Welcome to Hand2Mouth’s New2You Festival!
Our inaugural New2You Festival is a 9-day festival exploring the intersection of the body and technology, including an exploration of all media and the ways in which humans have d/evolved using technology and its psychological effects. After a call for proposals last Fall, we are delighted to share with you nine original works by some of Portland’s most exciting generative artists.
The idea for the festival was born out of our own company members’ interests in celebrating the artists process, uplifting new voices and original works, building community, and the desire for human connection beyond the facade of technology. The works you will see as part of the festival are all varied in style and focus.
We hope you enjoy these works and encourage you to consider how they resonate with your experiences moving through the technological world. As always, we thank you for your support!
-Michael Cavazos, H2M Artistic DIrector
Thank you to our host venue Portland Institute for Contemporary Art for all of their support and for always championing artists and art-making!
Jump ahead to show info by clicking on image below!
System Check
by Nurys Herrera
March 27 at 7:30pm
April 2 at 7:30pm
System Check is a solo performance about what happens when the human body is examined, measured, and misunderstood by technology.
After entering a futuristic diagnostic room, a woman is guided through a series of automated tests designed to read her body as data by a virtual nurse who follows protocol perfectly. When the system encounters things it can’t fully process like personal history, missing parts, and emotion, it attempts to adjust how it communicates, trying different programmed ways of explaining what’s happening. None of them quite work.
Blending physical comedy, silence, and a growing sense of frustration, System Check explores the gap between efficiency and empathy and asks what we still need when the results are inconclusive.
Nurys Herrera [Creator / Performer] is a Peruvian-born actress, performer, and writer who has worked in Portland for more than 20 years. She was last seen In Hand2Mouth productions Memento Mori as Death and Home/Land as the 'drowned woman'.
She believes laughter is a form of healing and her work invites audiences to laugh, reflect, and recognize themselves in the absurdities of modern life.
Special Appearance by Joaquin Lopez as the Doctor and Nurse Alma’s voice.
Soft Machine
by Trick Pony
March 27 at 7:30pm
April 2 at 7:30pm
How do you program humanity? Soft Machine - a newly devised piece from Trick Pony Theatre - invites you to clock in at the latest big tech company, OptiMates™, and see just how an android gets its adenoids. The most advanced mechanical being ever is presented as the answer to all of our most unnecessary tasks such as learning new things, making friends, and falling in love. An interactive, absurd journey into Uncanny Valley where we strive to make machines more like humans and humans more like machines. Who knew outsourcing our soul in pursuit of optimization was funny?
Content Warning: There will be some audience interaction and moments of low lighting.
Emily Laue [Co-Creator / Director] has been making theatre, film and multimedia projects for over 20 years and is delighted to now be directing and co-creating with Trick Pony Theatre. She is primarily a director, producer and actor. She has directed theatre at the Los Angeles Fringe, and in Portland at Artifice and Sam Festivals. Her films have screened at the Northwest Film Forum, MoMA, Vancouver Cinematheque and festivals in Oregon, New York, Mexico and Canada. She has a BFA in theatre acting from the University of British Columbia and an MFA in film directing from Stony Brook/Killer Films and is a graduate of PETE’s Institute of Contemporary Performance.
Adam Fleming [Co-Creator / Performer] is a theatre maker with a near thirty-year background in movement-driven storytelling. His work as a director and movement director includes Amélie, Secret In The Wings, Tuck Everlasting, Clue, and The Play That Goes Wrong, as well as choreography for Toe Pick at NYC’s Dixon Place, West Side Story with the Sioux City Symphony, and the Sundance favorite Dick Johnson Is Dead. Recent work includes Associate Director for Lizard Boy at Portland Center Stage, movement direction for The Madonna of the Cat at 21Ten Theatre and Everybody’s Eyes Are On the First at The Hatchery new works festival. As a performer, he appeared on Broadway in Hairspray (Sketch, OBC) and Wicked (Boq), and in the films dare and The Dare Project. www.alphahotelfoxtrot.com
London Bauman [Co-Creator / Performer] is a theatre maker, musician and sound designer from Portland, OR. He was a producing company member at Theatre Vertigo from 2017-2020 (credits include The Delays, Stupid Ghost, Map of Virtue, Complex, Everything You Touch) and has produced work seen around Oregon, the Bay Area, the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and elsewhere. He holds a BS in Theatre Arts from Portland State University and has trained at Dell'Arte International School of Physical Theatre, The Actors Conservatory, and as part of PETE's Institute for Contemporary Performance. He is the theatre instructor at Pacific Crest Community School and plays guitar in the local band Frecks.