Data Vaudevilles: Bits and Bytes

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This performance is the culminating event for UW-Madison artist-in-residence Stuart Flack, a playwright, producer and social researcher who has created shows for the fantastic Chicago dance/theater troupe The Seldoms. Flack taught a class titled “Performing Information: Exploring Data through Live Performance,” and at this event we’ll see the fruits of the students’ labor. The performers will share data in surprising ways, using theater, dance, clowning, poetry, and even Solo cups and LEGOs. It’s a whole new way of looking at data.

press release: Stuart Flack, the fall 2018 University of Wisconsin–Madison Division of the Arts' Interdisciplinary Artist in Residence, and students will present “Data Vaudevilles: Bits & Bytes in the H.F. DeLuca Forum at the Discovery Building (330 N. Orchard St.) on Saturday, Dec. 8 at 2 p.m. Stuart Flack is a playwright, producer, social entrepreneur and policy researcher who explores incorporating complex data into live performance.

“Data Vaudevilles” will feature a series of short vaudeville-style “bits” performed by seven UW-Madison students in Flack's residency course with support from local professional clown Jacob Mills. Students who created work for this event are Robert Brookens, Chris Castillo, Reggie Liu, Isabel Martín Sánchez, Nick Pjevach, Zach Pulse and Abby Swetz. These students represent a wide range of areas of study including Arts Administration, Public Affairs, Oboe Performance, Technical Theatre, Spanish & Portuguese and Composition & Rhetoric.

This free performance is the culminating event of the residency’s course, “Performing Information: Exploring Data through Live Performance.” During the semester, students learned how to engage in data analysis while studying theatrical approaches to sharing that data in unique and performative ways, such as performing infographics. The three to five minute-long ‘bits’ utilize a variety of techniques drawn from theater, street performance, clowning and dance. They also employ music, poetry, humor, LEGO^® blocks, Solo^® cups, digital technology and a wide range of other surprises.

The content of the final performances is sourced from a variety of data sets, with students choosing subjects such as water quality and nitrates, eating disorders and the export of garbage to developing nations. One student will utilize business cards in a series of magic tricks to show the socio-demographics of Fortune 500 companies. Another will use LEGO® blocks and data from the American Civil Liberties Union’s (ACLU) report on migrant children following their separation from their families at the Mexico-U.S. border, tracking those who have been reunified, those held in custody, or pursuing asylum.

“There are many topics about the world that artists want to make pieces about and want to explore. Many of those things can be made using traditional tools or modes but many of these subject areas, climate change as an example, requires some new ways of communication. We’re looking for new ways to harness data to inform people about the issues we care about most.”  - Stuart Flack

Students developed these new works over a six-week period, supported by the guidance of professional performers Marcia Miquelon and Jacob Mills (Mazomanie, Wis.), guest artist Adrian Danzig of 500 Clown (Chicago) and Angela Richardson, local artist and residency lead.

Since this event is inspired by street performances, the audience will move through the space, following the performers. Attendees are encouraged to wear comfortable shoes. An open discussion with the performers follows the show. Free and open to the public

Stuart Flack’s residency is presented by the UW–Madison Division of the Arts and hosted by the Bolz Center for Arts Administration at the Wisconsin School of Business with Angela Richardson as lead faculty. Co-sponsors include the Design Studies Department, Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation (WARF) and Wisconsin Union Theater.

Stuart Flack | go.wisc.edu/flack

Stuart Flack is playwright, producer, social entrepreneur, and policy researcher based in Chicago. His award-winning work includes productions at many of the leading theaters in the United States. He has worked with The Seldoms, a Chicago-based dance/theatre company, on two full-length works, currently touring, which examine power, politics, and social action. In 2015, Stuart Flack was commissioned by Steppenwolf Theatre Company to adapt John Howard Griffin’s “Black Like Me.”

Flack is currently a Senior Fellow at the Environmental Law & Policy Center where he is leading The Community-Based Environmental Monitoring and Public Health Advocacy Project. He is also developing a performance piece with the Invisible Institute, a Chicago-based community action group which monitors and disseminates data on police misconduct.

As a producer, he ran the Chicago Humanities Festival, the largest festival of arts and ideas in the United States from 2007 through 2012. From 1990–2007, he was a partner at the global consulting firm of McKinsey & Company.