Camposition | Projects

1000 Homosexuals

(WHY DOES GOD HATE HOMOSEXUALS? see video for answer.)
a new comedy by Michael Yawney

Presented by Camposition and co-commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center of the Performing Arts of Miami Dade County.

1000 Homosexuals was made possible through grants and private philanthropy namely from theCity of Miami Beach, Miami Beach Arts Council and the Miami-Dade County Cultural Affairs Council, Mayor and the Board of County Commissioners and the Dade Community Foundation GLBT Community Fund, Greater Miami’s permanent endowment made possible by generous donors since 1967. 1,000 Homosexuals was originally commissioned by the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts of Miami Dade County.

World Premier: November 20, 2008

Text: Michael Yawney
Direction: Sheldon Decklebaum
Choreography & Sound Design: Octavio Campos
Set: Jesse Dreikosen
Costumes: Adam Best
Lighting: Eric Fliss
Styling: Queen Cabaret
Hair: Sergio Gonzalez
Stage Management: Michelle Cote
Assitant Stage Manager: Mike Leon
Technical Director: Tomas Fonseca
Dramaturgy: Michael Yawney

Performance: Merry Jo Cortada as Anita Bryant
Matthew Chapman, Matthew Glass, Kristoff Skalet, Matt Mur, Ralph de la Portilla, Matthew Glass and Bill Spring.

1,000 Homosexuals is a new comedy that recounts the story of Anita Bryant's 1977 crusade against gay civil rights in Miami-Dade county. The play is a documentary/fantasy/comedy presenting Anita just the way she would want: as a musical Joan of Arc battling a powerful and perverse gay mafia. Due to Anita’s concern for her family, she resists taking a stand against a county-wide gay rights ordinance. After she heeds God’s call to take heroic action, Anita pays a heavy price for her stand. The play bends documentary sources such as government records, newspaper stories and underground gay manifestos into a twisted carnival of 70s-style sex and faith.

In the late 1970s, then-County Commissioner Ruth Shack introduced a Human Rights Ordinance including sexual orientation protection. After the ordinance’s adoption, Anita Bryant—former beauty queen, aspiring singer and spokeswoman for the Florida Citrus Commission—led the highly publicized “Save Our Children” campaign against it. As a result, her infamy soared. Nearly 6 months after the ordinance was passed, Bryant succeeded in repealing it.

In 1998, the controversial human rights debate was temporarily laid to rest with the adoption of a second Human Rights Ordinance. Again, the ordinance was challenged—this time by the Christian Coalition in 2002. With the same fervor that Bryant campaigned against gay rights in 1977, SAVE Dade successfully spearheaded the “No to Discrimination” campaign in 2002 and the ordinance was not repealed this time.

The world premiere of 1,000 Homosexuals is timely—immediately following a referendum to place the so-called Marriage Protection Amendment in the State of Florida constitution which would completely ban same-sex marriages in Florida. The 1,000 Homosexuals campaign and production serve to remind us that the battle for GLBT rights is not over. Anita Bryant fueled the gay rights movement that needs to continue to brew fervor today.

The BugChasers

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dancetheater by Octavio Campos
inspired by the Slap and Tickle Show, Susan Sontag and www.bareback.com.

World Premier: October 25, 2007 - Arsht Center of the Performing Arts - Studio Theater
Future Performances: October 26 & 27, 2007

VIDEO PREVIEW

Presented and co-commissioned by Miami Dade College, The Center for Cultural Collaborations International,Arsht Center of the Performing Arts, and Camposition.

Choreography: Octavio Campos
Texts: Matt Glass
Costumes: Diana Lozano
Video: Bec Stupak
Music: Zeena Parkins, Pink Floyd, a.o...
Dramaturgy: Michael Yawney

Performance: Natasha Tsakos, Diana Lozano, Heather Maloney, Ron Headrick,
Octavio Campos, Matt Glass & Joshua Nardi

Sex is different now. There are new questions. And lies.

The Bugchasers is an evening-length performance that explores the nature
of desire in a marginalized world where new forms of communication and a
fraught sexual epidemiology have altered the experience of intimacy.
Bugchasers are young men who compulsively seek to become HIV positive,
eroticizing risk in a game of viral Russian roulette where the shared bond of a
communicable disease substitutes for love.

The Bugchasers incorporates theater, dance, music and video to ask
whether the human need for belonging and contact has led to a new eroticism
or become a monstrous force for self-annihilation.
It is a story of accelerated love in our time.

Who is that person on the other side of the mattress? How can you be sure?

WARNING: This performance is not recommended for a first date.

Kitchen Monkey

Choreographic Theater by Octavio Campos

Premier - March 28, 2007
Venue: Carnival Center for the Performing Arts - Studio Theater (Miami)
Performance Length: 34 minutes

Performers: Rudi Goblen, Teresa Barcelo, Anthony Cano & Octavio Campos, a.o....

In Kitchen Monkey, Octavio Campos plunges the audience into the belly of the beast -- literally. Several dancers jump, moan, and make a monkey ruckus in the dark spaces above and around the stage, creating a surround-sound satire to Campos' darkly deviant drama. After a brief slideshow and faux academic lecture on the link between homo sapiens and their not-so-distant cousins, the monkeys, the curtains open to reveal Rudi Goblen and Teresa Barcelo in a domestic drama that quickly moves from dismal to disturbing. Think Blue Velvet rewired with electronica and hip-hop.

Partially inspired by his work with women in prisons, Campos has choreographed vertical, restrictive movements for Barcelo. She must answer to Goblen's bullhorn-wielding beck and call with arms glued to her side and head down. The exasperation, humiliation and, finally, rage that Barcelo is able to render from Campos' tightly gestural vocabulary speak volumes."
The Miami Herald - 3/2007

Production Miami Light Project, Carnival Center of the Performing Arts and
the New World School of the Arts and Camposition.

Developmentus Interruptus

a site specific performance pilgrimage

Solo Performance by Octavo Campos

Premier September 24, 2006

This duet for a dancer and a bulldozer foreshadows the melding of man and machine and public spectacle. The dancer yearns to establish a relationship with the bulldozer, but the love affair between man and machine is ultimately interrupted. Set on one of Miamiďż˝s actual construction sites, the dance represents the longing for the life of luxury promised by high end condominium developments, but denied to most residents of Miami. The impossibility of living in these luxury condos is particularly poignant for artists, since art has been used as the vehicle to generate interest in these developments, but artists have been increasingly marginalized.

Luna del Pinguino

Dancetheater conceptualized and performed by
Octavio Campos

Premier: Sept. 10, 2004, Florida International University - VH 100

Venues: Latino New Works Festival - Highways Performance (Los Angeles, CA), Florida Dance Festival (Miami Beach), PS 742 (Little Havana), City Center Studio (New York City), National Performance Network Showcase (Miami Beach), Movimiento de Arte y Cultura Latino Americana (San Jose)

Performance Length: 70 minutes

Critically acclaimed as "constantly surprising, interactive and gently transgressive"Miami New Times, luna del pinguino presents an unsettling reality of dictators, religious fanatics and war through the world of a penguin. In a collage-style performance, it takes the audience through a lyrical journey making pit stops at the concentration camps of Auschwitz, the refugee camps of the West Bank and the trials of Timothy McVeigh.

Blue LIVE

Dancetheater accompaniment by Octavio Campos

If the doors of perception were cleansed then everything would be seen as it is.

Premier: Dec. 1, 2005, Miami Beach Cinemateque.

Venues: Miami International Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (Miami Beach), Cinema Paradiso (Ft. Lauderdale), Florida International University (Miami), The Loft (Wynwood), Back Door Bamby (Miami Beach), Bed Art (Miami Beach). Long Island Gay & Lesbian Film Festival (New York),
Diverse Works (Houston)

Performance Length; 76 minutes

Blue LIVE is a dancetheater experiment in reaction to the final film of Derek Jarman, Blue (1993). The film poignantly records Jarmanďż˝s meditations on losing his sight and his life to AIDS. Testing the boundaries of what cinema dares to do, Jarman shows the audience only a wavering screen of blue for the entirety of the 76 minute film. Sometimes illustrating the filmďż˝s audio track and sometimes contradicting it, Camposďż˝ visual accompaniment translates Jarmanďż˝s journal entries, aphorisms, and miniature narratives into physical poetry.

The Insane Performance Opportunity

A Hybrid Art Project
conceptualized by Octavio Campos, Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez and Michelle Weinberg

Premiere: Dec. 3, 2004, Scope/Miami Beach, Townhouse Hotel
Venues: Miami Light Project Here & Now Festival (Miami), Experimental 8 (Little Havanna), Florida Dance Festival (Miami), $ellout Festival / Brick Theater (Brooklyn, NY), Scope/Hamptons (NY), 801 Projects (Miami).

Using a corporate structure, IPO: THE INSANE PERFORMANCE OPPORTUNITY, explores the business of creation through an investigation of process, collaboration and product. In collabration with film/video artist Dinorah de Jesus Rodriguez and visual artist Michelle Weinberg, IPO offers the spectator an eccentric and profound look at the creative and administrative forces shaping the arts in the 21st century.

For more information go to IPO-WORLDWIDE.COM

IPO: The Scan Artist

Dosinda

Choreographic theater by Octavio Campos

Premier: June 20, 2003 , Colony Theater (Miami Beach)
Venues: PS 742 (Miami), Florida Dance Festival (Miami Beach),
Performance Length: 20 minutes

Performers: Lela Lombardo & Octavio Campos

A nostalgic duet between a Cuban grandmother, her grandson,
a tombstone, cuban coffee and a chicken soup with lime. This dancetheater poem works with delicate memory and spoken word culminating in a real dialogue between truth, trust and a cuban mop. Who is she? She's the great, great, great, great, great, great, great Grandmother of LOVE.