The Future is For/Boating

June 30, 2024

Staten Island Ferry

ACOMPI and David Peter Francis present a newly commissioned processional performance by Pat Oleszko on the Staten Island Ferry. Titled The Future is For/Boating, the performance debuts a new costume whose arms give the illusion of walking backwards. Passing various New York City landmarks such as the Statue of Liberty, Oleszko’s absurd voyage draws attention toward rising sea levels, a recurring interest across her five-decade career. The performance is presented on the occasion of Oleszko’s first solo show in over two decades, Pat's Imperfect Present Tense. 

A younger generation of the city’s premiere experimental performers, Amando Houser, Abby Lloyd, and Alex Tatarsky present new works that dialogue with those of Oleszko.

Poster graphics by Willie Zabar

Photography by Walter Wlodarczyk

  • Pat Oleszko (American, b. 1947) received her BFA from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. Since the early 1970s, she has staged exhibitions and performances at institutions such as The Kitchen (New York),  Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), Performance Space (New York), P.S. 1 (Queens), Institute of Contemporary Art (Boston), Civitella Ranieri  (Umbertide, Italy), Neuberger Museum (Purchase), Rauschenberg Foundation (Captiva), and National Museum of Women in the Arts (Washington D.C.), amongst others. She was the recipient of the Rome Prize in 1998, and the Guggenheim Fellowship in 1990. A New Yorker since 1970, Oleszko has a long relationship with the Ferry, taking it myriad times in summer months to clean trash from the beaches and swim under the Verrazano Bridge.

  • Amando Houser is a transmasculine actor and clown born and based in NYC. Following a sold-out run with The Brick, their solo show DeliaDelia! The Flat Chested Witch! will premiere this summer at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. In June 2024, they were featured alongside Charlene Incarnate and David Greenspan in Midnight Coleslaw’s Tales From Beyond The Closet!!! at The Tank. In 2023, they performed at Soho Rep in Snatch Adams and Tainty McCracken Present It’s That Time of the Month. The show was featured in Vulture’s Best Theatre of 2023 and they reached critical acclaim. They have performed in and devised work at venues and variety nights around the U.S. as well as at The Signature Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, The Elysian, Vox Populi Gallery, The Wild Project, JACK, and The Richard B. Fisher Center at Bard College. Amando is a recent graduate of École Philippe Gaulier in France and has trained with Pig Iron Theatre Company in Philadelphia, Julia Masli, and Viggo Venn.

  • Alexandra Tatarsky blends performance art, comedy, physical theater, and clown practices to probe the construction of meaning, self, and community. Playing with perceptions of language and narrative structure, their live performances are highly responsive to venue and audience, often breaking the fourth wall and embracing humor to reveal vulnerability and humanity. “Performance is a realm that allows us to think up worlds beyond walls and boxes,” Tatarsky says. They describe the clown as an “ideal model for our times” while also drawing on traditions like vaudeville, postmodern dance, comedy, and Russian futurism. Tatarsky has performed original, evening-length solo works at New York’s La MaMa and the Exponential Festival, the UK’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, and in Philadelphia’s Fringe Festival, among others. They have an MA in performance studies from New York University and a BA in Russian literature from Reed College, and they studied devised performance at the Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance Training.

  • Abby Lloyd is a visual artist based in New York City. Her work deals with themes of adolescence, memory, and loss, exploring how different stages of life shape our identities. Through sculpture, performance, video, and installation, Lloyd creates works that draw from both personal and shared experiences. Over the past 15 years, she has also organized unconventional projects and events in collaboration with a wide range of artists. 

Photography by Walter Wlodarczyk

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