Saturday, November 18, 2017

Banners and Cranks this weekend!


Great Small Works will be represented by Jenny Romaine at this year's iteration of BANNERS AND CRANKS.

ArtYard, Frenchtown, NJ

Nov 17th – 7:30 PM
An Entertaining Illustrated History of Cantastoria (Lecture)
Dave Buchen and Clare Dolan will present an illustrated history of this fascinating performance form. In addition to the illustrated lecture, they will share footage of picture-story recitation from around the world, including Indian, Australian, and Iranian performances, as well as contemporary cantastoria performed by artists, activists, writers and puppeteers in the U.S.
Nov 18th – 7:30 PM
A Raucous Evening of Banners and Cranks
This cabaret-style evening presents Cantastoria and cranky shows in the grand tradition, celebrating stories of mayhem, intrigue, and the small triumphs of the downtrodden, with live music by the Banners & Cranks House Band!
Banners & Cranks for Kids and their Grown-Ups
This event presents cantastoria and cranky shows in the grand tradition, geared towards family audiences, with live music, moving pictures, and lots of stories.
Jenny's shows:
1. A family friendly sing a long show created with Mor Erlich of Sez Me  on the topic of SANDWICHES.
 
2.  THE REVIVAL OF THE UZDA GRAVEDIGGERS 
 A picture recitation show that invites you on a tour of the Belarusian village of Uzda, where the cemetery hides some surprising (or not-so-surprising) histories of inter-religious coexistence, solidarity, and defiance of authoritarian blockheads. Based on the creators' journeys through Líte — the historical Jewish-Lithuanian borderlands — on the Yiddishkayt Helix Project 2015, the REVIVAL combines multilingual source texts and folksongs with original material to tell funny and shocking stories of funerals and foodways in a "mostly ordinary town." In English, Yiddish, and Belarusian. THE REVIVAL OF THE UZDA GRAVEDIGGERS is a Great Small Works collaboration by Geoff Berner, Ben Kline and Jenny Romaine.
More about Cantastoria:
Cantastoria is the Italian word for an ancient performance form involving the theatrical display of paintings accompanied by sung narration. A precursor to modern puppet theater, this practice originated in 6th Century India and spread East and West, with many different variations in style and subject matter.
Recently there has been a revival of interest in Cantastoria among puppeteers, artists, and activists in the West, who find that this ancient form has startlingly modern qualities and can easily be infused with fresh content. The use of the cranky (a sister to the cantastoria in which the images appear on a scroll which is turned by means of a crank) has also lately grown popular among folk musicians and artists looking for new ways to perform their songs and display their artwork in a performance context. Banners and Cranks is committed to the concept of a nomadic festival, both because it is in keeping with the historic itinerant roots of the performance form, and also because they hope that the fest will reach new audiences of makers and thinkers who have never seen cantastoria before, inspiring the uninitiated to take up the form and invent fresh approaches to the magic of the cranky and the picture story.
This is a living and breathing folk performance practice that has its own particular place alongside the technology and media of the 21 st century.