Philadelphia Live Arts announces the launch of Scratch Night as part of the organization’s year-round programming at the Live Arts Brewery (LAB). Scratch Night is a monthly salon designed to foster the social, interactive, and accessible qualities of art-making while investing in artists creating new works of dance, theater, or cross-genre performance. Funding from the Knight Foundation will underwrite the first two seasons of the program running October through May annually.
Scratch Night will serve the performance community in several ways. First, the curatorial staff at Live Arts will have the opportunity to identify new artists and new works of strong potential. Second, audiences are invited into the artistic process and will learn more about the creative efforts of artists and their work. Finally, artists will have the opportunity to test new material, share their ideas at various stages of the developmental process and learn more about their work through engaged audience interaction.
The new series is derived from its predecessor, the Live Arts 2nd Thursday Series. Scratch Night builds upon the core concept that candid audience feedback offers artists valuable insight as they work to develop new performance-based work. The series will play a key role for artists who are testing, experimenting and building out a new idea. Artists will show brief segments of newly developed material and audiences will offer feedback directly through a moderated talk-back, as well as anonymously by sharing their thoughts via a survey.
At the close of the season in May, nine Scratch artists will be asked to submit proposals for the LAB Fellowship program, from which one candidate will be selected by Live Arts Programming staff. Knight Foundation support will underwrite two LAB Fellows over the course of the next two seasons.
Upcoming Scratch Nights
All Scratch Nights will be held at the Live Arts Studio, 919 North 5th St., Philadelphia, PA 19123.Admission is free, however advance reservations are encouraged by RSVPing online or calling 215-413-9006.
The most current artist lineup for the Scratch Night series can be viewed at the link above.
Thursday, January 12 at 7pm
Thursday, February 9 at 7pm
Thursday, March 8 at 7pm
Thursday, April 12 at 7pm
Thursday, May 10 at 7pm
About the Live Arts Brewery
The Live Arts Festival launched the Live Arts Brewery in 2009, further expanding and enhancing the Festival’s mission to support the development of new work by selected local artists, while simultaneously providing the organization with a year-round presence in the cultural landscape of Philadelphia. The initiative grew out of an emerging need in Philadelphia’s artist community for dedicated resources supporting the research and development of new live performance work. The LAB is currently in its second year of a two-year pilot program funded in part by a multi-year grant from the Kresge Foundation. Under the leadership of Director Craig Peterson, the LAB facilitates multiple programmatic initiatives designed to meet the needs of working artists.
Today, the Live Arts Brewery supports artistic research, experimentation, and exploration of contemporary theater, dance and cross-genre live performance work. In addition to the newly established LAB Test series, the LAB will continue to offer the Festival’s LAB Fellowship program and thriving Second Thursdays Series. The LAB also regularly offers workshops and master classes on choreography, playwriting, dance, theater, set construction and more, while functioning as a community gathering spot for artists, promoting discussions and artist exchange.