The Center at West Park presents

CREATED & PERFORMED BY G^2:
JOHN MARIA GUTIERREZ & BETH GRACZYK

CREATIVE TEAM

Co-Creators/Performers: John Maria Gutierrez & Beth Graczyk
Visual Set Design (12’ Drawings): Cristina de Miguel
Sound Design: Aaron Gabriel in collaboration with G^2
Cello Recording: Laura Sewell
Choral Pieces: G^2
Lighting Design: Liz Schweitzer
Costume Consultant: Asa Thornton
Sound Tech: Kilusan Bautista

KING LEAR IN THE FOREST 2021

Photos by Effy Grey

ARTIST BIOS

G^2 stems from artistic dialogue between John Maria Gutierrez, a NYC-born, 1st generation Dominican-American, and Beth Graczyk, a Seattle-born 3rd generation Polish-American. Their unique connection celebrates their diverse backgrounds and through a cultivated trust, have found ways to share their intimate struggles, hopes, and dreams with each other in a space that honors their differences while seeking to find empathetic understanding of each other. G^2 manifests material by collaging diverse improvisational concepts, post-modern, modern, hip-hop, and contemporary dance, theater, acting, poetry, and music into a multi-dimensional and imaginative worlds. G^2 have primarily independent performance histories, and met doing a series of projects with the feath3r theory from 2014-2016. They have launched G^2 as a collaborative platform for them to explore co-teaching, and co-generating performance work together. They aim to generate practices together that speak to ways in which their rigorous physical expressions can counter, challenge and blend with one another. In the more subtle and complex space of their bodies, John and Beth explore both identity and post-identity, where the individual labels that are afforded or placed on either of them, have the potential to become blurred with each other and the audience, even for a moment.

JOHN MARIA GUTIERREZ is an actor, dancer, creator who performs on screen and stage nationally and internationally. Originally from a small island presently called NYC, John was raised in the Northern region of the island in a hood commonly known as "Little Dominican Republic" or Washington Heights. His works combine bboy and postmodern aesthetics, original music, singing, and experimental theater to unwind a complex urban disparity brought on by social and systemic failings. As the first person in his family born in the US, John is carving out and balancing his own identity within his family, cultural history, and an artistic landscape that doesn’t often highlight the experiences of lower income, multilingual, and queer expressions. Since graduating from NYU Tisch’s Experimental Theater Wing John has ventured into various landscapes of performance with choreographer/directors and companies such as Miguel Gutierrez, Big Dance Theater, Pilobolus, Gesel Mason, Raja Feather Kelly, BAIRA, Full Circle Souljahs, Jeanette Stoner and Dancers, performing in venues such as BAM, The Chocolate Factory, Dancespace, Joes Pub, La Mama, JACK, Dixon Place. He is a graduate of the Terry Knickerbocker Studio and faculty at Peridance Center. John is a proud member of the Great Jones Rep Company of La Mama and G^2, an ongoing collaboration with Beth Graczyk which recently presented work at Judson Church and the Shanghai Tower in China. John is also a 2020-21 Artist in Residence at La Mama as well as a BAAD/Pepatian Dance Your Futures artist.

BETH GRACZYK is a body-based artist based in Brooklyn/Lenapehoking whose 20-year career as a creative-maker and bench scientist has allowed her to cultivate a unique perspective that reaches actively within and between the forms of art and science. Graczyk seeks to work with populations whose experiences are often ignored including female-identified, neurodiverse, and LGBTQIA+ bodies. Since 2002, Graczyk has performed throughout the US and in Japan, Ecuador, France, China, and India and in NYC has been presented by Gibney, La Mama, Jack, CPR, and Movement Research amongst others. In 2019, Graczyk directed a new work in collaboration with Aaron Gabriel examining the experiences of LGBTQIA+ artists with disabilities that was workshopped at the Walker Arts Center and featured in Critical Correspondence. She has a collaborative partnership with John Maria Gutierrez (G^2), and is on Faculty for the Peridance Certification Program. Concurrently, Graczyk is an author on 10 science publications and received a 2020 Pilot Award from Rockefeller University with collaborator Guadalupe Astorga for research on visual perception and neurodiversity. Graczyk co-directed the performance company Salt Horse in Seattle from 2008-2016 where they received funding from 4 Culture, Artist Trust, Washington State Arts Commission, NEA and commissions including City of Seattle, Northwest Film Forum and Cornish. As a performer she has worked with many artists including Torben Ulrich, Mark Haim, Sara Shelton Mann, Raja Kelly, Amy Chavasse, and K.J. Holmes. @bethgraczyk

AARON GABRIEL (they/them) is a Twin-Cities-based generative theater artist and theater/dance composer whose creative work with marginalized artists - nationally and internationally - has spanned 20+ years and over 40 productions. Gabriel’s unique approach to participant-based music creation music and lyric writing has allowed them to produce work with under-represented (primarily differently-abled and LGBTQIIA+ artists) in Algeria, Congo, India, Morocco, Thailand, France, and England as well as a decade-plus musical about iconic Storyville with musicians in New Orleans that premiered at the Guthrie Theater in 2018. Gabriel has worked with artists with intellectual and developmental disability for over 12 years. Prior to COVID-19, Gabriel had begun work on a new movement/music performance with choreographer Beth Graczyk examining the experiences of LGBTQIA+ artists with disabilities that was workshopped at the Walker Arts Center and featured in Movement Research. This project is awarded a MN State Arts Board Touring Grant and is scheduled to resume in 2022. Most recently, Gabriel was rewarded and 2021 MN Artist Support Grant to produce an EP of songs created by Twin Cities BIPOC artists responding to the murder of George Floyd and their experience living in the Twin Cities during that time.

CRISTINA DE MIGUEL (b. 1987, Seville, Spain) is based in Brooklyn, NY. She received a BA in Fine Arts from the University of Seville (Spain,2010), and an MA in Fine Arts from Pratt Institute, New York (2012). Her approach to painting is emotional, thinking in formal terms but balancing it out with a let-go attitude. De Miguel insists on the materiality of the painting by fragmenting the figure, so the figure is not the central point of the painting but the act of painting in itself. The iconography in her work alludes to action, velocity and the possibilities of the body -bodies that melt physically, in the same way paint drips and melts too. De Miguel’s diverse range of interests and influences is both eclectic and unexpected; she draws equally from Baroque painting and the banalities of daily life and intimacy. Recent solo exhibitions include 'Wheels, Flying bodies, and Other Stories' (New York, 2022) ‘Paintings of Through and Fell’, Allouche Benias Gallery, (Athens, 2021); ‘Life in its Poetic Form’, Fredericks & Freiser Gallery, (New York, 2020). Group exhibitions include Van de Weghe Gallery, East Hampton, New York (2021); Sim Smith Gallery, London (2020); Fredericks & Freiser, New York (2020); Herrero de Tejada, Madrid (2019).

LIZ SCHWEITZER is a New York City based Lighting Designer. As a Lighting Designer and Assistant she has worked at MTC, Roundabout, The Signature, La Mama Experimental Theater, The Vineyard Theatre, and Stella Adler. She is a proud graduate of Barnard College at Columbia University, and the Juilliard Apprenticeship Program. More info about Liz and her work can be found at lizlights.com.

PRODUCTION AND MAJOR SUPPORT Credits

G^2: King Lear In The Forest is presented through a residency at The Center at West Park. This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. The development of G^2: King Lear in the Forest is in part supported through a 2019 residency in Detroit at Wayne State University through BAIRA. Earlier versions were presented at Judson Memorial Church, by Pioneers Go East Collective, and in Shanghai, China for the “Urban Spaces 2019” festival invited by Amy Chavasse & Co. The Center at West Park co-produced a film version of KLIF last May 2021 as part of their residency program with filmmaker Daniel Hess.

SPECIAL THANKS

John and Beth would like to thank BAIRA, Amy Chavasse, Natasha, Zach and The Center at West Park team for continual support in the development of this work. Special thank you to our collaborative team that has help make the work come to fruition, and to Sarah Lurie who helped us immensely for the film version. Huge thank you to the patrons of G^2 & Beth Graczyk Productions, Inc. for supporting live original performance work.

LAND ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The Center at West Park is a not-for-profit community performing arts center based in the historic West Park Presbyterian Church, a New York City landmark on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.

We recognize that this land where we are privileged to be is the unceded territory and ancestral home of the Munsee Lenape. Today, members of the Lenape and many other indigenous sovereign nations continue to live, work, and create in New York City.

For over 30 years in the mid-19th century, this land was home to Seneca Village, the first free Black community in New York City. In 1857, the city used eminent domain to forcibly remove the residents and demolish their homes, schools, and churches to make room for the construction of Central Park.

Since its construction in 1889, this building has been home to countless artists and activists:

In 1978, West Park led the way in openly welcoming LGBTQ+ members as part of the More Light Movement.

From 1980 to 1985, West Park was home to The Shakespeare Center and the renowned Riverside Shakespeare Company.

From 1987 to 1991, God’s Love We Deliver worked out of West Park’s kitchen to serve up to 250 meals per day to people living with AIDS during the height of the crisis.

The West Park Presbyterian Church building was named a New York City Landmark in 2010. In 2016, The Center at West Park was founded by a coalition of community members to preserve and revitalize West Park as a community resource and home for arts and culture.

We are deeply inspired by the legacy of those who have called this land and this building home before us. We hope to honor them in all our work today and in the future.

ABOUT THE CENTER AT WEST PARK

The Center at West Park is a community performing arts center based in the historic West Park Presbyterian Church, a New York City landmark. We present engaging and boundary-pushing early-career and established artists through our artist residency programs, provide affordable rental space for artists to develop their work, and steward the restoration of our historic home’s landmark exterior. The Center is a secular, 501(c)3 not-for-profit organization.

This program is made possible by the generous support of audience members like you. To make a donation to support future residencies, go to centeratwestpark.org/donate.

Staff

Natasha Katerinopoulos, Managing Director
Zachary Tomlinson, Artistic Director
Dane Jerabek, Marketing & Box Office Manager
Richard Pimentel, Fascilities Manager
David Shocket, Consulting Technical Director
Gary Eisenkraft, CPA, Accountant
Mercedes Marrero-Alvarado, Porter
Dion Thompson, Porter

OBJECT MOVEMENT CURATORS

Maiko Kikuchi
Rowan Magee
Marcella Murray
Justin Perkins

FALL 2022 GUEST CURATORS

Christina Franklin
Melanie Greene
Trevor Weston

Board of directors

Marian M. Warden, President
Marsha Flowers, Vice President
Theodore S. Berger, Treasurer
Beryl Abrams, Secretary
Robert L. Brashear
Jennifer Rogers Carlock
Don Frantz
Derrick McQueen
Mitchell Schamroth
Susan E. Sullivan