The 25th season at Georgia Tech’s Ferst Center for the Arts begins with five September-October performances featuring a mix of theater, dance, multimedia and pointed comedy.
The arts center is at 349 Ferst Drive on the Tech campus in Midtown. Ticket packages are available at 404.894.9600. Single tickets go on sale Aug. 9 at arts.gatech.edu. Here’s a closer look:
September
SEPT. 15-17 | The Wholehearted. A drama from Stein/Holum Projects that combines live performance and larger-than-life video to tell the story of a world champion boxer taken down in her prime by her husband and determined to find redemption. Of it, WGBH Radio in Boston said: “There’s a certain narrative arc that often accompanies stories about female victims of domestic violence. But there’s nothing typical about the storytelling in The Wholehearted.” Stein/Holum is Deborah Stein, a New York-born playwright, director and producer living and working in San Diego, and Suli Holum, a Brooklyn-based performer, playwright, director and choreographer. $22. 7:30 p.m. Sept. 15; 8 p.m. Sept. 16-17.
SEPT. 30 | DJ Spooky and The Hidden Code. Original poetry, visuals and a musical score performed by Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, who describes The Hidden Code as a multimedia experience portraying the fusion of art and science. Free. 8 p.m.
October
OCT. 1 | DJ Spooky and the Peace Symphony. Paul D. Miller, a.k.a. DJ Spooky, uses sound and video to tell the stories of eight people who survived the 1945 bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan near the end of World War II. Miller, who interviewed the eight, combines their tales, historical footage, music and the DJ app he invented. $22; $10 children. 8 p.m.
OCT. 13-15 | Greg Wohead’s Hurtling. This outdoor performance piece asks each audience member to take a cassette player with headphones to a specific location. The piece, remade at each place, invites them to remember a previous version of themselves, a future version and to wonder aloud what that makes them now. “Hurtling was so beautiful and quietly transforming,” an earlier participant said, “that I feel like I now need to go away and have a little cry.” Wohead, a Texas-born, London-based performance artist, also has created pieces about Elvis Presley’s televised 1969 “comeback special” concert, surrogacy, and serial killer Ted Bundy’s confession tapes. $10. Show times vary.
OCT. 13-15 | Greg Wohead’s The Backseat of My Car (and other safe places). You get in the passenger seat of a car. Wohead is in the driver’s seat. He puts on thick-rimmed glasses, asks you to wear a wig and says: “You be Cathy and I’ll be me. Only it’s 1998, we’re 16 years old and we’re in Mesquite, Texas.” This one-to-one performance in a parked car is described as a “gently interactive storytelling piece about closeness, danger and intimacy through the lens of our teenage selves.” $10. Show times vary.
OCT. 22 | The Second City: Free Speech (While Supplies Last). Chicago’s famous sketch and improv comedy company, which amazingly dates to 1959, takes an irreverent look at America’s electoral process in its own fresh, fast and funny way. Free Speech is one of some 14 shows that Second City tours. $28 + $38; $20 children. 8 p.m.
OCT. 27 | Pilobolus performs Shadowland. The dance company Pilobolus, born in 1971 at Dartmouth College, continues to use movement to explore the human condition. Shadowland is a mix of shadow theater, dance, circus and concert that uses mobile screens for a performance that merges projected images and front-of-screen choreography. $34 + $44; $20 children. 7:30 p.m.
The Ferst season continues in November with jazz pianist Hiromi, big-band trumpeter and vocalist Joe Gransden and his orchestra, and the multimedia storytelling dance of ilLuminate; in December with the Blind Boys of Alabama; in January with Alonzo King LINES Ballet; in February with jazz from the Vijay Iyer Trio; in March with Bang on a Can All-Stars, the world-class percussion of DRUMline Live and new work from Atlanta’s Dance Canvas; and in April with SFJAZZ Collective. Details on all HERE.
