Kameron Steele

Intervención dramatúrgica y re-escritura: Ivana Catanese

basada en la obra AOI NO UE de Yukio Mishima

Dirección: Kameron Steele

Actores:  Celeste Alvarez, Valentina Luz Aparicio, Constanza Lucero, Francisco Molina, Neftali Villalba, Isadora McWha y Oriana Bono, Mauro Winckler, Mau Funes, Gabriela Contreras, Cristina Maveroff, Santiago Silva, Mariano Grasso, Maria Luz Cano, Mattias Lucero

Música original: Marc Appart

Escenografía original: Mariano Márquez

Realización escenográfica: alaSur

Diseño de vestuario: Ardith Ibañez

Diseño lumínico: Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa , Kameron Steele y Romina Moyano

Operación de Sonido: Camila Maccio y Kameron Steele

Operación de Luces: Romina Moyano y Mané Corvalán

Fotografía: Elizabeth Carretti Pablo Betancourt

Co-producción: alaSur / Teatro Independencia / Instituto Nacional del Teatro

Producción general: alaSur

DURACION 60'

(THE LIGHTS HIT ME)

by Ivana Catanese & Ruben Scatterreggi

directed by Ivana Catanese

original music by Rodolfo Castagnolo

light design by Kameron Steele

costume design by Ine

with Celeste Alvarez, Gabriela Senda, Valentina Luz Aparicio, Neftali Villalba, Osky

conceived and directed by Ivana Catanese

text by Longo

original music by Rodolfo Castagnolo

light design by Kameron Steele

with Celeste Alvarez, Gabriela Senda, Ampara Alcaraz, Neftali Villalba, Federico Ortega , Evelyn Acis, Federica Bonoldi, Inti Marina Salles, Oriana Bono, Soledad Soria, Sara Spoliansky, Kameron Steele, Ruben Scatterreggi, Valentina Luz Aparicio,

Premiered November 17, 2012 at Sala Circular in Espacio Cultural Le Parc.

‘62 Center, Williams College
Williamstown, MA

‘62 Center, Williams College
Williamstown, MA

A co-production between The South Wing, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (LMCC) and the Watermill Center  , DEATH IN VACANT LOT! is a theatrical staging of the late Terayama Shuji’s masterpiece film Den'en ni Shisu (Pastoral:To Die in the Country). The show opened on October 4 and ran for two weeks at 15 Nassau St. in lower Manhattan as part of LMCC’s Swing Space Series.

Terayama’s films, plays and poetry – wildly popular in Japan – are rarely seen in the West. For the first time in more than two decades, New Yorkers were treated to this production of one of the 20th century’s most provocative and rebellious writers, in an abandoned bank lobby next to ground zero. Read Harry Newman's Downtown Express feature article here:

The bulk of rehearsals for DEATH IN VACANT LOT! took place at the Watermill Center, avant-garde visionary Robert Wilson’s theatre laboratory in Southampton, NY where I had been working since 1998.  The residency was the first ever at the center. 

All images used with permission from Julien Jourdes

(2011)

MOSHEH re-enacts the biblical saga of Moses as an ancient-futuristic ritual. Created by Yoav Gal, whose style has been termed “Indie Opera” by New York Times’ critic Anne Midgette, this work presents the new aesthetic in the realm of opera. It has evolved in small spaces and with limited means, and draws on a wide palette of genres such as performance art, video art, minimalism, modern dance and virtuosic singing.MOSHEH highlights some of the more obscure details and 'minor' characters found in the biblical text. Moses' sister, his wife, and his two mothers (biological and adoptive) present a version of the story that is different then the one generally told. Ancient, pagan traditions can be glimpsed in the details of the relationship of these mother figures and the evolving leader, in protective acts such as giving up a child for a river-bank adoption, or performing a blood-ritual circumcision in the desert.

Another axis of the work is the relationship of Moses with God, a jealous and fearsome father figure. The piece is structured with God as the narrator (sung, chant-like, by an alto and counter-tenor in unison), and the ‘mother figures’ each with her own tableau. The role of Moses is performed by a dancer.

The work does not attempt an over-arching narrative, rather it is a personal depiction of the leader in his early years, internalized and re-imagined by the creator in his own environment of contemporary, ‘grungy’ Brooklyn, New York, as well as in Israel, the creator’s homeland. The work is an attempt to open a window into a reality that is foreign to our contemporary sensibilities, yet familiar in its human core.

All images used with permission from Yoav Gal.

Based on the 1958 play by Pulitzer Prize winner Tennessee Williams, this version incorporates live gamelan music, video and Suzuki method-based dance movement. The show ran April 11-13 and 15-17 at 8 pm, with an additional April 13 matinee at 2 pm, 2013 in CalArts Ensemble Theater 400.

Like many of Williams’ works, the play examines the problems of family that are timeless and universal, but also specific to the playwright’s own experiences. Suddenly, Last Summer tells the story of Catherine Holly, a poor relation of a New Orleans family, who had witnessed the death of her cousin Sebastian under mysterious circumstances while traveling with him in Europe. Sebastian’s mother, in an attempt to suppress the truth about her son’s demise, threatens to lobotomize Catherine for her utterances about Sebastian’s fate.

“This production asks the following questions: ‘What do each of us repress in ourselves?’ ‘How many steps are we away from psychosis or dissociative amnesia?’ And ‘how close at our heels is the health establishment waiting to cash in on our misfortunes?’” says Steele.

The story is brought to life with my incorporation of the “Suzuki method”—a school of acting that emphasizes the actor’s awareness of his or her own body.

The production also features Balinese Gamelan music performed by students, led by longtime CalArts faculty member I. Nyoman Wenten.

All images used with permission from CalArts

By Euripides

A noble city.  A new religion. 
An angry king.  A possessed mother.
A blind prophet.  A foolish drunken grandfather.  A stranger.

Revels and bloody hunting.  Crime, punishment, and revenge.  Confusion, hypocrisy and loss.

The Bacchae  shows a clash of cultures and ideologies through the lens of a bitter family drama.  Originally set in the ancient Greek city of Thebes, the LIU production strives to cross boundaries of language, style, time and place to show the universal nature of these struggles and their often tragic outcome.

Directed by: Kameron Steele
Associate Director: Ivana Catanese

(2000,2003-2004)

Hanjo was my bi-lingual Spanish/English translation/adaptation of Yukio Mishima's Modern Noh Play of the same name. In it, three damaged people, scarred by their passions and tied together by fate, discover where their long, desperate and very different paths lead.

Hanjo was presented at the Teatro Degollado in Guadalajara, Mexico in November 2003 where it was chosen my El Mural Newspaper as the Best Play of 2003.

Hanjo toured with The South Wing to New York in November 2004, produced at HERE Arts Center as part of the méxicoNow Festival.

Produced by: The South Wing, Zinzin Productions, HERE Arts Center
Written by: Yukio Mishima
Directed by:  Kameron Steele
Featuring: Ines Somellera, Anilu Pardo, Ivana Catanese, Nathan Guisinger Composer:  Marc Apart
Dramaturg:  Jorge Zul de la Cueva
Lighting Designer:  Gustavo Dominguez
Video Designer:  Marisela La Grave
Costume Designers:  Carlos Soto and Maiko Hiou

All images used with permission from Zinzin Productions.

(2011)

An ambulance appears in the middle of the night, carting off a woman who claims she is healthy. Her husband sets off on a surreal odyssey through a vast hospital. Epona’s Labyrinth follows his descent into a Kafkaesque network of constant surveillance, sexual deviance, addictions and delusion.

The South Wing teams up with Japanese multimedia collective, Nibroll to mount this erotic, original play. A nightmarish vision of modern medicine and life unravels through stark, neo-expressionist staging and striking video design.

Adapted by: Ivana Catanese
Choreography: Mikuni Yanaihara
Lights: Ayumu “Poe” Saegusa
Costumes: Mitsushi Yanaihara
Video: Keisuke Takahashi
Sets: Shige Moriya
Sound & Original Music: SKANK
Stage Manager: Catherine Coffey

Performers: Gillian Chadsey, Davina Cohen*, Gabel Eiben, Ximena Garnica, Nathan Guisinger, Sophia Remolde, Andrew Shulman*, Benjamin Stuber, Kate Villanova

Dramaturgical Advisor: Pete McCabe
Writing Collaboration: The South Wing and Maria Godoy

*AEA Members Equity Approved Showcase

Developed through the HERE Artist Residency Program (HARP).

Epona"s Labyrinth is co-produced by The Japan Foundation, The MAP Fund and The Watermill Center.

Learn more about the project at HERE's website

Also, see Ivana & Kameron's interviews, also on HERE's website:

MadeHERE: Artistic Couples

The South Wing, Hospitals and The Gospel (From when the piece was called "The Gospel According to Jack Vitrolo")

PHOTO: Ximena Guernica as "Girl in Room 6"

All images used with permission from Hind Bin Demaithan

Bertolt Brecht and composer Kurt Weill’s musical The Threepenny Opera presented by the CalArts School of Theater at the Modular Theater from Nov. 15 through 22, 2013.

Based on British author John Gay’s The Beggar’s Opera, the musical follows the trials of the anti-hero Macheath as he tries to marry Polly Peachum. Polly’s father, Jonathan Jeremiah Peachum, boss of London’s beggars, disapproves of the union and schemes to get Macheath executed.

The CalArts production, directed by Kameron Steele, features a kabuki-inspired hanamichi bridge that plunges into a 23 foot-wide reflecting pool. Musicians from The Herb Alpert School of Music, led by guitarist Jonathan Freilich  accompanies The Threepenny Opera’s 16-member cast.

In the press release, Steele describes the CalArts production in greater detail:

Two tiers of video projections, animation, fantastical costumes, extreme makeup and moving lights interweave with visceral performances to galvanize Brecht’s timeless assault on the status quo. Created to interrogate our notions of religion, crime, money, sex, race, love and middle-class morality, The Threepenny Opera  challenges our perceptions of ourselves, and the communities we live in.

All images used with permission from CalArts

http://blog.calarts.edu/2013/11/13/school-of-theater-presents-brecht-and-weills-the-threepenny-opera-at-the-mod/

(2006 - 2009)

In a bold new adaptation of Yukio Mishima's modern Noh play, "The Lady Aoi", I worked with the company to distill the 1950's shingeki naturalism of the original text with my brand of nouveau expressionism to expose the extremely conflicted nature of Mishima's psyche.

AOI! was commissioned by the Japan Society of NYC for their Noh~NOW festival in May 2007, and then presented at 2007 PRELUDE Festival at the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, and then the undergroundzero festival at PS122 in July 2009.

Based on Yukio Mishima's "The Lady Aoi"

Adapted by Ivana Catanese
Directed by Kameron Steele
Assistant Director, Saori Kaneko
Music by Marc Appart
Light Design by Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa
Costume Design by Ardith Ibañez
Set Design by Mariano Marquez
Sound Design by Jimmy Garver
Wardrobe Assistant, Haruka Kondo
Featuring: Ivana Catanese, Gillian Chadsey, Craig Dolezel, Catherine Friesen, Harold German, Nathan Guisinger, Julie Kline, Eunjee Lee, Kristine Lee , Brian Nishii, Sophie Nimmannit, Rachael Richman, Riccardo Riethmuller, Natasha Thomas and Andrew Shulman.

P.S.122

May 18 & 19, 2007

The Prelude '07 Festival at The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, New York September 27th

(The first workshop performance of Lady Aoi was presented at Institut del Teatre in Barcelona with Margalida Grimalt, Matxalen de Pedro Larrea and Jose Guirado)

All images used with permission from Japan Society, Prelude Festival, undergroundzero festival.

(2006)

A reworking of TSW's original HANJO at CRS Studio Theatre, NYC

February, 2006.  The new adaptation featured interactive video design, and an audience ramp.

Produced By: The South Wing, CRS Studio Theatre
Directed by: Kameron Steele
Written by: Yukio Mishima
Featuring: Gillian Chadsey, Ivana Catanese, David Ponce
Composer: Marc Apart
Interactive Video Design: Scott Piscitelli
Set Design: Mariano Marquez
Audience Area Design: Christian Wassman
Light Design: Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa
Costume Designer: Carlos Soto
Production Supervisor: Nathan Guisinger
Assistant Director/Stage Manager: Catalina Gonzales
Photography: Harry Zernike
Video Document: Vlad Teichberg

(2005)

A young woman pays the price for foreign love during a military dictatorship. An immigrant seeks citizenship despite a terrible sacrifice. A renegade citizen attempts to flee a crumbling empire. Through three narrative, Saudade investigates what happens when we server the relationship with our "home".

Saudade is an original piece created by THE SOUTH WING. It was performed in July of 2005 at HERE Arts Center for the American Living Room. The American Living Room (TALR) is presented through HERE's Visiting Artist Program, which provides commissions and support through our festivals and series. Also supported by: Actors Without Borders/itonyc, Studio 111, TSW.

Directed by: Kameron Steele.
Created in collaboration with Marc Appart, Rebecca Bray, Ivana Catanese, Gillian Chadsey, Martin de Goycoechea, Zul de la Cueva, Marsha Gall, Nathan Guisinger, Andrew Shulman*, Carlos Soto and Zishan Ugurlu*.

(2013)

The Suzuki method of acting, developed by Tadashi Suzuki, is one of the most commonly taught acting methods in the United States.  Steele, who joined the Suzuki Company of Toga, Japan in 1991, directs CalArts actors in this demonstration, filmed and edited by Natalia Sookias.

Still photographs are from the July 2014  training tour in Argentina.