The emerging French-American writer-actor Joshua Seidner kicks off the Watermill Center’s fall season this month with a residency developing Powderburn, a theatrical work in which criminal tongues, death matches, and old-world machismo are set against the corruption of the 21st century.

Named after a racial slur for blackness, Powderburn draws on the slang and languages, traditions, dances, and fighting forms of Russia, Israel, Turkey, the Middle East, and Latin America to explore “otherness” in America. The piece follows one man from his sun-scorched, war-torn homeland to an unnamed country in which cultures clash in cracked basements, men become brothers and then enemies, and a vicious class system turns him into exoticized, eroticized, animal-like performers.

Powderburn will begin with highly choreographed dances and fight routines that unravel into volatile and chaotic action as the protagonist descends into a world where criminals, cheats, cockfighters, and taxi drivers war over birthrights and turf. The only thing these broken men have left at their disposal are their own bruised bodies, which they choose to destroy each night by pummeling and fighting one another for the sake of a blood-thirsty crowd that doesn’t care if the men live or die.

During the residency and public performance, a video camera will continuously capture the action for a Powderburn film to be produced at a later date.

The first stages of Powderburn were completed in San Juan, Puerto Rico earlier this year. The piece is the first part of a trilogy of performance projects in which Seidner is planning to explore the implications of being an "other" in America.

Joshua Seidner is a graduate of Bard College, where he studied theater under JoAnne Akalaitis. He has appeared in theater, performance art, and online and independent film projects with companies including Gorilla Repertory, Theatre Mitu, and Hotel Savant, in collaboration with prestigious arts organizations such as The Kitchen, PS1/WPS1 Radio, and The British Film Council. His first experience at the Watermill Center was in 2007, in Hotel Savant’s adaptation of Antonin Artaud’s The Cenci. He later performed in the highly acclaimed full production at New York’s Ohio Theater. Seidner has worked with video artists Annika Larsson and Kalup Linzy, served as Editor of USELESS Magazine, contributed writing to V Magazine, and exhibited a series of polaroids at Los Angeles’ WOW Gallery. Upcoming is a role in the first film produced by Finnish fashion line Ivana Helsinki and an appearance in a PERFORMA09 collaboration this fall. 

*Please note: Performance includes male nudity and adult content.