Coil Festival To Feature Variations on Chekhov, Nijinsky, Frankenstein

The $15.1 million renovation that has largely kept Performance Space 122 out of its East Village home since the summer of 2011 is not stopping the adventurous organization from presenting its eighth annual Coil Festival, which will run Jan. 3 to 19, 2013. Like last year's edition, the festival will include an eclectic roster of theater, dance and performance-art productions, staged at locations all over New York.

Ten companies are participating, and though there is no unifying theme, several productions use great works of the past as starting points. In “Sacre,” for example, the choreographer David Wampach and his dance troupe, Association Achles, will reconfigure Nijinsky's choreography for Stravinsky's “Rite of Spring” as a duet for himself and Tamar Shelef.

The Brooklyn theater group Radiohole's “Inflatable Frankenstein!” is a whimsical fantasy inspired by both Mary Shelley's tale of a scientist and his mad creation, and James Whale's classic “ Frankenstein” films of the 1930's.

The playwright Kristen Kosmas stars in her own “There There,” a show inspired by a Chekhov character, Vassily Vasilyevich Solyony, from “Three Sisters.” And Tina Satter's “Seagull (Thinking of You),” to be performed by Half Straddle, another Brooklyn ensemble, draws on alternative translations of Chekhov's “Seagull,” as well as some of his letters in a rumination on what makes us human.

Probably the most curious entry on the schedule, which P.S. 122 announced on Thursday, is “Hot Box” by the director and video artist Brian Rogers, who was inspired by aspects of the films “Apocalypse Now” and “Fitzcarraldo,” most notably, the way actors in those films are said to have prepared themselves for their roles by undertaking ordeals of various kinds. Here, Mr. Rogers and his collaborator Madeline Best will spend several hours before curtain time drinking heavily and executing strenuous tasks, including exer cise, so that by the time the audience arrives, they are drunk and exhausted. A version of the piece played the Chocolate Factory this year.

Other productions include “Niicugni (Listen)” by the dancer and choreographer Emily Johnson; “Ruff,” a solo show by the playwright and actor Peggy Shaw, of Split Britches fame; “Amidst (The Painted Bird â€" Part II),” an audio-visual installation (with live music) by Pavel Zustiak and his company, Palissimo; and “Magical,” a feminist performance art work by Annie Dorsen and Anne Juren that uses the rituals of magic shows to explore perception and manipulation.

The festival will also turn its gaze on itself. In “The Curator's Piece,” Tea Tupajic and Petra Zanki will hold “a trial against art” for failing to save the world. Curators and artists will be asked to take the stand, among them Vallejo Gantner, the artistic director of P.S. 122. That part of the show is said to be unscripted.