Katha Cato, an award-winning improvisational theater artist and the co-founder of the Queens World Film Festival, has announced a new month-long art exhibit in Long Island City accompanied by an “audience-driven” live performance.
The veteran artist and festival organizer will present Katha Cato: Reassembled at the Local LIC at 6:30 p.m. on March 14, bringing a “fully improvised one-woman performance” to accompany a month-long exhibition of her fabric art and assemblages installed throughout the venue.
The exhibition, meanwhile, will run from March 4-31 at the same venue, located at 13-02 44th Ave.
Cato said the concept behind the new exhibition is “simple and expansive,” celebrating the “lived moments” that make up an individual.
“We are all made up of many pieces,” She said. “Over time, we add new ones, discard others, repair what’s worn, and discover patterns we didn’t know were there. Every lived moment is a unique act of assembly, unrepeatable, responsive and alive.”
Tickets for the upcoming live performance are available here, starting at $22.60.
Cato said the performance represents a return to her roots, noting that she began performing with the improvisational theater company For Play shortly after moving to New York City in the 1980s.
She said the company was part of a “pioneering moment” in New York City’s expanding improvisational theater movement, where Cato won the first BackStage Bistro Award for Direction in 1986.
The company also won multiple MAC (Manhattan Association of Cabarets and Clubs) Awards throughout the 1980s, becoming renowned for its absurdist one-act plays.
Cato later brought improvisational theater to New York City classrooms, boardrooms and comedy clubs while also building a separate career in film and the arts.
Cato, along with her husband Donald Preston Cato, launched the Queens World Film Festival in 2011, screening almost 2,000 films from 98 different nations in the last 15 years.
The 15th edition of the festival, which took place at the Museum of the Moving Image last November, featured 125 different films from 17 different nations.
