This past weekend I was fortunate to be included in the CATCH 50 lineup at the Chocolate Factory Theater in Long Island City.  It was a huge undertaking by the entire CATCH team as well as The Chocolate Factory.  Such a great space to work in, and such good people to work with.  I premiered a short piece specifically for CATCH called YOU ARE NOT HERE, which I’m treating as a sketch for a longer performance piece that I’ll be developing throughout the year.

Thank you to Bobby McElver for his expert sound engineering; Jeff Larson, Andrew Dinwiddie, and Caleb Hammons who make CATCH happen; and to everyone at The Chocolate Factory for an amazing night.

Lizzie Simon of The Wall Street Journal also gave this great account of Jason Grote’s experience at CATCH 50.

Each week in Curtain Raisers, we invite a local theater artist to attend a show of his or her choosing and discuss the results. On Saturday, the experimental playwright Jason Grote opted to see “Catch 50,” an evening of performance at the Chocolate Factory in Long Island City. Mr. Grote wrote for the first season of NBC’s “Smash,” but is known in the theater community for his plays “1001″ and “Civilization (all you can eat).” He’s currently working on a musical adaptation of “1001,” as well as a commission for Seattle’s ACT Theatre about the Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich and a commissioned adaptation of “A Wrinkle in Time” for Oregon Shakespeare Festival.

It was an unlikely interaction between members of two of the theater community’s more prominent camps. Mr. Grote pointed out that the landscape of new stage work is to a large degree divided between the playwrights, whose productions begin with a director and follow a well-worn hierarchy to the stage, and devised-theater artists, who build shows collaboratively, often with multiple texts, often with movement and music, and always through means of experimentation. But there are some playwrights—like Erin Courtney, Mac Wellman, Anne Washburn and Mr. Grote—who travel between the camps, borrowing from the tools and fruits of experimentation to reinvent the well-made play.

This is what brought Mr. Grote to Queens to see “Catch 50,” a curated smorgasbord featuring some of the city’s finest choreographers, performance artists, and devised-theater makers.

On view were mostly excerpts and works-in-progress. “This would be the equivalent of playwrights having staged readings,” he said. “It’s not text-based, so you need something like this.”

“Catch 50″ was actually the 50th iteration of a performance series that began in 2003. On Saturday night there were five lineups—one for every hour from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., with each act finishing in under 10 minutes.

But the performances were rich. Among the acts in the 9 p.m. show that Mr. Grote attended was Andrew Schneider’s unnerving physical and technical tour de force exploring the maplessness of life.

“Obviously this person is a skilled actor and mover,” Mr. Grote said. The evening continued with separate works by Paul Lazar and Annie-B Parson, co-artistic directors of the venerated downtown company Big Dance Theater.

Ms. Valk choreographed a dance for Mr. Lazar set to Bach, in which he moved around like the most casual of clowns—gesturing, hitting a pretend bat, laying on the floor enjoying a pretend cigarette.

“I can watch Paul Lazar forever,” said Mr. Grote. “I think he’s so appealing.”

Is he making fun of contemporary dance? “He is, in a gentle way. He’s making fun of himself first and foremost.”

It called to mind for Mr. Grote a certain movement vocabulary that has become a hallmark in New York-based devised work, a kind of dancing performed by nondancers that repurposes ordinary, everyday movement.

“It’s actually extraordinarily difficult,” he said. He had written some of it into “Civilization,” and seen it performed masterfully by the company Clubbed Thumb in New York, though less so in other parts of the country, where getting it right was “the biggest headache in the world.” Done badly, he said, looking like there was a stink in the room, it’s like “some variation of jazz dance.”

Ms. Parson choreographed a new solo for Tymberly Canale. Set in a mythical Austria, the piece was equal parts whimsical and ferocious, and Ms. Canale brought the show to an intensity it hadn’t to that point reached.

“There’s this way that actual, genuine, true beauty surprises you,” said Mr. Grote.

Across the evening, one could hear a tone of envy in Mr. Grote’s affection for devised theater. “One thing I love,” he said, “is that it isn’t conceived in a vacuum and shoehorned in. It was intended for the performer who performed it and in the space it was in.”

He admitted he feels more generosity for the work than he does for straight playwriting. “I tend to be extremely critical, like, how did they get this big production with this s— script? I can get lost in devised work more. There’s not that narcissism of small difference.”

But if he was being completely honest, he’d been a bit distracted during “Catch 50.”

“I spent half the time thinking: What can I write for Kate Valk now?” he said. “I was thinking about letting her do anything she wanted to any of my plays.”

I was very happy to be featured on The (indefatigably awesome) Creator’s Project site this week.

“The Creators Project is a global network dedicated to the celebration of creativity, culture and technology.  Each week we chat about the tools of the trade with one outstanding creative to find out exactly how they do what they do. The questions are always the same, the answers, not so much. This week: Andrew Schneider”

TWG is bringing Vieux Carré to the 2011 Holland Festival.  Here’s a quick video they produced of some behind the scenes stuff.  Unfortunately this was pretty much the morning of day 02 and not much video magic was up and running yet.

I was thrilled to be able to give this interview about my Solar Bikini with BBC’s Claire Bolderson yesterday afternoon.

Download audio file (BBCinterview.mp3)

Also available as a podcast here.

The Wooster Group must really be having some slow news days lately. Either that, or the general public’s cries for insider exposés are finally being heard. Check out my insider profile by the Group below.

Slow news day it is then. You can read the archived notebooks from the k.log here.

Hey all, I’m participating in a one-day project at my old grad-school called 5-in-5.  The kids do 5 projects in 5 days.  Read more about it here.  I decided to do something really stupid.  Check that out here.

I’ve got two (2) performances coming up this next week before I leave for LA with TWG. Catch Retrograde at Monkeytown in Brooklyn as part of an evening’s length-worth of performances called Sculpting Voice (organized by Lesley Flanigan) on Friday the 25th of January at 8PM. The bill also features R. Luke Dubois, Joo Youn Paek, Adam Parrish, Nick Hasty, Nancy Garcia, Eric Beug, Christopher McDonald, and Dafna Naphtali. And if you happen to be in the Savannah Georgia area the day before that, I’ll be demonstrating and lecturing on Experimental Devices for Performance at the Telfair Art Museum at 11AM.(scroll halfway down). And finally, if you just want to hang out I’ll be riding my bike to watch the Packer game with my buddy Ryan at 6:00 today. Reservations are encouraged for the first two events.  Just bring some Schlitz to Ryan’s and you’re in the door.

I don’t know why I made this video. But, I’m glad I did. I’ve been pretty burnt out lately. Tonite I got a drink with Ryan and Ted on 94th St. and 3rd Ave. We talked a lot about music. Anyhow. Today is my day one day off per week from Wooster. I spent it at my second job in the financial district editing video for Paltalk.com. The left channel of video is me during an eight hour work day at Paltalk during what is supposed to be my one day off per week. The right channel of video is me getting home from a drink with Ryan and Ted. The music is by The Horrors.  Enjoy.

The Archery Contest (a radio play), conceived and executed by John Jahnke, and the Hotel Savant opens tomorrow at P.S.122. I was fortunate to be involved in the project in a p-comp sort of way. I retrofitted six antique radios, which earned me the credit of “Sound Installation.” I cannot attend the performance but wish them all the best. I’ve been to a couple of rehearsals, and the show is quite mysteriously entertaining in a very Nancy Drew sort of way. If you’re into sleuthing at all (or if the word “sleuthing” makes you feel funny) then this work in progress is definitely for you. More info here.

My buddy, the GabeBC has posted a sweet new music video on You Tube for Radiohead’s Faust Arp.

The original footage is from a project that we collaborated on at ITP about a year ago. It’s getting quite a few views for whatever that’s worth. I think the original project, called S.A.D. Man, is also definitely worth checking out. In short, we make an interactive video that changes with the sun’s setting and rising. A really slow interaction. Here’s my documentation. Here’s Gabe’s.