“Compartmented”

Multimedia site-specific art happenings

Co-curated by Missy Pfohl Smith and Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge

At ‘The Sunday School’

Rochester Lyric Opera

440 East Avenue, Rochester, NY 14607

December 4 & 5, 2015, 6–9pm, $5 at the door

For images and souvenirs from the show, visit Compartmented’s Website: http://thesundayschool.space

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/events/1221086807907978/

Seventeen artists will occupy ‘The Sunday School’ located in the back of the Lyric Opera Theatre for two evenings of site-specific installations and performances in December. The audience will be invited to wander through a unique curiosity cabinet and explore the architectural structure transformed by the artists’ interventions. Independent artists and faculty from University of Rochester, RIT, Alfred University, Alfred State College and Hobart and William Smith Colleges were invited by the organizers/curators to imagine and present work in response to this fascinating space.

Missy Pfohl Smith happened upon the space when considering venues for The Fringe, and immediately thought it would make for fascinating site-specific art and performance. Smith contacted colleague Evelyne Leblanc-Roberge, suspecting she too would be inspired by the space. Smith says, “I was thrilled when Sue Cotroneo and Lyric Opera were willing to let us play in this curious space. Lyric Opera’s plans to renovate the space into a cabaret hall were scheduled to begin in January – I felt an urgency to give these fascinating vestiges from the former Christian Scientist Church one last life through art, dance and media.” Luckily, Evelyne wholeheartedly agreed, and the two invited multi-disciplinary artists from the region to explore and create in and for the space. Leblanc-Roberge writes, “One could see Bentham’s Panopticon, strange biblical reading rooms, a compartmented symmetrical cabaret, fascinating surfaces and corners, rounded walls, hypnotic wallpaper, one could hear the sound of a lost memory, imagine a dress as big as a room, a play of differences and repetitions, the smell and texture of a worn red carpet, typographic wonders of ancient blue prints, a place of worship, or perhaps a surveillance device.” The curators and the dozen artists involved in the project are curious to know, “What will you find here?”

This project would not be possible without the Rochester Lyric Theater, thank you!