Dirt, Decay, and Decomposition Laboratory with Alex Tatarsky

This workshop invites you to play at the edges of clown, comedy, performance art, dance theater, and everything in-between. 

While theater artists often approach their creative process in terms of composition, cohesiveness, and other frameworks that suggest accumulation and synthesis, this workshop gives you the chance to practice decomposition, falling apart, freaking out, and more as creative pathways. 

To this end, participants will explore Celebration Barn’s campus to observe how the more-than-human world moves as a source of inspiration. How, for example, might the cycles of a compost heap inform your approach to generating material? How might the movement of insects inform your solo performance? How can close observation of animals, tree branches, or the discarded items in a trash bin hold inspiration for character development? These explorations into the poetics of rot will serve as a jumping off point for making, doing, unmaking, undoing, rotting, raving, making a scene, making a mess, and singing songs. 

Throughout the week, participants will work collaboratively and individually. There will be time both to make—through improvisation, exercises, and play—and to think through reading, writing, and group discussion. 

This workshop is open to a wide range of artists, from clowns and comedians, to actors, visual artists, and playwrights. Those making solo performances will find ample opportunities to generate material, and everyone will have the chance to try new ways of making.

ABOUT ALEX TATARSKY

A “hilarious, finely tuned absurdist” (Theatre Jones), Alex Tatarsky (they/them) makes performances in the uncomfortable zone between comedy, dance-theater, performance art and delusional streetside rant, often breaking the fourth wall and embracing humor to reveal vulnerability and humanity. Sometimes there are songs. Their live performances actively play with perceptions of narrative language and strive to be highly responsive to venue and audience. Their original solo performance pieces Americana Psychobabble, Untitled Freakout, Buttplug Gnome, Dirt Trip and Sad Boys in Harpy Land have been presented across New York City at La MaMa, MoMA PS1, the Kitchen, the Glove, the Brick, Abrons Arts Center, Gibney Dance and Playwrights Horizons. Most recently, their improvisational project MATERIAL was presented as part of the Whitney Biennial. As a curatorial fellow at the Poetry Project, Tatarsky organized a series on the poetics of rot. They are honored to have been Garden Gnome in Residence at numerous public parks, including Glen Foerd and the South Philly Meadows. Along with collaborator Ming Lin, Tatarsky is one half of the roving poetic research unit Shanzhai Lyric and its fictional office offshoot the Canal Street Research Association. Personal interests include bootlegs, hellscapes, and compost.