The Roy and Edna Disney CalARTS Theater (REDCAT) presents the 21st annual New Original Works (NOW) Festival, a celebration of new and innovative dance, theater, music, and performance by Los Angeles artists presented over three weekends this fall.

Committed to an investigation of history and contemporary norms, these nine works use humor, improvisation, and multidisciplinary collaboration to disrupt power dynamics, craft collective rituals of care, and build new modes of community abundance.

Each of the three festival weekends features a triple bill of performances in a shared evening. Each program will premiere on Thursday and repeat Friday and Saturday at 8:30 PM. Performances will also be livestreamed each Saturday during the festival's run.

In the spirit of the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts), REDCAT's parent institution, the NOW Festival has served as a catalyst for creativity and new ideas for more than two decades.

Each year, NOW Festival premieres new and innovative work in contemporary dance, theater, music, and multimedia performance by Los Angeles-based artists. All artistic teams receive rehearsal space, production and technical support, artist fees, and participate in development workshops. Since the first edition in 2004, NOW Festival has presented the work of over 200 artists who continue to be seen on stages throughout the U.S. and abroad.

Schedule of Events

November 7-9, 2024

8:30 PM - Eliza Bagg, Rohan Chander, George R. Miller, Bernard Brown, Meena Murugesan

The 21st Annual New Original Works kicks off with a program of works by Eliza Bagg, Rohan Chander, George R. Miller, Bernard Brown, and Meena Murugesan. Committed to an investigation of history and contemporary norms, these works use humor, improvisation, and multidisciplinary collaboration to disrupt power dynamics, craft collective rituals of care, and build new modes of community abundance.

Eliza Bagg, Rohan Chander, George R. Miller
7 Early Songs

7 Early Songs is an opera song cycle created by composer-performers Eliza Bagg and Rohan Chander in collaboration with director George R. Miller. Framed by celebrated composer Alban Berg's rarely-staged song cycle of the same name, Sieben frühe lieder (1905-1908), this new work interweaves Berg's music with new arrangements of the existing material for voice, electronics, and synthesizers, along with entirely new compositions by Bagg and Chander. Miller stages the work as a series of poetic tableaux, tracing the lonely narrator's shadowy visions—the sound of a sweet voice, a surveilling gaze, a day of white chrysanthemums, or the sun's heat—as they process the banality of daily life and the urgency of the threats around them.

Bernard Brown
Sissies: Something Perfect Between Ourselves

Choreographer Bernard Brown spotlights a community of seven Black and Brown men, accompanied by a live DJ, Defacto X, in an uplifting dance performance that celebrates the Black Gay bar as a Queer haven. Taking its title–Sissies: Something Perfect Between Ourselves–from the disco-era ballad by Black Queer music icon Sylvester and Marlon B. Ross's text Sissy Insurgencies: A Racial Anatomy of Unfit Manliness, this work conjures a future where Queer Men of Color craft their own narratives as central to society. While they swirl, swish and kiki through disco and R&B songs highlighting the lost generation of Queer icons who changed the world, Brown prompts a reconsideration of understandings of masculinity, sexuality, and connection through embodied discourse, text, and sonic power.

Meena Murugesan
Dravidian Futurities: Chapter II

Dravidian Futurities: Chapter II dives into the deep indigo waters where the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea meet. Meena Murugesan investigates the space where a sunken landmass once connected South India and Sri Lanka to Africa to consider the connections across dark melanin, caste abolition, syncretic spiritual systems, and earth-reverent rituals. Together with an ensemble of diasporic artists based in Los Angeles, they craft a surreal visual art, movement, and music ritual to re-earth ethical possibilities of being together.

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November 14-16, 2024

8:30 PM - Ajani Brannum, Sophia Cleary, Tijuana Dance Company

The 21st Annual New Original Works continues with a program of works by Ajani Brannum, Sophia Cleary, and Tijuana Dance Company. Committed to an investigation of history and contemporary norms, these works use humor, improvisation, and multidisciplinary collaboration to disrupt power dynamics, craft collective rituals of care, and build new modes of community abundance.

Ajani Brannum
CONGRESS

As a national mythos slides into decay, CONGRESS builds a crypt for its ghosts. In this performance, five (alleged) men move, speak, and sing as representatives of both themselves and their historical inheritances. They conjure and confront patriarchy's ghosts—descending into the space where social violence takes physical, psychic, and energetic shape. This theatrical convening extends Ajani Brannum's investigation into what performers do on behalf of those who witness them. Part ceremony and part town hall, this interdisciplinary performance draws the audience in to confront bodily forms of oppression and remake the roles that hold together a suffering society.

Sophia Cleary
Read The Room

Framed as a theatrical rehearsal between an Actor and her Director, Read The Room reconsiders these roles and their relationship to the audience in an unsettling, comedic, and outrageous experience. Interdisciplinary artist Sophia Cleary investigates the tension between script and improvisation in theater and the illusion of control in a performance that embraces liveness: you cannot fast forward or rewind–you can only move without knowing what comes next. This two-hander play manifests as a metaphor for the contemporary climate where fact and fiction are no longer discernible and investigates what laughter seemingly condones–ultimately calling attention to what contracts can be upended rather than being consumed as spectacle.

Tijuana Dance Company
Salón México

The Tijuana Dance Company presents Salón México, an examination of the borderland staged in a dance hall. Directed and choreographed by Dulce Escobedo, this dance theater piece reveals the stories and complex interactions that pulse through Tijuana's nightlife. An intricate choreography of identity, power, and survival emerges as individuals carve out spaces for personal and collective expression on the dance floor.

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November 21-23, 2024

8:30 PM - Bret Easterling, Mallory Fabian, Kensaku Shinohara

The 21st Annual New Original Works concludes with a program of works by Bret Easterling, Mallory Fabian, and Kensaku Shinohara. Committed to an investigation of history and contemporary norms, these works use humor, improvisation, and multidisciplinary collaboration to disrupt power dynamics, craft collective rituals of care, and build new modes of community abundance.

Bret Easterling
On Second Thought

In this new dance, choreographer Bret Easterling asks: What might we create if we went with our second thought? Refuting the logic of "first thought, best thought", On Second Thought draws attention to bias and patterns as improvisational structures and set choreography combine to break habits and inhabit new terrain. In a world trapped in trends and stuck in systems of harm, Easterling devises a new mode of decision-making and artistic exploration to craft different potentials and imagine liberatory futures.

Mallory Fabian
I Hate Women

I Hate Women is an energetic multidisciplinary performance that uses dance, theater, text, boxing, and murder ballads to study the complexities of platonic relationships between women—relationships that often go deeper than romantic connections. Created by Mallory Fabian, this quartet explores these intimate friendships by examining internalized personal and collective misogyny, patriarchy, and homophobia. Embracing sisterhood and rehabilitating competition, this work seeks to dismantle stereotypes that shape interactions amongst women.

Kensaku Shinohara
sorry I did not prepare anything today: I will give up my art because I cannot make money and feel embarrassed and also I am trying to be a good father ALTERNATE TITLE: tired music concert

In tired music concert, Kensaku Shinohara incorporates dance and music to explore his firsthand experience as a father, interdisciplinary artist, and immigrant in the United States. Accompanied by a sound score created by the manipulation of ordinary objects, Kensaku's experiences are shared and embodied by performers in a series of athletic movement scores. Examining stereotypes around masculinity and Asian men, this performance invites audience engagement in a reminder that community is built collectively.

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Date:
November 7-9, 2024
November 14-16, 2024
November 21-23, 2024

Time: 8:30 PM

Location:
Roy and Edna Disney and CalArts Theater,
631 West 2nd Street,
Los Angeles, CA 90012.

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