The Wandering

a story in time and space

The Wandering is an immersive, interactive pseudo-performance to be experienced by one person at a time. Under the leadership of Executive Artistic Director Jeremy Paul, a creative team of dancers, painters, filmmakers, installation artists, writers, musicians, performers, and more will construct a gallery of dream-spaces that tell the story of a group of strangers brought together under mysterious circumstances.

In the aftermath of a catastrophic accident, the survivors find themselves sharing the same dream, discovering new ways of expressing and communicating with each other in ways they cannot in the waking world. Part art gallery, part theme park ride or haunted house, The Wandering explores themes of connection/disconnection, individualism vs. collectivism, resilience, mourning, and use of artistic metaphor to reframe our lives.

The Wandering is limited to only one audience member at a time (or two if they are from the same household) who will be required to wear a mask during the experience. All art will be installations or otherwise made remotely, but there will be live elements and environmental changes as the audience moves through the space and experiences the story.

Thursday October 8- Sunday November 1, 2020

Mondays
5:30pm | 7:00pm | 8:30pm

Thursday-Fridays
5:30pm | 7:00pm | 8:30pm

Saturdays
10:00am | 11:30am | 1:00pm | 2:30pm | 4:00pm | 5:30pm | 7:00pm | 8:30pm

Sundays
10:00am | 11:30am | 1:00pm | 2:30pm | 4:00pm | 5:30pm | 7:00pm

Deviser
Jeremy Paul

Designers/Technical Staff
Katherine Nash - Marissa Green

Writers
Alexa Mal - Amy Schwabauer - Jasmine A. Golphin - Jeremy Paul - Meredith L. King - Robin E. Steele

Narrators
Alexa Mal - Amy Schwabauer - Beau Reinker - CasualBlerdist - Julia Sosa

Art in order of discovery

Before The Accident
Marissa Green & Meredith L. King

The Night Room
Emily Liptow - Faye Hargate - Jasmine Golphin - Kate Atherton - Kayli Salzano - Sequoia Bostick & Martinique Mims
Music by Mina Aevum

One Week Later
Cassandra Harner, Janine Nicole Jones & Shatara Jordan - Grace Wen - Lúnatic - Suhaylah Hamzah - Susie Underwood - Varsha Vydyula
Music by Devin Hinzo & Molly Andrews-Hinders

The Dream Party
Christine Lewis - Connie Fu - Elaine Hullihen & Rachel Torowski
Music/Video Installation by Brianna Janae, Devin Hinzo, Naomi Columna & Silk Allen

Artist Bios

Alexa Mal is a poet and writer living in Cleveland. Their work is concerned with the body, the domestic, rituals and missed connections, among other things.

Amy Schwabauer is a Cleveland actor, playwright. In 2017, she was named Cleveland’s Best Actress by ‘Cleveland Scene Magazine’ for her performance in her one-woman show, “This is Not About my Dead Dog”. She performed “This is Not About my Dead Dog” again at the BorderLight International Theatre and Fringe Festival 2019. Other recent work includes playing Virgil/Satan in MCA’s production of “The Inferno”, she also toured "The Events of the Warren County Fair as Observed by a Young Astronaut", a toy theater adventure co-written and co-performed with Mike Geither.  Amy is a member of the Dobama Playwright’s Gym and The Midwives artist collective in Chicago. Currently, she is creating and performing in a children’s web-series for Lake Erie Ink “Playing with a Purpose” check it out at lakeerieink.org. Learn more about Amy at AmySchwabauer.com.  

Beau Reinker is a Cleveland based actor and theatre artist. You may have recently seen his work as Mantis Shrimp in Breakout Session at Cleveland Public Theatre. Other credits include ENDependence (Cleveland Public Theatre), The Man/Peter/Doctor in The Pride (convergence-continuum) and Officer in Br'er Cotton (Cleveland Public Theatre). Beau's many sound designs include Live Bodies For Sale; Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act; Thiz Girlz Lyfe; and The Pride. Directing credits include We Think Differently, Contradictionary Lies, and Collaborator. Beau has also performed on stage with Cleveland Public Theatre, convergence-continuum, Theater Ninjas, Playwrights Local, Cesear's Forum, Cleveland Shakespeare Festival, Ensemble Theatre, and the Ohio Shakespeare Festival.

Brianna Janae is a Writer and Poet  currently residing in Cleveland, OH. Her writing has been featured in The Mighty, Lesbian Connection and other online publications. She is the Culture Curator and Blogger for Thottie Brand (@thoettiebrand on IG) She focuses specifically on activism, mental health, and advocating for marginalized communities.

Cassandra Harner is an illustrator, performer, and video artist in Cleveland. Her work centers queer identity, pop culture, body positivity, and a chronically low budget. To see cracks in the facade is to relate to the human within the fantasy, to see the walls containing a flawed world. Discovering video art in 2012 was a turning point in her art career that uncovered a form of expression built on experimentation and discovery through the process of making video with others, and performing herself. Through collaboration, she finds patterns in the footage, and makes methodical cuts to create relationships and piece together a narrative the viewer can uncover, a bit at a time, after watching over again.

Christine Lewis is an interdisciplinary artist and musician based in Northeast Ohio. The artist has been involved with Maelstrom since her performance work, "3 Cauldrons" in May 2019's ShortForm. Since then, Christine has been an active artist with MCA and created and collaborated on installations, audio works, movement pieces, costuming, painting, performance and sculpture. In December 2019, Christine appeared and performed as B0xed Wine M0m, her recent music project, at Maelstrom's Saturnalia event. 

Connie Fu is an American-born daughter of Chinese immigrants. She is a transdisciplinary artist working in textiles, performance, and research-based practice to reconfigure traces of her bicultural heritage as living environments. Her work has been exhibited at Maelstrom Collaborative Arts (Cleveland, OH), FiveMyles (Brooklyn, NY), and La MaMa Theatre (New York, NY). She is the Gallery and Community Outreach Director at Praxis Fiber Workshop, an artist-run community fiber studio and educational center. These days, she is learning how to ferment soy sauce.

CasualBlerdist is the ironic moniker chosen by performer and visual artist Courtney D. Love. She has performed in multiple pieces throughout the Cleveland area. Although acting has been CasualBlerdist’s primary medium, she found her love for painting when looking for ways to destress. Inspired by gaming, anime, and the simple humors of everyday life turned extra CasualBlerdist wants to turn the word “casual” on its head and aims to inspire other 9-5 owners to pursue their passions regardless of what society tells them. Who said you can’t be an artist with a full time job? Bills still exist while you’re following your dreams!

Devin Hinzo is a versatile oboist based in Northeast Ohio but performs across the country and beyond.  He has played with the Sarasota Orchestra in Florida, as part of the 2017 Fringe Festival in Philadelphia, and has given solo recitals in New York City and Paris, France. Devin studied at The New School in New York City and completed his Master’s at the Cleveland Institute of Music. As an arts leader, he has served as a panelist at SphinxConnect, a national conference focused on equitably diversifying classical music. Devin is the founder and artistic director of fp Creative, an organization that provides performance and creative producing opportunities for artists. In his free time he composes music and builds computer software.

Elaine Hullihen is an interdisciplinary artist attracted to the meaning created through movements, actions and process. Her most recent work explores presence, embodiment and systems of support. The scope of her practice is studio-based, collaborative, public, and educational as she is always looking to spark a creative curiosity as the fuel of life. In addition, her expanded practice includes teaching yoga- where she sculpts experiences into opportunities for connection to both one's self and community.

Emily Liptow is a dancer and performance artist based in Cleveland, OH . While her work is primarily performance based, she has been drawn to textiles since learning how to sew and crochet from her grandmother. Her work is rooted in presence, often interactive, and shaped by movement improvisation and the natural world. Her work has been presented at Cleveland Dance Festival, Ten Tiny Dances in Columbus, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, and Cleveland Public Theatre.

Faye Hargate is a Cleveland native who creates semi-autobiographical performance art, installation art, t(T)eatre based on her life experiences. Faye's work inspired by the Faeries and g/GODdess research. She works full time at Cleveland Public Theatre. She likes to play, move, sing, and craft. 

Formally, Grace Wen is a representative abstract artist: all her images start with a specific reference drawn from the natural world based on its compositional potential, or because of her psychological, intellectual, or philosophical attachment to it.  The idea is then stripped down to its essential core and surface through abstraction and connotations with the use of bright colors, strong values, and flattened, decorative spaces that recall the qualities of the Symbolist, Aesthetic, and Art Nouveau movements.  The resulting intensions will engage viewers in a meditative exercise and lead them towards their own conclusions about her art.  Although she has a personal interpretation, she shuns an official interpretation because her goal is not to create didactic discourse, but to encourage multifaceted, if even contradictory narratives of her images. Her work exists in a constant state of conjoined meanings, and becomes a symbol of the thread that connects the differing narratives.  It is unattached, though not forgotten, from her original intent.

Cleveland native, Janine Jones, is a multi faceted artist . She is classically trained musician and local community dancer that has performed with multiple local professional dance companies. She has traveled internationally under her stage name of Mahsitti as a Tribal Fusion Belly Dancer and has performed locally with multiple burlesque companies. Over the past year or so, she has been a repeat face in a few of Malestrom Collaborative Arts’ productions such as Rising Tide and appeared in multiple roles in the largely produced Inferno. Currently, outside of her day job, she is working in her home studio on a multiple dance projects featuring one other artist to premiere in the soon to near future.

Jasmine A. Golphin is a filmmaker, artist and producer with an intense obsession with the craft of storytelling. Professionally, she’s spent the last 10 years managing film education and community outreach programs for nonprofit organizations such as MyCom, the Cleveland International Film Festival, and SPACES.  Creatively, Jasmine's writing has been published in The Vindicator, HitRecord's Tiny Book of Tiny Stories, Shadow And Act and Alturus and her film work has been recognized by Octavia Spencer’s Short Film competition and the Short. Sweet. Film Fest. This year Jasmine joined Maelstrom Collaborative Arts as a cadre member and launched the abolitionist task force organization Black Spring CLE. Also, we’re in the middle of a pandemic?? How wild is that?

Jeremy Paul is the founder and Executive Artistic Director of Maelstrom Collaborative Arts since 2006. Primarily working in the field of devised theater, Jeremy has led the creation of the original productions Who We Used To Be, Don't Wander Off, Broken Codes, The Turing Machine, The Grand Celebration of the Celestial Mystery, TingleTangle, Code: Preludes, The Excavation, and Marble Cities. He is also the co-creator of the original works The Last Day (with the Maelstrom Cadre), NICK&JEREMY (with Nick Riley), Absence (with Michael Rau) and The Beetlebug and the Bad Worm (with Faye Hargate). Jeremy has also directed the world and regional premieres of many plays in Northeast Ohio, including Tall Skinny Cruel Cruel Boys, Stranded on Earth, Black Cat Lost, My Barking Dog, Inoculations and Anna Bella Eema. Jeremy graduated from Wesleyan University in Connecticut with dual majors in Theater and Film, and has post-graduate training with the Pig Iron Theatre Company, New World Performance Lab and the Celebration Barn International School for the Performing Arts. Jeremy is a recipient of CPAC Creative Workforce Fellowships in 2012 and 2016.

Julia Sosa/Lúnatic, is a pop music band formed in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, in 2010. Maic Corral (Guitar and Music Production) and Julia Rosa Sosa in songwriting and vocals. Currently, they have continued to work at the distance. Their lived experiences inspire their music and sounds. https://www.facebook.com/Lunaticmusica/

Kate Atherton is a comics artist, performer and part time librarian. She attended Rhode Island School of Design with a BFA in Illustration and since has worked as a set painter (for the Cleveland Playhouse and Talespinner Children's theatre), illustrator (Kringle's Inventionasium, Heights Arts, Edible Cleveland), comics/art workshop teacher (Lake Erie Ink, RISE at Near West Theatre), Props designer (Near West Theatre), performer, actor and stage manager. She creates lavish pen and ink paintings as well as pen and ink comics based on theater, literature and autobiographical comics based on her life. She is thrilled to get to exercise her installation and collaborative muscles working along side all these brilliant peers. Handles : www.kateatherton.com @nonsensesinger and @katescomicsdaily on Instagram

Katherine Nash is a Cleveland-based artist and performer, and a graduate of Indiana University with a BA in Theatre & Drama. Lighting Design credits include Maelstrom Collaborative Arts’ productions of Activate, Saturnalia, Inferno, Bricolage, Shortform, and FreeForm. Stage Management credits include: Station Hope 2019 (CPT), Saturnalia (Maelstrom), Pandemonium 2018 (CPT) and Bricolage (Maelstrom). Technical credits include: Sound Operator for Cleveland Dance Fest 2019 (The Movement Project). 

Kayli Salzano is a performance artist and sculptor currently residing in Cleveland, OH. Their work prods the tenderness that—sometimes literally— sugarcoats both involuntary and self-induced threats towards one’s bodily integrity. Often co-opting the aesthetics of celebrations, birthdays, rituals, and feasts, Salzano emphasizes the potential for radical hospitality to foster crucial and mutual intimacy. Salzano holds a BFA in Sculpture + Expanded Media from the Cleveland Institute of Art. Their work has been exhibited in Cleveland and Philadelphia, at venues including H Space, FORUM Artspace, Rooms to Let: CLE, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, and Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts.

Martinique Mims is a writer, organizer and spoken word artist having performed around Cleveland for over 10 years. Her past experiences have impressed upon her the importance of giving youth and local artist a voice. Martinique believes that education and art have the power to transcend our circumstances. She uses the power of word to inspire change, uplift and build community. She is excited and thrilled to be a part of Spaces and looks forward to sharing art!

Meredith L. King makes words and sounds collide on the stage, including work as a playwright, performer, lyricist, and composer. With Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, Meredith has created work for Short Form, Bricolage and Saturnalia in 2018. Recent credits include work with Cleveland Public Theatre’s Entry Point (Saturated Fat and Bipolar Mixtape) & Station Hope Programs (Under/Stand), and Talespinner Children’s Theatre’s PLAYground (The Garden of In-Between). As a director, performer and musician, Meredith has worked with Round House Theatre’s Heyday Players, dog & pony dc, eXtreme eXchange, The Hegira and African Continuum Theatre, including participating in the Kennedy Center’s Page to Stage Festival. Meredith received a B.A. from Stanford University and an M.B.A from Yale University. She has worked professionally as an arts administrator, teacher and community organizer on the national level. Meredith served a three-year term as a judge for Washington, DC’s regional theatre awards, The Helen Hayes Awards, and has also served six years as a reader/judge for the Source Theatre Festival.

Molly Andrews-Hinders is a theatre creator, songwriter, and somatics educator. Her most recent project is Emergence, a movement and musical score for healing, synthesizing, and finding power in this messy world. Created with 7 ensemble members, Emergence was featured at Prop Thtr’s Rhinofest and Cleveland Public Theatre’s Test Flight series. Emergence is a living piece that continues to evolve as demands for how we share work change and as more themes arise within the ensemble. Molly has created and performed musical scenes for many shows featured at CPT, and regularly performs around the Cleveland area as a singer-songwriter, in traditional and non-traditional performance spaces. She has been a longtime fan of MCA and is thrilled to be working here with this piece! 

Mina Aevum is a multi-genre artist and songwriter. Her sound and tonality, based in soul and experimental sonics have thrust her into a universe of loyal listeners and broad ranging tastemakers. Mina Aevum is a multi-genre artist and songwriter. Her sound and tonality, based in soul and experimental sonics have thrust her into a universe of loyal listeners and broad ranging tastemakers.   Mina’s relationship with music dates back to her infancy. Exploration of sound and songwriting carried her forward to the dreamy, post r&b landscapes we hear today.

Naomi Columna is a classically trained vocalist committed to performing/creating new works. Columna has premiered over 20 new compositions between 2015 and 2019, premiering a wide range of works including Erica MacLeod’s technically demanding and emotional song cycle,Varying Degrees of Madness, Bryan Lin's self-aware and quirky chamber piece for soprano and wind trio, and Devin Hinzo’s enveloping, electro-acoustic installation opera, (sound) asleep. While earning a Master of Music from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music ‘19, and a Bachelor of Music from the Cleveland Institute of Music ‘16, Columna pursued both large and chamber ensemble work, singing with groups like Mouthscape Contemporary Choir, and Case Western Reserve’s Early Music Singers. Experienced in production and prop work, Columna creates installations and pieces for self production and events like 'Ingenuity Cleveland'. Based in Cleveland Ohio, Columna can be reached via www.naomicoulumna.com   

Rachel Torowski is a local dance artist in Cleveland. She has a heavy background in ballet and modern techniques. She has had opportunities to perform in Cleveland Dance Fest, On Display with The Dancing Wheels Dance Company, Station Hope, and many other events. She has recently just performed as a guest artist for Ballet Legato in Moving Still...

Sequoia Bostick is an Illustrator, maker, and designer living in Cleveland, Ohio. After earning her BFA in Illustration from the Cleveland Institute of Art in 2014, she pursued a career as a resident teaching artist where she works with local youth to grow their visual art skills all while growing her own artistic practice as a multi-disciplinary freelancer. Bright colors, dream-like figures, cute and playful characters inhabit the stories she brings to life with both traditional and digital media. She is a project oriented artist and loves working with others on large assignments.

Shatara Jordan aka Mixxed Rose is a freelance multi artist based in Cleveland, Ohio. Shatara specializes in dance, creative writing, and a primary focus in acting. She is a graduate from The Cleveland School of Arts, a natural hair advocate, and social justice activist. One may recognize her from her performances done at Cleveland Public Theatre, Talespinner Children’s Theatre, BorderLight Festival, Maelstrom Collaborative Arts, and exhibitions hosted by Shooting Without Bullets. Shatara has been a panelist for discussions on natural hair, featured on the cover of CSU’s Vindicator Magazine, and modeled for local clothing brands in Cleveland. The artist is currently in pursuit of obtaining her Associates of Arts Degree, in collaboration with other artists, brands, virtual performances, and producing her own content via social media. Shatara hopes to inspire and uplift people through her bodies of work and make a positive impact in the world. 

Silk Allen is a freelance fashion stylist, online personal stylist, journalist and style blogger whose work pops up in the most random places! You can find her writing in The Plain Dealer, The Plain Press, Destination Cleveland and various online publications and journals including her own fashion & style blog "All the Fly Things". Silk has often participated as the only stylist in various fashion shows around Cleveland using silhouette, color, texture and hip hop and rock references to create stories using clothes on bodies of all shapes and sizes. Find and follow her here: www.thehouseoffly.com, IG: @Alltheflythings/ @Idoflythings

Suhaylah (The Artist) Hamzah is a self-taught, soul-guided artist who uses her talents as a means of therapeutic outlet; expressing herself through mixed-media. Suhaylah is seeking to further her dream as an artist by expanding her skills into a non-profit organization that helps Black / African-Americans have an outlet of expression through art therapy. By developing her artistic network through exhibitions and involvement with other artists and organizations - she’s determined to manifest her dreams into reality.

Susie Underwood is a performance and installation artists who recently acquired a kiln and will henceforth be referred to as "Susie, The Potter" and will only wear clothes made from dirt. 

Robin Steele is an afrofuturist writer who does writes short stories geared toward trans people.  They are going to therapy to be a better person.

Varsha Vydyula is a visual artist and designer based out of Cleveland. She believes in the wellbeing of all sentient lives and in the empowerment of humanity. While she enjoys art as a way of expressing beauty she especially values its ability to shape society by changing perceptions and spreading awareness. Through her art, she explores and communicates the effects of existential threats that influence our culture and challenges the viewer to interpret their own role in the ecosystem. Find her at: www.varshavydyula.com and IG @varshavydyula