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Monday, January 14, 2013

OPERA MAKES WORLD PREMIERE @ PEAK PERFORMANCES IN MONTCLAIR: ALL TICKETS $15!

WHEN: January 26-February 3:
January 26 @ 8 PM
January 27 @ 3 PM
January 31 @ 7:30 PM
February 1 @ 7:30 PM
February 2 @ 8 PM
February 3 @ 3 PM
WHERE:
Alexander Kasser Theatre, Montclair State University, 1 Normal Ave., Upper Montclair
TICKETS: $15, and are available at the box office, www.peakperfs.org, or by calling 973.655.5112.
Charter bus service is provided from New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal – arcade on 41st Street between 8th and 9th Avenues – to the Alexander Kasser Theater ($10 per person, roundtrip) for all Saturday and Sunday performances. Bus reservations may be made by calling 973-655- 5112 or by visiting www.peakperfs.org. For train service, available only on weekdays, go online to www.njtransit.com or call 973.275.5555.

For restaurants close to the Alexander Kasser Theater, visit www.destinationmontclair.com

It is only when the curtain goes up that the truth is told.

With a working process as intuitive, unique, meticulous and enigmatic as the resulting shows, it is a blind gamble to predict much about any Robert Wilson production, except its riveting genius. Aside from music steeped in Southern blues, traditional hymns and chants and zydeco, with less than three weeks out on the world premiere of Wilson’s Zinnias—The Life of Clementine Hunter, only the facts of the show can be revealed with certainty.

And the facts are:

  1. Clementine Hunter (1887-1988) was a self-taught African-American visual artist whose work Wilson was first introduced to on a family trip from Waco, TX to Louisiana where Hunter lived and worked. Wilson was 14 at the time. Hunter, who was born on Hidden Hill cotton plantation near Cloutierville, LA, did not begin painting until she was in her mid-fifties. Her work, full of vibrant color, chronicled the side of plantation life that was “over the fence and across the road.”
  2. An opera in one act, the show’s concept, direction, set and light are by Robert Wilson; the music and lyrics are by Bernice Johnson Reagon and Toshi Reagon. Jacqueline Woodson is responsible for the story and book. The costumes are designed by Carlos Soto; Scott Bolman is the assistant light designer; Jakob Oredsson is the assistant set designer; Lynsey Peisinger is the assistant director.
  3. The performers are Cornelius Bethea, Nat Chandler, Carla Duren, Francesca Harper, Karma Mayet Johnson, Jennifer Nikki Kidwell, Josette Newsam-Marchak, Robert Osborne, Charles E. Wallace and Darynn Zimmer with Sheryl Sutton. The musicians are Robert Burke, Fred Cash, Juliette Jones, Jason Walker and Adam Widoff.
  4. Zinnias—The Life of Clementine Hunter is produced by Peak Performances at Montclair State University.
  5. The performance is one hour and a half with no intermission.

CLEMENTINE HUNTER is one of the most important self-taught American artists of the 20th century. She produced thousands of paintings drawn from her experiences working and living on a southern cotton plantation during the last century. Her works hang in the Smithsonian Institution, the American Folk Art Museum, the African-American Museum in Dallas, the Ogden Museum in New Orleans, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and numerous other museums and private collections. Hunter’s art will play a major role in the National Museum of African-American History and Culture, scheduled to open on the Mall in Washington, D.C. in 2015.

Hunter was born Clémence Rubin in 1887 on Hidden Hill cotton plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana. Her parents were sharecroppers in the fertile region that took its name from the oxbow lake known as Cane River. When Hunter was a teenager, her father gave up sharecropping to take a job that paid wages and moved his family to Melrose Plantation, one of the largest and most successful farms in the region. Hunter continued to live on or near Melrose for the rest of her life.

At Melrose, Hunter toiled in the cotton fields and pecan groves for most of her youth and then worked as a domestic servant in the plantation’s “Big House” when she approached middle age. Between 1917 and 1948, the plantation was owned and operated by Carmelite “Cammie” Garret Henry. Strongly influenced by the Arts-and-Crafts Movement of the early 20th century, Henry developed Melrose into a haven for artists and writers, who were invited to live in the outbuildings and work for extended periods on the plantation grounds.

Sometime in the late 1930s, after age 50, Hunter began painting with the leftover brushes and oils discarded by New Orleans artist Alberta Kinsey, a frequent Melrose visitor. Without formal training, Hunter began painting her memories. In time, her colorful works illuminated the side of plantation life that was “over the fence and across the road.” Her paintings are recognized as visual narratives, telling the story of the African-American and Creole people who lived and worked on and around the plantation until their labor was replaced by mechanization after World War II. Hunter continued to paint until a few days before her death on January 1, 1988, at the age of 101.

Zinnias—The Life of Clementine Hunter is made possible in part by a grant from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters Creative Campus Innovations Grant Program, funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation.

Programs in this Peak Performances season are made possible in part by funds from the Association of Performing Arts Presenters; the National Endowment for the Arts; the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Dept. of State, a partner agency of the National Endowment for the Arts; Discover Jersey Arts; New England Foundation for the Arts; Alison and James T. Cirenza; and The Honorable Mary Mochary.

All artwork by Clementine Hunter, Historic American Building Survey, National Park Service,