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SFMOMA- Halloween! 11 a.m. + 2:30 p.m., Floor 4, White Box | Lysistrata performance by Facing West Shadows at SFMOMA on SFMOMAween, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026. Free with museum admission!
SFMOMA- Halloween! 11 a.m. + 2:30 p.m., Floor 4, White Box | Lysistrata performance by Facing West Shadows at SFMOMA on SFMOMAween, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026. Free with museum admission!
Enjoy a performance of Lysistrata with handmade animation, puppets, live music, and cast shadows. This reimagining of Aristophanes’ tragi-comedy explores themes of collective resistance and the pursuit of peace. https://www.sfmoma.org/event/sfmomaween/
Facing West Shadows: Lysistrata reimagines Aristophanes’ ancient tragi-comedy, reflecting on collective resistance, reconciliation, and the pursuit of peace amid cycles of war. The work follows a group of women who end the decades-long Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, forging peace between warring factions. Originally exhibited as a six-channel, 40-foot audiovisual installation and now performed as an expanded cinema work with live shadow puppets, it was created by Yawen Chien and Lydia Greer of Facing West Shadows using handmade animation, puppets, and cast shadows at MeMeraki in Cyprus. Themes include weaving and spinning, everyday domestic items and rituals, gender and power in dance, Greek theatre masks and artwork, Karagiozis shadow puppetry, and looping images, visual and auditory echoes, euphemisms, and symbols of protest and resistance. Performed as expanded animation with shadow masks and shadow puppets with live music by Désirée Sturrock; shadows performed by Ya Wen Chien, Jessica Nguyen, and Lydia Greer. https://www.facingwestshadows.com/news
SFMOMA- Halloween! 11 a.m. + 2:30 p.m., Floor 4, White Box | Lysistrata performance by Facing West Shadows at SFMOMA on SFMOMAween, Saturday, Oct. 31, 2026. Free with museum admission!
Enjoy a performance of Lysistrata with handmade animation, puppets, live music, and cast shadows. This reimagining of Aristophanes’ tragi-comedy explores themes of collective resistance and the pursuit of peace. https://www.sfmoma.org/event/sfmomaween/
Facing West Shadows: Lysistrata reimagines Aristophanes’ ancient tragi-comedy, reflecting on collective resistance, reconciliation, and the pursuit of peace amid cycles of war. The work follows a group of women who end the decades-long Peloponnesian War between Athens and Sparta, forging peace between warring factions. Originally exhibited as a six-channel, 40-foot audiovisual installation and now performed as an expanded cinema work with live shadow puppets, it was created by Yawen Chien and Lydia Greer of Facing West Shadows using handmade animation, puppets, and cast shadows at MeMeraki in Cyprus. Themes include weaving and spinning, everyday domestic items and rituals, gender and power in dance, Greek theatre masks and artwork, Karagiozis shadow puppetry, and looping images, visual and auditory echoes, euphemisms, and symbols of protest and resistance. Performed as expanded animation with shadow masks and shadow puppets with live music by Désirée Sturrock; shadows performed by Ya Wen Chien, Jessica Nguyen, and Lydia Greer. https://www.facingwestshadows.com/news
Sat, May 11 | Clarion Performing Arts Center In Praise of Shadows: Lydia Greer with Facing West Shadows
Facing West Shadows is an experimental shadow theater collective.Sat, May 11 | Clarion Performing Arts Center In Praise of Shadows: Lydia Greer with Facing West Shadows
Time & Location
Facing West Shadows is an experimental shadow theater collective.Sat, May 11 | Clarion Performing Arts Center In Praise of Shadows: Lydia Greer with Facing West Shadows
Time & Location
May 11, 2024, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM
Clarion Performing Arts Center, 2 Waverly Pl, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA
Clarion Performing Arts Center, 2 Waverly Pl, San Francisco, CA 94108, USA
About the Event
Facing West Shadows (principal members: Lydia Greer (artistic director) and Caryl Kientz (theatrical director) is a collective of artists, puppeteers, filmmakers and musicians hybridizing art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art that is sustainable in the current gold rush climate of the Bay Area. FWS combines analog shadow theatre with original animation, video projection of found footage and sometimes Opera performed live. Expanding into film, theatre and installation, Facing West Shadows depicts stories re-imagined with unique visual storytelling to create surprising experiences for the audience by seamlessly combining old and new technologies and art forms.
Facing West Shadows Artistic Director and Interdisciplinary artist Lydia Greer will present short films exploring shadows in theatre, cinematic installation, sculpture, film/video, expanded cinema performance and animation, and her work with her collective, Facing West Shadows.
Facing West Shadows has been commissioned by The Exploratorium, The Institute for Advanced Uncertainty, Shapeshifter’s Cinema, Berkeley Public Library, Radar Productions, Other Cinema, Kala Art Institute and The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art among others.
Facing West Shadows Artistic Director and Interdisciplinary artist Lydia Greer will present short films exploring shadows in theatre, cinematic installation, sculpture, film/video, expanded cinema performance and animation, and her work with her collective, Facing West Shadows.
Facing West Shadows has been commissioned by The Exploratorium, The Institute for Advanced Uncertainty, Shapeshifter’s Cinema, Berkeley Public Library, Radar Productions, Other Cinema, Kala Art Institute and The San Jose Institute of Contemporary Art among others.
Facing West Shadows at The ICA SJ-Institute of Contemporary Art, San José
Facing West Shadows: The Endless End (April 2022-Aug 2022)
Facing West Shadows: The Endless End is a cinematic, sculptural installation created by Facing West Shadows at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José. Facing West Shadows: The Endless End illuminates the perpetuation of extinction and survival; the disrupted life cycles of native plants and animals, aquatic systems, and fire ecologies as affected by anthropogenic climate change. The viewer’s attention is guided through projected moving images, hand-made animation, and cast shadows with a multi-dimensional soundscape. Collapsing and expanding time, species will live and die over the span of an hour of looping, overlapping, multichannel and multidirectional projection. In a sculptural environment, our role as animals within a system and as the planet’s apex predator is illuminated.
As in proto-cinematic cave paintings and ancient shadow theatre storytelling traditions, Facing West Shadows seeks to understand non-human species and our relationships with them. Among their inspirations are the Bay Area’s own precarious and diverse ecologies and Eadweard Muybridge’s electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements. By weaving multiple moving images of Bay Area ecologies, mycorrhizal networks, fire, and water, Facing West Shadows: The Endless End takes the viewer on a time-based and immersive journey through cycles of ecological and species extinction and sometimes, survival.
About Facing West Shadows
Facing West Shadows (principal members: Lydia Greer (artistic director) and Caryl Kientz (theatrical director) in collaboration with artist Ya Wen Chien is a collective of artists, puppeteers, filmmakers, and musicians hybridizing art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art that is sustainable in the current gold rush climate of the Bay Area. Facing West Shadows combines analog shadow theatre with original animation, video projection of found footage, and sometimes Opera performed live. Expanding into film, theatre, and installation, Facing West Shadows depicts stories re-imagined with unique visual storytelling to create surprising experiences for the audience by seamlessly combining old and new technologies and art forms.
Facing West Shadows: The Endless End (April 2022-Aug 2022)
Facing West Shadows: The Endless End is a cinematic, sculptural installation created by Facing West Shadows at the Institute of Contemporary Art San José. Facing West Shadows: The Endless End illuminates the perpetuation of extinction and survival; the disrupted life cycles of native plants and animals, aquatic systems, and fire ecologies as affected by anthropogenic climate change. The viewer’s attention is guided through projected moving images, hand-made animation, and cast shadows with a multi-dimensional soundscape. Collapsing and expanding time, species will live and die over the span of an hour of looping, overlapping, multichannel and multidirectional projection. In a sculptural environment, our role as animals within a system and as the planet’s apex predator is illuminated.
As in proto-cinematic cave paintings and ancient shadow theatre storytelling traditions, Facing West Shadows seeks to understand non-human species and our relationships with them. Among their inspirations are the Bay Area’s own precarious and diverse ecologies and Eadweard Muybridge’s electro-photographic investigation of consecutive phases of animal movements. By weaving multiple moving images of Bay Area ecologies, mycorrhizal networks, fire, and water, Facing West Shadows: The Endless End takes the viewer on a time-based and immersive journey through cycles of ecological and species extinction and sometimes, survival.
About Facing West Shadows
Facing West Shadows (principal members: Lydia Greer (artistic director) and Caryl Kientz (theatrical director) in collaboration with artist Ya Wen Chien is a collective of artists, puppeteers, filmmakers, and musicians hybridizing art forms to create magical acts of rebellion as experimental art that is sustainable in the current gold rush climate of the Bay Area. Facing West Shadows combines analog shadow theatre with original animation, video projection of found footage, and sometimes Opera performed live. Expanding into film, theatre, and installation, Facing West Shadows depicts stories re-imagined with unique visual storytelling to create surprising experiences for the audience by seamlessly combining old and new technologies and art forms.
