Cornelius
MASTERWORK
MAR 22-25, THU-SUN
MASTERWORK is the most important performance of our generation and time, created and directed by one of the most important performers/artists of our generation and time — Cornelius. With insightful vision and razor-sharp skill, Cornelius moulds his cast into a form that can only be described as “godlike”. Undercutting, subtextual, subtle and enormous, MASTERWORK is aptly named. This piece tells the audience “You are the audience. You will sit. You will be silent. And you will watch. You will know that you are the audience. We will impress you, and we will change you, and we will amaze you, and we will give you everything you ever wanted for 30 minutes.” Cornelius takes 12 of San Francisco’s most talented performers, known as “the disciples”, and sets them in images at once heartbreaking, profane and unimaginable. MASTERWORK not only addresses the macro performance but also the micro with fine pointed execution of physical movement through and within space. While specific issues of power and placement center and ground the piece, there also unfolds a beautiful maelstrom of ancient Greek-like pathos and popcultural decontextualization. MASTERWORK leaves us feeling like nothing can happen because everything already has.
Joining Cornelius (VivvyAnne ForeverMORE!) on the path to fame and fortune are the (in)famous personalities Laura Arrington, Harold Burns, Rachael Dichter, Kolmel WithLove, Elijah Minnelli, Trixxie Carr, Tessa Wills, and Dia Dear. The glamour and the gore will be captured by video paparazzo John Foster Cartwright.
Cornelius (AKA VivvyAnne ForeverMORE)
As student of theater and performance for 25 years, Cornelius has specialized in physical theater, improvisation and site specific performance. 6 years ago he fled the proscenium stage and traditional venues and refocused his energies on go-go performance installations and the populace stages of the nightlife. 2 years ago he created drag persona VivvyAnne ForeverMORE! and since has performed on stages and festivals in San Francisco, L.A. New York, and London, and in the deYoung, the New Museum (NYC) and Yerba Buena Center for the arts. In 2008 Cornelius founded the performance group OX of which he is the artistic director.
Cornelius also produces the WORK MORE! series, a twice a year drag production featuring nightlife performers presented in a “real” theater context, where their processes are exposed, and their boundaries pushed. As a writer his work has been featured as part of the Radar Reading series alongside San Francisco’s Poet Laureate.
OX
OX, founded in 2008, Cornelius, explores the tension between artifice and authenticity through non-traditional physical theater, improvisation and site specific performance. OX self-produces large-cast live theater events, participates in large group shows and co-curates evening-length performances using traditional queer modalities of theatrics such as drag, nightlife entertainment and go-go performance as a point of departure.
OX is a loose knit group of fiercely committed, magically present and challengingly individual solo performers who come together to make whole works greater than the sum of their individualities under the creative direction of Cornelius.