Renowned visual artist Edgar Arceneaux’s first live work, Until, Until, Until… investigates the infamous 1981 performance of Broadway legend Ben Vereen, which was televised nationally as part of Ronald Reagan’s inaugural celebration. Intended as an homage to vaudevillian Bert Williams—America’s first mainstream Black entertainer—the final five minutes of the performance were censored for the television audience, omitting Vereen’s biting commentary on the history of segregation and racist stereotypes. Until, Until, Until… is based on the footage that never aired that night.

Arceneaux’s mise-en-scene immerses the audience in the scenery of the presidential celebration, where the relationships between past and present, experience and memory, and fantasy and reality are blurred as they are filtered through time and the television screen. Until, Until, Until… questions the truth of past narratives and creates an opportunity to reconsider our collective understanding of historic events, while illuminating the present.

Director/Writer/Producer: Edgar Arceneaux
Co-writer: Kurt Forman
Lead Actor as Ben Vereen: Frank Lawson
Actor as Marie Osmond: Jes Dugger
Producer: RARARA

Stage & Production Manager: Toran Xavier Moore
Choreography: Marvin Tunney
Scenic Designer: Elizabeth Smith
Video Designer: Hsuan-Kuang Hsieh
Sound Designer: Daniel Gower
Lighting Director: Josephine Pu-Sheng Wang
Costume Designer: Yonit Olshan
Director of Photography: Solomon Turner
Scenic Painter: Miguel Ayala
Electronic Composer: Jeremy S-Horseman

Production Associate: Eve Thomas
Cameramen: Nicolas Savignano & Jonathan Weistburst

Edgar Arceneaux received a BFA from the Art Center College of Design and a MFA from the California Institute of the Arts. Arceneaux constructs drawings, installations, video and film works as complex arrangements of association that examine adjacencies and points of contact between implausible relations. Constantly working in new modes, Arceneaux’s first play Until, Until, Until… premiered at the Performa Biannual in 2015 and was awarded the Malcolm McLaren, Best of Show Award. He has participated in the Rauschenberg Residency in Captiva Island, Florida, Art Pace in San Antonio, and at the Fachhochschule Aachen, in Germany. Solo exhibitions have been presented at the Vera List Center at MIT in Cambridge, MA, Hammer Museum, Los Angeles; The Studio Museum in Harlem and Museum für Gegenwartskunst in Basel, Switzerland.

Until, Until, Until… is a Performa Commission for Performa 15, co-commissioned with MIT List Visual Arts Center, and supported by Bernard I. Lumpkin, Carmine D. Boccuzzi, Geoff Hargadon, Patricia La Valley, Jessica Stafford Davis, Merc Arceneaux Jr., and Susanne Vielmetter.

Until, Until, Until… was developed in partnership with CalArts Center for New Performance, with project advisors Travis Preston, Leslie Tamaribuchi, Nataki Garrett-Meyers, Paul DiPietro, Peter Flaherty, Megan Carter, Jackson Campbell.