Curated Conversation: Virtual Screening of “When a Priest Marries a Witch” + Livestream Q&A with Suzanne Bocanegra
Event Details
In Suzanne Bocanegra’s theatrical takes on the standard “artist lecture,” an actor appears as Bocanegra, recounting significant moments in her artistic development. Part artist’s talk, part performance, part cultural history, this filmed version of Bocanegra’s 2010 lecture features actor Paul Lazar of New York’s legendary Wooster Group and Big Dance Theater. Lazar channels Bocanegra, describing her early life in Pasadena, Texas, in a tale incorporating Elvis, Abstract Expressionism, the pope, astronauts, the singing nun, and, obviously, a witch. This one-time virtual screening is presented in conjunction with the exhibition Suzanne Bocanegra: Valley. A livestream Q&A with Bocanegra will follow the online screening. The event should last about 90 minutes.
Funding provided by the Carolyn Harris Hynson Centennial Endowment.
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About our Speakers
Suzanne Bocanegra (Houston, Texas, 1957 –New York City, present) earned her BFA from The University of Texas at Austin and her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute, California. She is a recipient of a 2020 Guggenheim Fellowship, the Robert Rauschenberg Award from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and the Rome Prize. She has also received grants and fellowships from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, MacDowell Colony, the Tiffany Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the New York Foundation for the Arts, among many others.Her work has been presented in solo shows at Art Cake, Brooklyn; the Fabric Workshop and Museum, Philadelphia; the Frances Young Tang Teaching Museum and Art Gallery; and at SITE Santa Fe; and internationally in group shows at venues including the Hammer Museum; the Serpentine Gallery, and the Victoria & Albert Museum. Her performances have been presented at venues including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; Carnegie Museum of Art; Hammer Museum; CounterCurrent Festival, Houston; the Fusebox Festival, Austin; UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance; Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival; Marfa Live Arts; Mass MoCA; the Walker Art Center; the Wexner Center; Pulitzer Arts Foundation; Fisher Center for the Performing Arts at Bard College; Danspace Project; Chicago Arts Club; and the American Dance Institute. Her recent work involves large-scale performance and installation, frequently translating two-dimensional information, images, and ideas from the past into three-dimensional staging, movement, and music. In spring 2022, she will debut a new work titled Honor, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra Starring Lili Taylor, which was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Paul Lazar is a founding member, along with Annie-B Parson, of Big Dance Theater. He has directed, co-directed, and acted in works for Big Dance since 1991, including commissions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Walker Art Center, Dance Theater Workshop, Classic Stage Company, and Japan Society. In 2017, Paul premiered a solo piece called Cage Shuffle (text by John Cage, choreography Annie-B Parson), at the American Realness Festival in New York. He has subsequently toured Cage Shuffle throughout the United States and Europe. In Fall 2020, he created a duet version of Cage Shuffle with Choreographer/Dancer Bebe Miller for the Wexner Center for The Arts. The Cage Shuffle Duet toured to the Cena Festival in Brasilia, Brazil in December of 2020. Outside of Big Dance, Paul has directed numerous productions including Young Jean Lee’s Obie Award-winning We’re Gonna Die. Aversion of We’re Gonna Die featuring David Byrne premiered at the Meltdown Festival in London in 2015. Paul also directed Bodycast: An Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra Starring Frances McDormand at the BAM Next Wave Festival in 2014 ; He directed Major Bangfor The Foundry Theatre at St. Ann’s Warehouse. Paul has performed in The Wooster Group’s Brace Up!, Emperor Jones, North Atlantic, and The Hairy Ape. Other stage acting credits include Tamburlaine at Theatre For A New Audience, Young Jean Lee’s Lear, The Three Sisters at Classic Stage Company, Richard Maxwell’s Cowboys and Indians at Soho Rep, Richard III at Classic Stage Company, Svejkat Theatre for a New Audience, Irene Fornes’ Mud at the Signature Theater and at Mabou Mines, and Mac Wellman’s 1965 UU. He has acted in over 40 feature films, including Snowpiercer, The Host, Mickey Blue Eyes, Silence of the Lambs, Beloved, Lorenzo’s Oil, and Philadelphia. His awards include two Bessies (2010, 2002), the Jacob’s Pillow Creativity Award in 2007, and the Prelude Festival’s Frankie Award in 2014, as well as an Obie Award for Big Dance in 2000. Paul currently teaches at New York University. He has also taught at Yale, Rutgers, The William Esper Studio, and The Michael Howard Studio.
Image Credit: Paul Lazar in When a Priest Marries a Witch, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra Starring Paul Lazar. Photo: Peter Serling, courtesy of Suzanne Bocanegra.