Lyam B. Gabel, the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table
KST Presents
Co-Presented with Chatham University’s Immersive Media Program
Friday, March 25, 2022, 8:00pm, Reception to follow
Saturday, March 26, 2022, 2:00pm
Saturday, March 26, 2022, 8:00pm, Post-show artist talkback featuring Lyam B. Gabel & creative team
Chatham University’s Eddy Theater | Woodland Rd.
Pay What Moves You: $15-30
ACCESS VIRTUAL RESOURCE: “an archive of queer care”
Three queer researchers slip between the present and the past, becoming, interacting with, and learning from a chorus of voices from a critical moment in the queer liberation movement. the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table is a performance, immersive media project, and archive of queer care that stitches together stories from COVID-19 and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The script draws from interviews with caretakers, activists, organizers, and long-term survivors, and a companion app will allow the audience to access and add to the archive of queer care used in the performance.
Content advisory: the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table includes references to sex and sexuality, depression and suicide, drinking and drug use, illness, death and dying, racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia. The production includes images of full nudity, onstage partial nudity, and the use of haze & strobe effects. There will be no late seating for these performances.
the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table is a National Performance Network (NPN) Creation & Development Fund Project co-commissioned by Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans, Chatham University, Contemporary Arts Center, and NPN. For more information www.npnweb.org. the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table by Lyam B. Gabel received developmental support as part of the 2021 Director Residency Program of The Drama League of New York. (Gabriel Stelian-Shanks, Artistic Director; Bevin Ross, Executive Director). A version was workshopped at Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama in November 2019 and received additional support from the Carnegie Mellon University GSA/Provost GuSH Grant.
Photo Credit: Hannah Cornish, Jen Davis, and Owen Ever in a November 2021 residency at Dancing Grounds. Live media mixing by Joseph Amodei.
- ABOUT THE ARTIST
- CREDITS
- DIRECTIONS
Lyam B. Gabel (they/he) is a trans* director, performance-maker, and community organizer who creates containers for collective remembering and radical celebration. He is obsessed with archives and his ever-evolving process combines extensive research, emerging technology, and embodied improvisation. He worked for eight years in New Orleans where they founded LAST CALL, a collective that documents and interprets neglected queer history. With LAST CALL they co-created and co-directed Alleged Lesbian Activities, a nationally touring musical about the history of lesbian bars. They are a member of New Orleans physical theater ensemble NEW NOISE where they directed Jubilee, a dinner and performance that asks white audiences to interrupt familial patterns of racism. Now they are exploring queer care from 1980s-present with the dance floor, the hospital room, and the kitchen table which received a NPN Creation Fund commission. They regularly collaborate with playwrights and solo performers and have developed work at Ars Nova, Judson Church, Pipeline, Ashland New Plays Festival, The Theater Offensive, and The New Orleans CAC among others. Lyam teaches acting and directing at Lehigh University. Drama League Resident 2021, Drama League Fellow 2017, Distillery Artist New Orleans CAC 2016. BFA Virginia Commonwealth University, MFA Carnegie Mellon University.
Conceived and Directed by Lyam B. Gabel
Media and additional research by Joseph Amodei
Clothing by Jean-Luc Raimond
Set by Sasha Schwartz
Music by Kei Slaughter
sound by Eben Hoffer
Lighting by André Segar
Dramaturgy by Sammie Paul
Performed by and developed with Hannah Cornish, Jen Davis, and Owen Ever
These bus lines stop near Chatham University: 28X, 64, 67, 71B, 71D, 74.
Free parking is available in the Library Lot, accessible from Murray Hill Avenue.
If you are coming from 5th Ave onto the Chatham campus, drive up Woodland Ave and turn hard right up curve for the grassy hill, heading to the chapel. From the chapel, the theater is to the left, across the quad–This theater is next to the Jennie King Mellon Library.
