January 18 - 30, 2022
THE TIPPING POINT — what would it take for YOU to leave home?
Carrick 25
an artistic collaboration with the renowned international organization, DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS/ Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) a timely, multi-disciplinary, intimate, audience-immersive production that taps the growing global refugee experience in an attempt to bring pressing issues closer to home — personalizing the headlines — to offer up a tangible “WHAT IF” experience.
concept & choreography beth corning
co-director gab cody
set design stephanie mayer-staley
projection design joe spinogatti
lighting design iain court
Days from opening in March 2020, corningworks had to shut down due to COVID. The most pivotal work of Corning’s 40-year career, became, due to the pandemic, what co-director Gab Cody noted was “the most amazing workshopping opportunity”.
Corning & her development team now have the rare opportunity to further develop, & contextualize this groundbreaking work, making an already vital production even more timely, poignant, & provocative.
Given the United States’ past year of experiencing tangible social distancing, civil unrest, unprecedented politics, and loss of lives, the new version resonates beyond its initial conceptual prompt of --
“WHAT IF”
— to --
“WHAT NOW?”
Borne from Corning’s intensive 3-year mentorship with a Kurdish refugee family from Syria, combined with her DEEP concern for the future of our country, and the world in general, she has created this complex, interdisciplinary work in an artistic collaboration with the renowned, international humanitarian medical organization, Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières.
Corning sites this work as “potentially one of the most layered and comprehensive works I’ve created in my 40-year career, a way to address my fears for the future … a response to the numbness from media over saturation, climate change, the effects of societal polarization, political fall out . . . that we are living out the ‘boiling frog fable’ — if a frog is put in tepid water which is then brought to a boil slowly, it will not perceive the danger and will be cooked to death.” She keeps asking herself, “What will it take to take action?”
THE TIPPING POINT, with input from DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS,
re-imagines their critically acclaimed touring exhibition, FORCED FROM HOME, intertwining it with movement, a theatrical audience-immersive designed experience, provocative projections, led by a diverse cast of 12 local professional dancer/actors, and an international group of re-settled refugees. Corning has gathered some of Pittsburgh’s top designers and directors to create this layered work, including set designer Stephanie Mayer-Staley, immersive director Gab Cody, projection designer Joe Spinogatti, along with Corningworks long-time lighting designer, Iain Court.
A visceral, sensory, provocative, immersive, shared experience that uplifts human consciousness, an emotional response; a wake-up call to the numbing onslaught of changes in the world around us.
Due to COVID precautions we are trimming the size of our audience by 50% Expanding our performance schedule from 10 to 12 performances.
Created for intimate groups of 10 per time slot (with two time slots per evening), the work plays throughout the two floors of 25 CARRICK, a new & unique Center for the Arts (located at the former Birmingham United Church of Christ in Pittsburgh’s South Hilltop community of Carrick).
THE TIPPING POINT ... is made possible in part with support from: Allegheny Regional Asset District (ARAD), two Anonymous Donors, The Benter Foundation, CORNINGWORKS Board of Directors, The Fine Foundation, The Heinz Endowments, Individual Donors, Opportunity Fund, The Pittsburgh Foundation, PA Council on the Arts, PNC Charitable Trust, Port Authority of Allegheny County, WYEP & WESA