Madelon Powers Gallery at ESU to Present 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens

12 Shouts to the Heavens

Posted by: Elizabeth Richardson on January 17, 2020, No Comments

East Stroudsburg University’s Madelon Powers Gallery will present 12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens, a retrospective exhibition/installation and performance by theatre artist Sibyl Kempson from February 3-March 6, 2020.

The installation will feature artifacts and videos from work first performed by Kempson and her group, 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co., at the Whitney Museum of Art on the solstices and equinoxes in 2017-2018.

On Monday, February 3, Kempson will open the retrospective with an interactive reception and performance which will include references to the Poconos environment where she was raised.

Those planning to attend the reception and performance should gather outside the front entrance to the university’s Fine and Performing Center, Normal and Marguerite streets, East Stroudsburg, at 4:45 p.m. for the 5 p.m. event. In the case of inclement weather, attendees should gather in the lobby of the building.

Hours for the gallery are Monday, Tuesday and Friday from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m, and Wednesday and Thursday from 11 a.m. – 7 p.m. The exhibit and reception are open to the public at no cost.

A recipient of a 2018 PEN/Laura Pels International Foundation for Theater Award for American Playwright at Mid-Career, Kempson began developing her own pieces at Little Theater and Dixon Place at the turn of the millennium. Her plays have been presented in the United States, Germany, and Norway.

Kempson created the 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr. & Perf. Co. in 2015 at the Martin E. Segal Center at the City University of New York. The company’s inaugural production, Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag, premiered at Abrons Arts Center in NYC the same year.

12 Shouts to the Ten Forgotten Heavens, a 3-year cycle of rituals for the Whitney Museum of American Art, began on the vernal equinox in March 2016, and recurred on every solstice and equinox through December 2018.

Other recent projects include the 2018 productions of true pearl, a new opera with David Lang for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston, and Sasquatch Rituals at The Kitchen in New York City.

Kempson earned an MFA from Brooklyn College and is a 2017 alum of New Dramatists. She was playwright-in-residence at the Abrons Arts Center from 2015-18.  She teaches experimental performance writing at Sarah Lawrence College, and at the Victoria College of the Arts, University of Melbourne.

In conjunction with the exhibit and performance, Kempson will present an Intuitive Research Workshop on Tuesday, March 3 from 5-8 p.m. in ESU’s Kemp Library, 160 Smith Street, East Stroudsburg.

This workshop, which is open to creatives in all media – visual and performing artists, writers and composers – will be focused on deepening the creative process. There is a $15 fee for the general public. To register for the workshop, email esuarts@esu.edu or call 570-422-3483.

The exhibit, performance and workshop are supported in part by the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, a state agency funded by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

For more information about the exhibition or reception, email esuarts@esu.edu or call the Fine and Performing Arts Events Line at 570-422-3483.