Featuring original music and puppetry, this surreal dark comedy from interdisciplinary artist Edgar Arceneaux follows an eccentric family on individual yet intertwined journeys. The story centers around Sunny, a self-loathing artist who struggles to finish his script about the infamous pop duo Milli Vanilli while coping with Momma’s (his mother, a failed pop singer) slow fade into dementia. Meanwhile, his freeloading brother Bro Bro begins a misguided adaption of the controversial Disney film Song of the South into a play about Black liberation. Each performance opens with a 1990s-themed karaoke party in the Walker’s Cityview Bar.
Boney Manilli is supported by the Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts and presented in association with UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA). The full production of Boney Manilli is scheduled to made its official US premiere in Spring 2023 at CAP UCLA, where Arceneaux was an artist in residency with Boney Manilli. CAP UCLA received the prestigious Mike Kelley Foundation for the Arts' Artist Project Grant for the creative development of Arceneaux's project.
The Boney Manilli sneak preview performance and BBQ was presented on Friday, February 18, 2022 during Frieze LA and concurrently with Arceneaux’s solo exhibition of paintings and sculptures, “Skinning The Mirror” at Vielmetter Los Angeles through March 12th, 2022.
