2023-24 Season
THE PRECIPICE: NYC Premiere.
June 27 - 28, 2024
The Space at Irondale, Brooklyn, NY
CAST
Grey - themself
Karl - himself
Grey Double - Morgan Mastrangelo
Karl Double - Wayne Arthur
BAND
Contemporaneous Ensemble
Clarinet, Violin, Cello, E. Guitar, E. Bass, Piano, Percussion
CREATIVE
Created by KARL
from music and text by Grey Grant and Karl Ronneburg
Director/ Choreographer - Corey Smith
Lighting Design - McKenna Ebert
Sound Design - Charles Mueller
Scenic Design - Corey Smith
Costuming - Corey Smith
Dramaturgy - Grey Grant and Corey Smith
Marketing - Vicki Nguyen and Gabrielle Hemlick
Karl Ronneburg's The Precipice returns to the world in June 2024. Join Fifth Wall in collaboration with Contemporaneous Ensemble for its world premiere! After years of development, music workshops, a staging workshop at Avaloch Farm Music Institute, and a successful Michigan public presentation, we are excited to bring The Precipice to Brooklyn.
Weaving together text and music from journal entries, poems, and voice memos by Karl Ronneburg and Grey Rose Grant, THE PRECIPICE is a 100-minute abstract chamber-rock opera that tells the story of two parallel journeys of becoming and self-mythologizing, from both a trans/queer perspective and a cis/straight one. The "precipice" itself represents irreversible change–growing up, leaving home, and moving on from past places, relationships, and visions of self. The show asks: is making ourselves a tragic act, a leap from the precipice, a great wrenching? How do the metaphors and myths by which we construct our identity hold us back? How do you leave behind a relationship, place, or vision of self without losing the part of it that made you who you are? And finally, do we do this alone? Is the formation of self an individual act or a collective one?
Co-Comissioned by Contemporaneous Ensemble and Fifth Wall Performing Arts.
Supported in part by the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, & Dance, and the Eileen Weiser EXCEL Fund.
Little Histories
A Folk Opera in Four Acts
January 26 - 28, 2024 -- Canterbury House, Ann Arbor MI
Grey, from concert premiere of excerpts of "Little Histories" at Strange Beautiful Music, Sep. 2023, Detroit, MI. Credit: The Otto Lab
Left to right: Mike Avitabile, Westley Hornpetrie, and Jennifer Cresswell, from concert premiere of excerpts of "Little Histories" at Strange Beautiful Music, Sep. 2023, Detroit, MI. Credit: The Otto Lab
The world production of Grey Rose Grant's latest theatrical work!
A mortician reflects back on the events that led them to become a mortician. They work through their first experience of death as a child, burying animals, first adult love, the first death of a close friend, and a revelation about their first encounter with death. They do this as they prepare for a home funeral of their lover. Their friend arrives to console and to help carry out the funeral ritual. Memorialize and remembering.
Little Histories, is a folk opera that explores death ritual and our distanced relationship with death in the U.S. Personal histories from the composer's own life are swirled together in a world of magical realism where grandmothers become trees, where Icarus is a depressed mortician, where death has made its presence known, mixed with histories at large such as the birth of the U.S. funeral industry. The work investigates how we memorize our dead, how we grieve, how we die, and how impermanence shapes meaning in our lives.
Join Grey and Fifth Wall for an intimate evening of experimental opera-theatre about death! The audience is invited to sing select songs from The Sacred Harp throughout the performance.
Content warning: mentions of suicide, and heavy religious themes surrounding Christianity-based religious trauma.
CAST
The Mortician - Grey Rose
The Friend - Allison Prost
The Lover - Daniel Becker
CREATIVE
Concept / Libretto / Music - Grey Grant
Electronics - Alfredo Cabrera
Producer / Director - Grey Grant
Scenic Design - Ali Giessner & Grey Grant
Costuming - Grey Grant
Dramaturgy - Karl Ronneburg
Marketing - Zoe Marie Hart
BAND
Mike Avitabile - flutes
Westley Hornpetire - cello, voice
Melissa Coppola - piano, accordion, voice
Daniel Johnson - musical director, voice
Thank you to Cantebury House for having us.
Thank you to Riverside Arts Center for providing rehearsal space.
Commissioned in part by the Gabriella Lena Frank Creative Academy of Music
Co-Produced by Fifth Wall Performing Arts and Grey Rose Works
Supported in part by New Music Detroit, The Canterbury House, and Eileen Weiser EXCEL Fund.
Fluxus Fest no. 4
November 10-11, 2023
NYC & Ypsilanti, MI
Two nights, two cities, two states...
Too much flux.
Join us for fluxus fest no 4.
Night One
NYC - Nov 10 - 8pm @ Pageant
"Punk Flux Get Fluxed Flux Your Flux Off"
Night Two
Ypsilanti, MI - Nov 11 @ Grey's House
"Fluxoricism 2: Revenge of the Flux"
2022-23 Season
THE PRECIPICE: Michigan Premiere.
The "precipice" itself represents irreversible change: growing up, leaving home, moving on from past places, relationships, and visions of self. The show asks: is making ourselves a tragic act, a leap from the precipice, a great wrenching? Who or what do we leave behind when we move on from a relationship or place? And finally, do we do this alone? Is the formation of self an individual act or a collective one?
Karl Ronneburg's The Precipice will premiere April 29 and 30, 2023, at the Riverside Performing Arts Center in Ypsilanti, MI!
After years of development, music workshops, and a staging workshop with director Corey Smith at Avaloch Farm Music Institute in the summer of 2022, we are excited to bring this piece to our Michigan community!
Weaving together text and music from journal entries, poems, and voice memos by Karl Ronneburg and Grey Grant, The Precipice is a 90-minute abstract chamber-rock opera about how to be a person.
Fluxus Fest 2022
FLUXUS PARTY
EMBRACE THE FLUX
It's a performance. It's a party. The performance IS the party. The party IS the performance. The artists are the audience. Fluxus is all around you. Fluxus is RIGHT BEHIND YOU!!
Oct 28, 2022
See photos and videos from the event on our instagram.
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Fluxus Fest
2021-22 Season
Fluxus Fest 2021
Combining the physical and the virtual, Fluxus Fest 2021 is a celebration of performance and presence.
Featuring:
-Weekly "pop-up" fluxus performances on YouTube by Federico Balducci, Corey Smith, Justine Sedky, Ty Easley, Terminal Moraine, James Vitz-Wong, and Thomas Kratofil
-A sneak peek of interludes from Grey Grant's upcoming "Ropeplay" (Oct 28)
-A live in-person show at One Rivington in downtown NYC featuring Karl Ronneburg, PROMPTUS, Calvin Hitchcock, Anastasia Shmytova, Ben Murphy, and more!
Oct 30, 7:30pm: For tickets and more info, see https://metropolisensemble.org/all-events/fluxusfest2021
Black Hearts, Black Voices 2022
Join us on February 13, 2022 for a virtual release party of the second edition of Black Hearts, Black Voices, now coming to you as an album! This year's Black Heart, Black Voices is Produced by Maya Johnson and features poetry and prose from Ashanti Davis, Nicholas Felder, and Maya Johnson. Sajada Domino returns again this year as the project's designer. Check it out at fifthwallpa.bandcamp.com.
The Precipice, in development
Karl Ronneburg's The Precipice began workshops in Fall 2021 and will receive a full production premiere in 2022-23.
Weaving together text and music from journal entries, poems, and voice memos by Karl Ronneburg and Grey Grant, The Precipice is a 90-minute abstract chamber-rock opera about how to be a person.
The "precipice" itself represents irreversible change: growing up, leaving home, moving on from past places, relationships, and visions of self. The show asks: is making ourselves a tragic act, a leap from the precipice, a great wrenching? Who or what do we leave behind when we move on from a relationship or place? And finally, do we do this alone? Is the formation of self an individual act or a collective one?
2020-21 Season
Fluxus Fest - Year One
Fifth Wall Performing Arts presents simultaneous virtual performances of Fluxus and original Fluxus-inspired pieces across the country at complementary moments, embracing the locations we are all in and creating a hodgepodge of Fluxus that only the internet age can provide.
Fluxus works were presented live on Facebook and YouTube on the first four Saturdays in October from 3:00-3:30pm EDT, with a massive combined stream on Oct 31 featuring a talkback with artists. See the full program here.
What is Fluxus?
Fluxus was an interdisciplinary, neo-avant-garde artist collective/movement in the 60s and 70s whose artists sought to infuse everyday life with heightened aesthetic awareness and appreciation. Fluxus artists looked for value in the commonplace, believing that art can be anywhere and belong to anyone. Fluxus artists variously included George Maciunas, Dick Higgins, Nam June Paik, Alison Knowles, Yoko Ono, Wolf Vostell, Emmett Williams, Ben Patterson, Takako Saito, La Monte Young, Meiko Shiomi, Jackson Mac Low, George Brecht, Ken Friedman, and more. For an introduction to the movement and how we see Fluxus as relevant in 2020, check out our article in New Music America!
SCHEDULE:
Oct 3rd:
Emily Allison Zhou, Clay Gonzalez, Grey Grant, Elliot Cole, Christopher Rountree, Kalun Leung
Oct 10:
Peter Littlejohn, Karl Ronneburg,
Joey Chang, Katherine Lim, Justine Sedky, Luna Lenus-Bromley, PROMPTUS (Darian Thomas, Tyler Cunningham, and Liana Kleinman)
Dick Higgins' Fluxus-style Event Score for Danger Music #3: a vision of 1960s social distancing that resonates eerily today.
Oct 17:
Thomas Kratofil, José María, slapslap (Cameron Wilson, Maddy Wildman, Tanner Tanyeri, Ezra Gans), Ben Murphy, Cassandra Venaglia, Karl Ronneburg
Oct 24:
Hannah McLaughlin, Raquel Klein, Corey Smith, ensemble consensus, Danielle Mumpower, Luke Stewart, James Vitz-Wong, Karl Ronneburg, Grey Grant, Carlos Duran
Oct 31st: Every work performed during the month of October streamed in one mega event! A talk-back with some of the artists will follow the stream.
Black Hearts, Black Voices
Black Hearts, Black Voices is an audio show about love and blackness, directed by Maya Johnson. Every Valentine’s Day, artists share their stories about love and loneliness, parenthood and platonic relationships, sex, sacrifice, kink and consent. For the first show on February 14th, 2021, the theme is Distance. In March of 2020, the entire country was brought to a screeching halt that persisted through spring, summer, and now into autumn with no clear vision of the future. Some of us were forced to be away from loved ones, others were trapped in apartments with way too many people. Distance, or lack of it, for months on end, has changed us. Forever.
See the full show on our YouTube Channel.
2019-20 Season
Michigan Trees: A Guide to the Trees of Michigan and the Great Lakes Region
Grey Grant's Michigan Trees: A Guide to the Trees of Michigan and the Great Lakes Region is a new folk opera for classical and folk vocalists, steeped in mythos and Michigan, all the while remaining relevant to the present experiences of trans* folks. In the opera we follow the journey of Orna, a trans-woman as she grapples with self-acceptance. She travels to the north of Michigan--guided by the Mother of Trees--to transform into a white-pine that will sit upon Chapel Rock, on the edge of Lake Superior, overlooking it all.
August 28 - 29, 2019 | Freighthouse, Ypsilanti, MI
October 12, 2019 | Dixon Place, New York, NY