Alex Tartarsky - Episode 06.02 SLC Performance Lab

Alex Tartarsky - Episode 06.02 SLC Performance Lab

From SLC Performance Lab by Sarah Lawrence College Theatre MFA Program

March 31, 2025 · 40 min

About this episode

Alex Tartarsky discusses their unique approach to performance that blends various artistic forms and challenges traditional narratives.

ContemporaryPerformance.com and the Sarah Lawrence College MFA Theatre Program produce the SLC Performance Lab. During the year, visiting artists to the MFA Theatre Program's Performance Lab are interviewed after leading a workshop with the students. Performance Lab is one of the program's core components, where graduate students work with guest artists and develop performance experiments. Alex Tartarsky is interviewed by Amelia Munson (SLC'26) and Sheridan Merrick (SLC'26) and produced by Julia Duffy (SLC'25) Alex Tatarsky makes performances somewhere in between comedy, poetry, dance-theater, and rant—sometimes with songs. Tatarsky’s pieces play with the tension and overlap between written and improvised sequences, careening between known and unknown, set and scored. Drawing on the lineage of the clown, Tatarsky plays with the expectations and power dynamics of a given context, dissolving the fourth wall to respond to what is actually happening in the room, and probing the construction of genre, self, and narrative in real time. Sad Boys in Harpy Land, which premiered in 2023 at Abrons Arts Center in New York, NY, is an adaptation of a German novel about a little boy who wants…

People in this episode

Guest: Alex Tartarsky

Topics covered

  • performance
  • comedy
  • poetry
  • dance-theater
  • clowning
  • art

Keywords

  • Sad Boys in Harpy Land
  • Abrons Arts Center
  • MFA Theatre Program
  • performance experiments

Mentioned in this episode

Books & works: Sad Boys in Harpy Land, MATERIAL, Gnome Core, Dirt Trip, Untitled Freakout, Americana Psychobabble

Places: New York, NY, Philadelphia, PA, Long Island City, Brooklyn, Becket, MA

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