Landscape with Figures

Contemporary Arts Center, New Orleans
The Watermill Center, Long Island, New York / 2021

Landscape With Figures is a live performance by Andrew Ondrejcak in collaboration with 4 short story writers, 20 performers from the host city of New Orleans, and fashion artisans from Mali, Afghanistan, Burkina Faso and Haiti, though the United Nations’ Ethical Fashion Initiative.

Visually and thematically, Landscape with Figures is a contemporary iteration of Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s genre paintings, a 17th century style in which artists turned their gaze away from the aristocracy and royalty of “history painting” and, instead, looked closely at the peoples that populate villages, at simple actions, at communities.

Landscape With Figures focuses on relationships between the lives of the unrelated. Despite having different stories and diverse aesthetics, a network of unrelated figures create a portrait of the interconnectivity of all humans, with each individual both the center of the world and part of something they cannot comprehend.

Directed by Andrew Ondrejcak
Co-Directed by Katherine Helen Fisher, Kiyoko McRae, Ryan David O’Byrne
Lighting Design by Scott Bolman
Composer Nathan Parker Smith
Stage Manager Kit Sternberger
Assistant Stage Manager Joey Vreeland
Costumes by (Design Assistants) Ellen Bull, Joshua Smith, Hannah Lax, Blythe Craft, Abby Wetsman, (Stitchers) Kaci Thomassi, Erin Routh, Michelle O’Reagan

Performed by:
Enrique Abada
Katie Alligood
Sophie Arnold
Tharrison Boykin
Chanice Diantè
Gregory Dorado
Katherine Helen Fisher
Meg Harper
Ryuta Iashita
Kiyoko McCrae
Leah Oby
Ryan David O’Byrne
Andrew Ondrejcak
Denice Ondrejcak
Cecelia Tapplette-Pedescleaux
Cheka Bahiya Pedescleaux
Diana E.H. Shortes
Nathan Parker Smith
Mahalia Abèo Tibbs