Curious Sensory Encounters – May 17-20, 2024 at 7 Stages
Choose your own encounter in the newest rendition of 7 Stages’ wildly popular Curious Encounters Series. This year we are exploring our senses, including sight-hearing-taste-smell-touch, and taking inspiration from Ilya Kaminsky’s book Deaf Republic, a poetic tale of an occupied country and the citizens’ unique way of fighting back by “going deaf”. Protest and resilience are paired with sensory explorations, including both celebration and suppression.
In Curious Sensory Encounters, artists of many disciplines respond to this book and its themes of oppression, resistance and collective power, resulting in a wide range of experiences: live performances, interactive exhibits, a film screening and much more. These “Encounters” are self-led, entry is Pay-What-You-Choose, and only requires that you check in between 7-8:30 p.m. (4-5:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 19) to experience the full range of curious offerings. An ASL Interpreter from Hands in Motion will be available during the first half of each event.
Encounters
Upon entering the building, visitors will receive a map and can begin their journey in any order – whether you choose to “dunk her!” in dead sea or visit the Sheds of the 6 Senses. See The Foul strutting through the halls in mismatched laces, divine silks, astonishing pearls and dashing wigs! Explore our memories and sense of intuition in F(L)IGHT *L stands for love or loss, and what it means to really listen in a special interactive screening of The Tuba Thieves. These encounters are multifaceted and many change throughout the evening, so don’t miss the chance to interact and grow with the art!
dead sea – Julie Krzypek
Dunk Her! Dunk Her! In a world where our senses are bombarded by stimuli fighting for our attention, dead sea is a conceptual piece conveying war through the lens of “strangers” meeting for the first time. DUNK HER! DUNK HER! DO IT! IT’S FUNN!!
Sheds of the 6 Senses – Aileen Loy – Little Free Contentious Library
With Lauren Vogelbaum, Mike Katinsky, Skyeris, Nitzia Ramos and La Donna
Sheds – In the High Street of the occupied village, shops cater to the sometimes broken, sometimes joyful citizenry of any town, anywhere. Each store has been simply erected with little adornment – the design, utilitarian with no nod to decadence or whim. Each has four walls, a roof and a door – the bare minimum required for civility, common sense and efficiency. The interior is something else – lush or by turns, broken, mischievous and hopeful. The six shops offer more than a brief encounter with one of the senses. Specificity is the key. Located on the most trafficked part of High Street by the puppet theater, they remind the townsfolk of what they have gained or sacrificed and may have occasion to find, again.
Black Woman Joy – La Donna / Dramatic Impulse, Sharlene Sanders
This DreamSpace celebrates our communal experiences, exploring memory and heritage with joy and freedom. May we always come back to ourselves.
The Tuba Thieves – Georgia Public Broadcasting
What is the role of sound and what does it mean to listen? Hard of hearing filmmaker Alison O’Daniel uses a series of tuba thefts in Los Angeles high schools as a jumping-off point to explore these questions. Through several d/Deaf people telling stories in a unique game of telephone, the central mystery of The Tuba Thieves isn’t about theft of instruments; it’s about the nature of sound itself.
We Keep Us Safe – Tatiana Bell, Michael Czajkowski, and ANI (Atlanta Narrative Imagination)
Got grief? A new iteration of Tatiana Bell’s installation at South River Arts Studios, “We Keep Us Safe,” this interactive exhibit is about healing through collective care. We invite Atlanta to share the grief they’re carrying and bear witness to each others’.
Light/Shadow Sensorial Playful – Charne Fucron, Dana Lupton, Celeste Miller, Deisha Oliver
A series of playful, interactive guided movement meditations playing with light and shadow. How can embodied experiences of light be opened to multi sensorial experiences? What can we learn about the human condition, our humanity, our human connections, by allowing ourselves to be sensorially present in community with others at play with light and shadow?
F(L)IGHT. *L stands for love or loss – Shady Radical
F(L)IGHT is a meditation on intuition, memory, and forgetting. Building on WITNESS: Pearl (2021) t.r.a.p. explores what our mothers taught us to remember in our bodies that helps preserve our archives when we are threatened with survival.
Welcome to Laugh City! (An improv show) – Mark Kendall, Madeline Evans, Marietta Mendler
A fun-filled improv show where everything goes according to plan and nothing ever goes wrong!
On off days we enjoy the salad – Cori Williams
We watch from backstage; the props are stored ready for their cue. Every show slightly different from the one before. The props are telling their story.
The Exalting Dreams of the Wondrous Foul – Petar Miloshevski
They see him as little more than just filth, but The Foul is beautifully crafted and stylized – mismatched laces, divine silks, astonishing pearls, dashing wigs, telling a story of abandoned dreams, failed ambitions, yet so many hopes awaiting realization in The Exalting Dreams of the Wondrous Foul. Welcome to the theatre within the theatre within the theatre…
Major funding for this organization is provided by the Fulton County Board of Commissioners, the City of Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, and Georgia Council for the Arts through the appropriations of the Georgia General Assembly. Georgia Council for the Arts is funded in part through partnerships with the National Endowment for the Arts. To find out more about how NEA grants impact individuals and communities, visit www.arts.gov
