other, to objects we hold dear, to ideas. We are moved: we are pulled toward and we are pushed away. Following lines of electricity through the body, through the air, and through history, this show looks at the long and the short distances electricity travels and how humans have used it as a measure of control: a body becomes something else, a plume of smoke rises, an elephant is made to perform, two hearts beat in unison.
Notes:
devised by by Karen Christopher & Sophie Grodin
1st Produced:
Chelsea Theatre, London 10 Oct 2013
Organisations:
Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
piece
Parts:
Male: - Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageMiles and Miles
Synopsis:
We are falling in and out of a performance. We are working with blusters, moments in which we fall through the performance and cast about for the next moment. Something extra leaks in about thought processes and the relationships between us. We pass through alternating states of control and the lack of it. It is as if we are on a floor that mostly holds us up but has places we fall through and this instability devours the content.
Notes:
devised by by Karen Christopher & Sophie Grodin
1st Produced:
Organisations:
Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
piece
Parts:
Male: - Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageSeven Falls
Synopsis:
Seven Falls involves water and gravity, is other worldly, and integrates song and rhythm. Starting with a series of conversations, we found ourselves surrounded by many histories and personal experiences of water. This performance is the record of where we went when we looked under the surface of the water all around us. Purposely working together both in person and at a remove (we are based in different parts of the UK), the piece is intended in part to reflect the drift employed in our perforated process.
Notes:
devised by by Teresa Brayshaw & Karen Christopher. Seven Falls forms part of The Difference Between Home and Poem: a duet series. Each project in the series is jointly made, directed and performed by Karen Christopher and another artist.
1st Produced:
Gateshead International Festival of Theatre 04 May 2012
Organisations:
Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
piece
Parts:
Male: - Female: 2 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
Top of PageSo Below
Synopsis:
Buckets of water, mounds of earth, gravel, the time it takes a tree to wrap around a gaggle of grave stones, a stutter holding us in place. Two performers learn the dance steps, tidy the graves, fail to determine the difference between pain and itch, and tremble in the face of a world made small. Combining composed and appropriated movement with spoken word, and focussing on the texture and sound of materials, the performance strives to express the completeness of a single moment. We walk on the wrong side, we fail to progress, we run from the dance, we light the match, we define happiness, we have a cup of tea. We can't find the horizon. We tremble in the face of death. We tend the garden. We attempt to present our findings on the quality of distance. Somewhere between heartbeats we are confronted with the time it takes a tree to grow around a circle of dislocated gravestones. We make way for progress. This duet explores a moment of pause, the space between two stutters-stopped in our tracks, we can't move on-and as time stops and the world grows small around us we find a multitude encased in this interval. With a combination of gravity and lightness two people inhabit a carefully constructed twilight of mounding earth and the sound of water intermingled with the comic grace of a time between world wars.
Notes:
devised by Gerard Bell & Karen Christopher
1st Produced:
Chelsea Theatre SACRED, London 19 Oct 2012
Organisations:
Haranczak/Navarre Performance Projects
1st Published:
- -
Music:
-
To Buy This Play:
If Publisher (above) is underlined then the play may be purchased by direct click from the Publisher, otherwise (below) are AbeBooks for secondhand, signed & 1st eds and other Booksellers for new copies
Booksellers:
Genre:
piece
Parts:
Male: 1 Female: 1 Other: -
Further Reference:
-
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