PhysFestNYC Presents: 12th Chair Cellist // With These Hands // Push (Split Bill)

12th Chair Cellist

12th Chair Cellist is a physical theater, storytelling extravaganza. It tells the autobiographical story of Becca’s relationship to music—a love that was passed down from her parents, shared with her sister, and helped save her from bullies on the bus at school. There was only one problem…she didn’t like to practice. Peppered with vibrant musical physical comedy numbers, interviews and true stories, the show explores how music can make you feel, how it connects us to people and memory, and how you don’t have to be a professional musician or play perfectly to have it enrich your life.

Becca Bernard has been acting since she could stand and write musicals in her basement. She’s worked in NY and toured with companies such as the Zany Umbrella Circus, Clowns without Borders, NY Goofs, Parallel Exit in collaboration with Metropolis Ensemble, and is a proud member of the Laughter League. Her self-written solo show The Fainting Room was a recipient of the Bindlestiff Family Cirkus First of May Award and has appeared in many festivals. Her love of clown and physical theater was ignited while eating pasta and studying at the Accademia Dell’ Arte in Arezzo, Italy.

Shannan Calcutt, she/her, Coach.
Shannan is a multi-award winning performer and instructor who has conducted workshops in clown and play worldwide. Her critically acclaimed solo shows were broadcast on CBC Radio and Canada’s Bravo! network, where CBC declared her “a national treasure.” She has designed and directed comic acts for Cirque du Soleil, Spiegelworld, the philanthropic event One Night for One Drop, and Berlin’s Friedrichstadt-Palast, the world’s biggest theater stage.

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With These Hands

"With These Hands" is the culmination of an extended study centering life within the hands. Are we not made of all that we touch, be it to feel or to be felt? Of every act of creation? Of every act of destruction? Of every effort to experience the many textures of this rough world? This piece, which makes its premiere at PhysFestNYC, began as a simple experimental work incited by spacial constraints and a self-inflicted conceptual challenge, yet it has blossomed into a deeply personal and cathartic exploration. Set to the intricate and exquisite music of hammer dulcimer soloist and composer Malcolm Dalglish, "With These Hands" is a stationary movement solo developed around gestures, which may indicate the literal, the metaphorical, or something in-between, delving relentlessly into the dichotomies of what it means to be--physically, psychologically, emotionally--human.

Danielle Strader is a multidisciplinary artist based in Upper Manhattan. After cultivating her love of the arts throughout her youth amidst the Blue Ridge Mountains of upstate South Carolina, she pursued her interests at Marymount Manhattan College, graduating in the spring of 2023 with a BFA in Dance and a minor in Creative Writing. Now, she continues to utilize her many passions, creating original live performance pieces that realize clear, focused, and comprehensive artistic visions.

Malcolm Dalglish (music composition and performance) is a choral composer and director, hammer dulcimer, spoons, bones, and chin music virtuoso who presents programs of original folk choir and dulcimer music, stories, mime, rhyme, rhythm, and song.

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Push

Push is a retelling of the myth of Sisyphus, a cautionary tale about the inevitability of death and the power of acceptance. While enjoying a peaceful reign as the first King of Corinth, Sisyphus' life is thrown into chaos when he crosses Zeus, who condemns him to death and eternal punishment in the Underworld. Sisyphus, and the burden he bares, has long been an analogy for the state of humankind. But the journey Sisyphus goes on, his crimes against the Gods, and the reasons for his punishment are often forgotten. Push seeks to share this story through the expressiveness of the body and martial arts. The world of Ancient Greece is spun together through the use of a Bo staff, and characters spring to life within the structure of specific martial styles. Myth, martial arts, can campfire style storytelling all come together to lead you from the city of Corinth to the depths of the Underworld.

Rupert comes to his work with a background in dance, martial arts and theater. His work explores the meeting point between performance and martial arts, with a focus on archetypal/mythic storytelling. Through martial practice and ritualistic theater, Rupert creates theater that is ancient, new, and familiar. Most recently, Rupert trained at the Grotowiski Institute in Poland with Studio Kokyu, and was a Resident Artist at Triplets Amsterdam in The Netherlands. Rupert is a practicing Aikidoka at Brooklyn Aikikai under Sensei Ryūgan (6th Dan).

Daniel Santiago (he/him), Musician/Composer
Daniel Santiago is a 25 year old drummer from Somerset New Jersey who strives for stylistic fluidity in every musical setting. As a recent graduate of Berklee College of Music, Daniel has accumulated 100’s of hours in studio and in live settings primarily playing Pop, Rock and Funk/RnB but also sitting for bands/artists playing everything from straight-ahead jazz to country/folk music. Daniel has also served as a producer and arranger/orchestrator, often playing on those projects as well. 

MaryKate Glenn (she/her) Dramaturg
MaryKate Glenn is an actor and physical performer. Her praxis explores the expression of unconscious material through the body, voice, and visual image. She has worked with Transport Group, fullscreen blackbox, November Theatre, The Useless Room (Los Angeles) and Teatr ZAR (resident company of the Grotowski Institute). She is completing her MFA in Acting at California Institute of the Arts, where she studies dramaturgy under Mona Heinze.

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PhysFestNYC is a community-focused festival that celebrates, enriches, and envisions our field of physical theaters. As an annual gathering, provides space for practitioners, audiences, and the physical-theater-curious to share in presented works, diverse workshop offerings, and community-building events.

Broken Box Mime Theater's mission is to activate the imagination of our audiences, contemporize the art of mime, and remind us all of the power of simple storytelling.