The Play
An informal showing
May 8, 7:30pm
Attack Theatre
212 45th St, Pittsburgh
$15 Suggested Donation
Seating is limited. We suggest arriving early!
The Play is a dance-theater work that represents the newest evolution of Jeanine Durning’s “nonstopping” practice, which demands continuous, unscripted speaking and moving, in order to resist absolutes and uplift the present. Performed by Miguel Castillo, Sarah Konner, and Erin Kouwe, The Play grapples with desire, grief, urgency, and purpose in a volatile world. Set in a room where everyday objects are constantly organized, reorganized, and disordered, three performers frame and reframe recurring scenes that blur the lines between memory, present reality, and future possibility. The result resembles an absurdist dance-play unfolding in a sparse environment, but with very high stakes. Each moment is a collective act of navigation through disorder. The work plays with time, place, and communication, creating temporary meanings in unpredictable circumstances. It explores how to maintain agency in a world moving too quickly, how to persist in the midst of dismantling systems, and how to cultivate new forms of togetherness amidst uncertainty.
Jeanine Durning
is a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow and Alpert Award-winning choreographer and performer whose work is described by The New Yorker as having “the potential for philosophical revelation and theatrical disaster.” Her choreography, performance, practice-based research, teaching, and mentoring all investigates the mobilizing and mutable force of bodies and grappling with their conditions in time, space, and place. Since 1998, she has created over 30 works that blur artistic and aesthetic boundaries, and since 2010, her nonstopping practice has formed the core of her ongoing research. Her performances and her commissions for other artists and companies have been seen at The Chocolate Factory, NYU Skirball, The Brooklyn Academy of Music, Sadlers Wells, Seoul Dance Center, The National Palace of Culture in Sofia, Toronto Dance Theatre, among others.
Since 2005, Durning has worked extensively with choreographer Deborah Hay as a performer, consultant, choreographic assistant, and coach. She has also performed for choreographers including David Dorfman, Lance Gries, Chris Yon, Zvi Gotheiner, Martha Clarke, Richard Siegal, and Bebe Miller. Durning teaches frequently in universities and dance centers in the U.S. and Europe.
Miguel Castillo
is a Venezuelan movement artist who uses cross-disciplinary collaborations to explore diasporic imagination. Named among Dance Magazine's 2024 "25 to Watch," he performs in works by Faye Driscoll, Durning, and others. Castillo holds an MFA in Dance from Smith College.
Sarah Konner
is a dance artist and improviser. She has performed for artists such as Durning, Sara Shelton Mann, Jenna Riegel and Heidi Hendersonn, and creates her own dance-theater work that has been seen at Danspace, Judson Church, and beyond. Konner is Associate Professor of Dance at Boston Conservatory and holds an MFA in Dance from Smith College.
Erin Kouwe
is a dance artist whose work explores memory, identity, and disorientation. Kouwe has performed with New Dialect and Visceral Dance Chicago and is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Slippery Rock University. She holds an M.F.A. in Dance from Smith College.