Choreographer Mamie Green and her dance company Volta will partner with the Skirball Cultural Center for the world premiere of Dis-order, a dynamic, weeklong program culminating in a sixty-minute performance utilizing dance, puppetry, music, and theater to test the societal line between order and chaos with dark levity. 

Staged à la Judy Chicago’s The Dinner Party, the piece references Jewish symbolism, Greek tragedy, and Pina Bausch’s Rite of Spring to examine the rigidity of roles and stories within families, communities, and institutions—all set to live saxophone by Patrick Shiroishi and Nicolas Snyder (Common Side Effects & Scavengers Reign, HBO).

The piece, jointly imagined by Mamie Green and writer Rebecca Schultz, is directed and choreographed by Green and written by Schultz. It features a collaborative team including puppets by Freak Nature Puppets, production design and paintings by artist Ari Salka, with an original score composed and performed by Patrick Shiroishi and Nicolas Snyder. The work is performed by Roxanne Steinberg, Anaya Cierra, Ryley Polak, Sophie Becker, Tim Allen, and Nico Fife. 

The performance includes a cast of dancers, actors, and large-scale puppets. The Father, played by Sophie Becker, tries to lead the audience, but the other family members interrupt, challenging his grip on the order of this spring rite. The Baby, played by a dancer in a giant Claes Oldenberg-style Egg Puppet, spins on his head. The Son, wearing a Donkey Puppet Head, spills wine on The Daughter, who dances “the death of the first born.” The Mother, filled with rage and sadness from holding the family’s emotions, wears an oceanic skirt that swallows them whole, or protects them.

WORKSHOP AND PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE 

Public all-ages workshops and performances of Dis-order will take over the Skirball for an entire week in March 2026:

• DIY Haggadah: A Dis-orderly Workshop: Sunday, March 15 at 11:00 am
• Dis-order—Student Matinee and Workshop: Wednesday, March 18 at 10:00 am
• Dis-order—Dress Rehearsal: Wednesday, March 18 at 7:30 pm
• Dis-order—Public Performances: Thursday, March 19 and Friday, March 20 at 8:00 pm

For the general public, more information and individual ticket prices can be found using the links above. 

---

Directed by Mamie Green, Volta fuses physicality, theatricality & multidisciplinary approaches to performance. Green is the recipient of multiple grants and awards and was named in Fjord Review’s Best of Dance 2023 and Bachtrack’s Young Choreographers to Watch. Green has been commissioned and presented at the Laguna Art Museum, Jeffrey Deitch, MAXXI National Museum, East Miami Hotel, Brand Library, Neutra House VDL, Loyola Marymount University, Museum of Neon Art, Ace Hotel Brooklyn, MAK Center at the Schindler House, New Hollywood Theater, among others, with upcoming engagements at Skirball Cultural Center.

Freak Nature Puppets is an artist collective from Los Angeles, CA. Their work channels dreamlike narratives through giant puppetry, leading to unexpected and playful conclusions. Freak Nature’s theatrical work is inspired by the avant-garde progressive puppetry of Bread and Puppet Theater, the oddball physical theater of Mummenshanz, and the anarchist children's entertainment of Pee-Wee Herman. Freak Nature’s past collaborators & co-presenters include Dead & Company, the Bob Baker Marionette Theater, Eric Andre, KCRW, Poncili Creación, David Zwirner Gallery, and Childish Gambino. 

Patrick Shiroishi is a Japanese-American multi-instrumentalist and composer based in Los Angeles who is perhaps best known for his extensive and incredibly intense work with the saxophone.  Shiroishi may well be considered a foundational player in the city’s vast musical expanse. He has presented work and performed at the Museum of Contemporary Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the International Museum of Surgical Sciences and has toured around the world in various solo and band configurations including The Armed, contemporary classical ensemble Wild Up and Upsilon Acrux.

Rebecca Schultz writes fiction and criticism.  Her work has appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB, Full-Stop, and the Santa Monica Review, where it was nominated for a Pushcart Prize. She teaches fiction and poetry at UC Irvine.

Sophie Becker is a New York–based ventriloquist and actor working at the intersection of ventriloquism, theater, and experimental comedy. With a cast of recurring characters, including her dummy, Ronnie, Sophie has performed at MoMA PS1, De Studio (Belgium), the Marriott Marquis in Times Square, the Rockaway Film Festival, Jean’s Lafayette, Art Omi, and NADA Miami, among others. 

Nicolas Snyder is a composer, film maker, and visual artist from rural southwestern Pennsylvania. His work has a wide range of expression, from cinematic animation, scoring Scavenger’s Reign, 2023and Common Side Effects, 2024 for HBO Max, to sobering yet magical documentary filmmaking, Song of Salt, 2021, to primitive and abstract furniture making. Though music composition is his main focus he considers all aspects of his art to be symbiotic and informative of each other. He currently lives and works in Pasadena, California.

Ari Salka is a Los Angeles-based artist whose practice spans painting, drawing, and poetry. He received a BFA from SAIC (2016) and an MFA in Painting from UCLA (2019). Salka was awarded the Yale Norfolk Summer School of Art’s Ellen Battell Stoeckel Fellowship in Norfolk, CT (2015). Salka has lectured as a visiting artist at UCLA, Chapman University, and Bennington College. Salka’s work is in the permanent collections of the John M. Flaxman Library, LACA, UCLA Arts Library, and the ROSA KWIR Archive. His artist book is currently available for purchase at MOCA, and he looks forward to an upcoming solo museum exhibition at XELA Art in 2027.

Roxanne Steinberg is a dancer and choreographer. She founded Body Weather in Los Angeles in 1988 based on the Japanese paradigm for training. Her solos have been presented at the REDCAT, Dance Conversations at the Flea, NY, the Basilica in Hudson NY, Zebulon LA and in Flower of the Season, the dance series she co-directs at the Electric Lodge. She has led workshops at Cal Arts, UCLA and choreographed works for Cal State LA and Body Vox in Portland. 

About the Skirball

The Skirball Cultural Center is a place of meeting guided by the Jewish tradition of welcoming the stranger and inspired by the American democratic ideals of freedom and equality. We welcome people of all communities and generations to participate in cultural experiences that celebrate discovery and hope, foster human connections, and call upon us to help build a more just society.

Visiting the Skirball

The Skirball is located at 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd., Los Angeles, CA 90049. Museum hours: Tuesday–Friday, 12:00–5:00 pm; Saturday–Sunday, 10:00 am–5:00 pm; closed Mondays and holidays. Reservations are recommended for General Admission and the permanent exhibition Noah's Ark at the Skirball, which requires timed entry and is ticketed separately. For general information, the public may call (310) 440-4500 or visit skirball.org.