2018/19 Season: Color Brave
A new play by screenwriter and director Todd Solondz, a revival by hyper-realist Thomas Bradshaw and world premiere productions by rising writers Geraldine Inoa, Idris Goodwin, Kristiana Rae Colón, and Nick Gandiello are all in store for the 2018/19 season at The Flea.
2018/2019 Anchor Partners
The Flea Theater proudly presents the roster of its Fall 2018 Anchor Partners, promising music, dance and theater companies who will perform at The Flea during our 2018-2019 season. This fall, The Flea presents Tiffany Mills Dance, New York Children’s Theater, The Muse Project, Talea Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, EPIC Players, New Camerata Opera and The Bang Group.
2018/2019 Anchor Partners *SPRING*
The Flea Theater proudly presents the roster of its Fall 2018 Anchor Partners, promising music, dance and theater companies who will perform at The Flea during our 2018-2019 season. This spring, The Flea presents New York Children’s Theater, TOSOS, Talea Ensemble, Experiments in Opera, New Camerata Opera, New York Deaf Theatre, Hook and Eye Theater, Jody Oberfelder, and New Light Theater.
2019/20 Season of Anarchy: The Return of the Macs
The Flea Theater is proud to announce the 2019-2020 Season of Anarchy: Return of the Macs. The season features a festival of plays dedicated to three-time Obie Award winning playwright and poet, Mac Wellman, and the premiere of Tony Award nominee, Taylor Mac’s The Fre, along with the return of The Flea’s family programming CEREALS and the late-night episodic series SERIALS.
A Blanket of Dust
A Blanket of Dust is a political thriller and a new addition to the Theater of Resistance. It is the story of Diana Crane, a modern day Antigone. The daughter of a US Senator whose husband has died in the World Trade Center, her subsequent ordeal in seeking justice for his murder ultimately drives her to the outer fringes of society. Struggling with facts that the government, the media, her family and her countrymen deny, she finally confronts them all with a harrowing act of sacrificial tragedy.
A Goddessey
NOW EXTENDED thru Sunday 12/18! A GODDESSEY is a re-telling of the traditional “hero’s journey” as a feminist survival story using dance and acrobatics to narrate a quest for equality and empowerment.
Anna Karenina: a riff
Russians in track suits play melodicas to an original, folk-punk score in this fresh adaptation of Anna Karenina. Set in 1880s Russia and dripping with Eastern European ennui, our comedic reimagining of the classic tale moves at the speed of a runaway train as it examines the consequences of female rebellion and its echoes today.
Anthony Braxton Theater Improvisations
In celebration of the 75th Birthday of trailblazing composer and EiO mentor Anthony Braxton, Experiments in Opera presents a run of performances of Compositions No. 279-283 composed for improvisational actor and improvising musicians. This production is in collaboration with the Tri-Centric Foundation, which supports the continued evolution of the music of Anthony Braxton. Drawing on Braxton’s complex systems of graphic notation, character development and narrative poetics, these compositions ask performers to engage with newspaper clippings, traditional improv comedy techniques and historical comedy tropes, all in the name of creating a dynamic and surprising evening of music and theater. These shows will feature director/performer Rob Reese, as well as a different set of musical improvisors for each night of the run. Confirmed musicians include renowned improvisers Nate Wooley (trumpet), Jessica Pavone (strings), Ingrid Laubrock (saxophones) and Kamala Sankaram (vocals) . Other guests to be announced.
APAP Dance Showcase 2019
The Flea welcomes its Anchor Partners for a spectacular showcase of contemporary dance. Designed for presenters and fans alike, the performances feature LAVA, Tiffany Mills Company, Elisa Monte Dance, and The Bang Group. A perfect sampler of 4 companies at the top of their form presenting excerpts of these choreographers’ most recent work.
ARTEK @ The Flea: Spring 2018
One of The Flea's Anchor Partners, ARTEK (The Art of the Early Keyboard) is back with a baroque theater show and two one-night-only concerts!
Bad Penny
A man and a woman sit in a park. They appear to be a couple, but aren’t. The man is clutching a car tire. The woman has picked up a penny and put it in her pocket. Wait! Is that the Boatman of Bow Bridge coming for the penny? How do we make choices in the face of the end of the world as we know it?
Beyond Monteverdi: Lasciatemi Morire
ARTEK performs its madcap theatrical take on Monteverdi's famous lament "Lasciatemi morire" from the lost 1607 opera Arianna, with ARTEK's fabulous singers and the magnificent Queen Ariadne herself, classical/cabaret singer Sarah Chalfy.
Bucket o’Blood Cabaret
Returning for the second time this year, Opera on Tap brings its signature irreverent approach to opera to The Flea in its resident immersive cabaret series. In honor of the season, we are pleased to present The Bucket o’Blood Cabaret. Get ready to laugh. Get ready to faint. No one gets in for free, but no one gets out alive! Bloody cocktails paired with hair-raising operatic screams guaranteed!
CEREALS
Give us your children! Experience The Flea’s universe-hopping, monster-hunting, pigeon-loving, buffalo-bunning, future-seeing, family theater spectacle – a brand new way to watch age old stories.
Chunky in Heat
Experiments in Opera and Contemporaneous present the premiere of Chunky in Heat an opera based on a libretto by celebrated author A. M. Homes. Chunky in Heat tells the story of a girl who comes of age poolside at her family’s home in the canyons of Los Angeles. The magical thinking of youth comes undone after her brother dies and she realizes what the word “dream” in American Dream really means. Chunky in Heat features music by Jason Cady, Paula Matthusen, Erin Rogers, Aaron Siegel, Shelley Washington and Matthew Welch. This production is directed by Alison Moritz.
Cosmicomics
Qfwfq is a young dinosaur who miraculously survived the Ice Age. They make their way in a magical brave new world, searching for their mother and pondering how to not only evolve but thrive in a world without anyone else who looks the same.
Dance Showcase 2020
The Flea welcomes its Anchor Partners for a spectacular showcase of contemporary dance. Designed for presenters and fans alike, the performances feature Jody Oberfelder, Tiffany Mills Company, Elisa Monte Dance, and The Bang Group. A perfect sampler of 4 companies at the top of their form presenting excerpts of these choreographers’ most recent work.
Elisa Monte Dance 38th NYC Season
The critically acclaimed and world-renowned Elisa Monte Dance (EMD), under the Artistic Direction of Tiffany Rea-Fisher, celebrates their 38th Annual NYC Season at The Flea. Rea-Fisher brings EMD to The Flea for their first season as Anchor Partners. EMD, founded by master choreographer, Elisa Monte in 1981, bridges cultural barriers through the universal language of dance. Rea-Fisher, Artistic Director since 2016, reinvigorates modern dance, while using the art form as a vehicle for community service. Travel across thirty-eight years of Modern Dance History in one evening. EMD will present classic master works, contemporary favorites, and world premieres. Monte’s “Dreamtime” demonstrates the company’s deep legacy in modern dance while proving the company’s technical and theatrical excellence. “The Best Self” excerpt shows Rea-Fishers extreme range and sensitivity as a choreographer. Followed by a Rea-Fisher premiere, which sets out to elevate the American art form of Modern Dance into the future.
Emma and Max
Emma and Max, a new play by Todd Solondz (Welcome to the Dollhouse, Wiener-Dog) explores the illusions and delusions, hopes and despair, of the city’s well-off and worn-down in a satire of tragic dimensions.
Enchantress/Bombay Rickey Meets the Psychology of Desire
ENCHANTRESS is a 20 minute opera about Ada Lovelace, the inventor of the first computer, originally written under the auspices of American Lyric Theater’s Composer/Librettist Development Program. Praised as “a true treat for the adventurous ear” (TimeOut NY), BOMBAY RICKEY is a five-piece band with a unique sound evocative of 1960s movie soundscapes. The group plays both covers and original music that borrow equally from the worlds of surf rock, cumbia, spaghetti-Western, and Bollywood, balanced out with soaring operatic vocals.
Every Brillant Thing
Life is hard. Sometimes, it feels like you’ll always be stressed, always be sad. Then, you remember the brilliant things that make life worth living. Like rollercoasters and chocolate, laughing so hard you shoot milk out of your nose, great conversations and waking up late with someone you love. There are a million brilliant things that have the power to bring people together. New York Deaf Theatre wants to share every brilliant one with you in this funny and intimate production.
Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill
Breakups are hard. But Joni’s taken her breakup to the next level, physically feeling holes all over her body. From acupuncture to threesomes, FILL FILL FILL FILL FILL FILL FILL asks how do we live fully in our own skin?
Flea Fridays
FLEA FRIDAYS is an immersive cabaret in residence in The Flea’s indoor/outdoor theater The Pete. Each Flea Friday features some of downtown's most daring artists, who invite audiences to engage with our most pressing social questions.
Flea Fridays
FLEA FRIDAYS is an immersive cabaret in residence in The Flea’s indoor/outdoor theater The Pete. Each Flea Friday features some of downtown's most daring artists, who invite audiences to engage with our most pressing social questions.
Flipside
8 Performers. 8 Monologues. Wildly reimagined. One night only. If you think you know what you're getting when you walk into this show, prepare to upend your expectations.
good friday
A fierce and funny feminist debate is disrupted by a ricochet of bullets. Assaulted at every turn, a group of millennial women must decide whether they are ready to put their bodies on the line for each other. good friday tackles #metoo feminism at the intersection of gun and sexual violence.
Her Kind
What does it mean to be a woman in the times of the #metoo and #timesup movements? Brooklyn outfit Opera on Tap brings their irreverent, heartfelt, and entertaining approach to classical music to the Flea for the first time.
Hook & Eye Invades The Flea
Hook & Eye is landing at The Flea with three outrageous new ideas to share. Echo & Narcissus is an early look at an original play we're creating about a narcissistic soldier home from the Gulf War - a play about identity, responsibility, and community. Queer Black/Filipinx writer Roger Q. Mason delivers material from a new work in progress - a performance work about 1920s female impersonators inspired by a censored Mae West play. Eliza Bent leads a cast who tell a tale of the MTA's wayward past and perhaps glorious future in the form of a subway ride. Each night, all three shows punctuated with out-of-this-world cosmic refreshments.
HYPE MAN: a break beat play
HYPE MAN follows a front man, hype man and beat maker on the verge of hitting it big when yet another police shooting shakes them to the core. Following its sold out run in Boston, this hip hop play dares to ask who has the responsibility to speak up in the face of social injustice.
HYPE MAN: a break beat play
IT'S BACK. Battery Park City Authority presents a limited outdoor run of HYPE MAN: a break beat play. HYPE MAN follows a front man, hype man and beat maker on the verge of hitting it big when yet another police shooting shakes them to the core. Following its sold out run in Boston, this hip hop play dares to ask who has the responsibility to speak up in the face of social injustice.
Ideas, Not Theories
Ideas, Not Theories is a theatrical percussion show featuring original music that explores the use of unconventional instruments such as bicycles, tap and body percussion, water, brushes, as well as traditional percussion instruments such as drums.
Inanimate
Erica, shy and more than a little socially awkward, is in love with Dee. The problem is that her politician sister, her only and equally awkward new friend, and the nosy residents of their small town in Massachusetts don’t understand at all, because Dee…
iNSIDE Out
Talea’s iNSIDE Out series fosters creative discussions and interactive environments that allow musicians and audiences to share how—and why—they listen. We design programs and choose venues that facilitate post-concert receptions and socializing...
iNSIDE Out: Imagined Times
Talea Ensemble’s iNSIDE Out Series seeks to create participatory environments that foster engaged listening and personal connection to great works of cutting-edge contemporary music. In these events the audience is an equal participant, joining the performers in musical exploration and creative discussion to uncover personal truths surrounding how and why we listen to the music of our time. No musical experience necessary, open ears and open minds required.
iNSIDE Out: Side by Side
Talea Ensemble presents iNSIDE Out: Side by Side, an immersive program followed by a panel discussion on audience engagement strategies in contemporary music. The program explores the dynamics, tensions, and joys of performing music in duo. The panel discussion is a part of Talea's initiative to bring issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in new music to the forefront through a series of public conversations.
Jack of Cups
Many years from now — long after The Wave That Eats The World — a stranger, queerer, more loving world has sprouted from the sodden rubble and ruins: a world called Mother Ocean. Once a year, the many communities of this new world become one by making the perilous pilgrimage to a barren island for the Remembrance Festival. Amidst the food and drink and games, the sharing of knowledge and the telling of Big Stories, the people of Mother Ocean are visited by a mysterious and legendary wanderer who comes to tell the biggest Big Story they have: their post-apocalyptic creation myth.
January Dance Showcase
Featuring: The Bang Group, Elisa Monte Dance, 10 Hairy Legs, and Tiffany Mills Company
Laura Bush Killed a Guy
Laura Bush is an enigma wrapped in another enigma. She is shy, bookish, beautiful, and in 1963, she blew through a stop sign and killed a guy. It was probably just an accident. Perhaps it was simply youthful recklessness. Or maybe, just maybe… it was murder.
Leap and the Net Will Appear
“In this play, we contain secret selves and animals inside us. In an instant, 20 years can pass. We travel the world while standing perfectly still.” What happens when Margie (raised to be a good girl; wants to be a lion) leaves home: twenty years whiz by like a moving train, logic and time escape their usual confines, steaks are eaten, tuxes are worn, the world expands, people transform, there is a rule that is breaking. In a world that is close to ours but is not ours, lions run with limitless grace, we all eat cake, have some champagne.
Leaving The Blues
Hop onto an imaginary train of memories with famed African-American blues and jazz singer and songwriter Alberta Hunter as she follows her long-dead friend, black comedian Bert Williams (Will), now her glad-handed guide and conductor. He has promised to stir up enough memories of her past successes, friends, and loves to encourage her return to the music she left some twenty years past in the late 1950s. Hunter’s life story, rife with danger, uncertainty, heartbreak, and triumph lays bare the tension that our racial and sexual histories create inside all of us and the danger that history has been and can be to our ability to love.
LOCKED UP BITCHES
Get ready for some RUFF bitches! When Pipsy, a pedigree cocker spaniel, lands at the Bitchfield Animal Shelter, she becomes the center of a turf war between the dogs and the cats.
Madame Ovary
Madame Ovary is a contemporary exploration of the body as a site of intuition, agency, and identity with choreography by Jody Oberfelder, music composed by Missy Mazzoli (funded by New Music USA), and lighting by Kathy Kaufmann. This new work uses Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary’s story of a corseted life amid 19th Century social constructions as a springboard to address and provoke conversation on today’s gender revolution and the #metoo movement. Oberfelder boldly weaves together small stories, broad contexts, and big dancing. With empathy, humor, embroidered breast plates, and badass rocker panache, Oberfelder addresses an ever-evolving terrain of womanhood. Madame Ovary is the third work in Oberfelder’s body-part trilogy, following the heart, 4Chambers, (performed as an immersive installation on Governors Island and a former hospital in Brooklyn, 2013-14) and The Brain Piece, (at New York Live Arts in June 2017). This time Oberfelder focuses on the gut and genitals asking how are we defined by our bodies — or not?
Maple & Vine
New York Deaf Theatre (NYDT) presents an accessible production of MAPLE AND VINE, presented using a combination of American Sign Language, spoken English, and English Captioning. The cast and production team features a diverse group of Deaf and hearing artists.
Merril Mushroom’s Bar Dykes
Behind a nondescript door you’ll find a very distinct clientele where you get to immerse yourself into the world of butches and femmes, flirting, smoking and dancing. Playwright Mushroom, drawing on her experiences as a lesbian in the Deep South and New York City in the pre-Stonewall era, transports us into the hidden subculture of lesbian society in mid-century America, and into the women and their relationships in a precarious time. Follow 11 bar dykes as they drink, dance, date, duke it out, and grab a few undisturbed moments. BAR DYKES will be an immersive staging, so the audience can experience and eavesdrop on a girls’ night out captured in time, as it once was.
ms. estrada
The boys at Acropolis U are too preoccupied with the Greek Games to treat their ladies right. But fierce feminist goddess, Liz Estrada, rallies her besties to take a stand – and campus chaos ensues.
New Georges @ The Flea
New Georges presents two lyrical new plays steeped in SOUND, running in staggered rep at The Flea!
Not My Monster!
Have you ever noticed a small bearded man running around your house? Look again because Russian folklore promises that every home has a Domovoi, the house spirit who protects the family. In Not My Monster! Father, Mother, Darya and Vasily are forced to move from their lavish penthouse in the city to a creepy cabin in the middle of a swamp when the Russian economy tanks. Watch what happens when the children are not so sure that their Domovoi came along too.
Not then, not yet
Choreographer Tiffany Mills’s Not then, not yet, created in collaboration with Puerto Rican composer Angélica Negrón and French vocalist/composer Muriel Louveau, examines states of transition, drawing inspiration from the liminal space between endings and new beginnings. The artists’ initial interest in liminality comes from Mary Shelley’s life and early writing—specifically her examination of the threshold between creation and destruction, integration and isolation. Ruminating on what it means to be in between, the collaborators now look at portals and passageways through a 21st-century lens. Negrón’s blend of electro-acoustics mixed with classical instrumentation and found sounds, Louveau’s extreme vocal registers and neoclassical influences, and Mills’s raw and unhinged movement create a kinetically charged world that speaks to the subconscious.
Nut/Cracked
The Bang Group’s beloved, witty response to The Nutcracker has delighted audiences for more than 15 years.
Off The Ground
Experiments in Opera presents workshop performances of three different operas. Rainbird is a collaboration between director/librettist Mallory Catlett and composer Aaron Siegel. Chunky in Heat is a multi-composer work based on a libretto by A.M. Homes, directed by Alison Moritz and produced in partnership with Contemporaneous. Warka Vase is a new work by composer Rick Burkhardt and presented in collaboration with the International Contemporary Ensemble (ICE).
Off The Ground 2020
Experiments in Opera presents Off The Ground 2020 at The Flea Theater from March 4 – 7, 2020 as a way to provide audiences with an early glimpse of new works in development at a very low cost. Performances on March 4 and 5 at 7 PM will feature a first look at the new opera Everything for Dawn, which is the product of the ongoing work in the Experiments in Opera Writers’ Room. Everything for Dawn is a 10-episode serial opera that explores the world of outsider art through a sympathetic portrait of a Vietnam Veteran who embraces art therapy as a way to heal his trauma. Everything for Dawn, when complete, will feature work by ten composers each of whom will write an episode of this ambitious three-part work. Off The Ground 2020 will feature two workshop performances of Everything for Dawn (Part One) including episodes with librettos by Lauren D’Errico, Jerome Parker and Jason Cady and music by Pauline Harris Kim, Phil Kline and Jason Cady.
Pillowland
Stanley always has trouble falling asleep - even counting sheep doesn't help! When he receives an invitation to visit the Kingdom of Pillowland, he sets off on an exciting adventure with his friends Finn, Quinn and you! From the company that brought you Please Bring Balloons comes a new interactive play for your youngest theatergoers based on the hit song by Laurie Berkner.
Prompts for a Socially Distanced Population
We can't venture into the theater, but we can bring creative making into our homes. From the poetic to the gleefully weird, The Flea's resident directors offer prompts to guide you on journeys exploring your home, neighborhoods, distant strangers and even your junk drawer. Each one is a crafted experience that transforms your everyday reality into a little playscape of its own.
Romantic Fools
ROMANTIC FOOLS consists of 9 two-character comedies examining love, lust, dating, and romance -- from a date with a caveman (Find Me a Primitive Man) to the joys of dull sex (One Man's Secret Desire) to the surprise frustrations of having a perfect mate (The Stepford Guy). With influences of Monty Python, Saturday Night Live, Jules Feiffer, the Marx Brothers, and classic vaudeville comedy, these sketches vary in style but all celebrate the inherent comedy of male-female relationships. (Excerpt from Playscripts, Inc.)
Scrambled Porn
Eden Theater Company presents an experimental narrative performance piece curious about why people build relationships only to destroy them—unearthing the fear and longing buried underneath it all. In the aftermath of their relationship, in the abyss of someone’s front yard, Adam, Sam, and June try to prove why they couldn’t be alone but can’t stay together. At their individual mics, like a busted En Vogue live set, the ‘throuple’ share the creation of their own suffering.
Scraps
What we always hear: “Black Male Shot by White Police Officer.” What we never see – how loved ones struggle to cope amidst their anger and grief.
Secret Identity
The world can be unbearable when the school bully paints a target on your back. For 16-year-old JT, it means retreating to the safer and terrifically exciting world of spandex-clad super heroes he’s created. Things get complicated, though when his imaginary, square-jawed hero Paladin suddenly has competition in the form of the very real, but equally square-jawed, and dazzling new kid in school Trey. Lines between the real world and the imaginary world start to blur, and JT may become a casualty of his own storytelling. When adolescent fantasies come in heroic proportions it’s difficult to keep them under wraps. Playwright Chris Weikel, whose previous work Fern Siegel described in the Huffington Post as “witty” and “clever” gives voice to the many ways bullying can wreak havoc in the lives of LGBTQ+ youth. It shines a light on the decisions many who feel marginalized must confront in a society where bullying has become the norm.
SERIALS @ The Flea: ONLINE!
Fans of The Flea’s late-night episodic show now have the chance to experience five all-new plays specifically created for digital viewing. SERIALS takes to the internet on Saturday, June 6 at 9 p.m. via Instagram and YouTube or join our live watch party at 8 p.m.!
SEX TAPE + Nuptial Blitz
SEX TAPE is the second project where Gabrielle Revlock has recreated a moment in her life but shifted the focus by removing the man. In 2016 she premiered, I replaced him with a lamp, a solo extracted from an accidental video recording of herself receiving verbal feedback from an older, established, male artist. For SEX TAPE the found choreography between Revlock and a male lover, documented on video, has been reconstructed by Revlock and a longtime female friend. Nuptial Blitz (world premiere) is an exploration of the choreography of wedding photography - how shape and tableau, and the use of space and touch convey emotion and story. For this interactive performance seven audience members will be invited to participate in the contemporary ritual that is wedding photography, posing alongside the artist as her partner.
Sincerity Forever
In the fictional southern town of Hillsbottom, a place with a prominent community of young Ku Klux Klan members, a furball has been sighted. But the teenagers still hang out in their cars on serene nights with their friends and crushes, and question, as teens do, absolutely everything.
Southern Promises
On his deathbed, a plantation owner vows to set his slaves free, but his wife rejects the request and chaos soon erupts on the plantation. Based on slave narratives and featuring an all PoC company of actors, Southern Promises is a brilliant examination of the deeply disturbing and utterly corrupting power of American slavery and its lasting grip on our country's hearts and institutions.
SPRING 2018 @ THE FLEA
Who run the world? Womyn. Member Pre-Sale ends 12/21!
Syncing Ink
Gordon wants to learn how to rap, thinking it will gain him respect, admiration, and the attention of a beautiful woman. What he doesn’t know is that his journey to learn how to rhyme…
Taste The Clouds
Can you touch the stars? See the music? Taste the Clouds? Join us on an adventure as a young girl learns to harness her imagination and use her senses to better understand the world around her. Created by the award-winning company, Hit the Lights!, Taste the Clouds will take you on a journey of the senses using shadow puppetry, live music, and immersive theater.
The 2019 Repertory Season
The Virtuous Fall of the Girls from Our Lady of Sorrows, inspired by Shakespeare’s problem play, is a hilarious exploration of teenage revolution in the face of petty authoritarianism. SWP's audacious cut of Measure for Measure tells the story of women coming together to uncover a history of sexual harassment buried within the Justice System. In the wake of the political and cultural tumults women have endured this year, SWP re-examines a frustratingly timeless question: even if you speak the truth, who will believe you?
The Art of Stacking the Deck: A Mac Wellman Symposium
As part of Mac Wellman: Perfect Catastrophes, A Festival of Plays, The Flea will hold a three day symposium on October 4 - 6 exploring Mac Wellman's profound impact on the American theater. Mac's foremost collaborators, protégés, and scholars will explore the unique demands of interpreting his plays; the breadth of his career across mediums, including dance, music theater, and opera; and the legacy of his writing and teaching on multiple generations of theater makers.
The Blueing: Ceremonies from in the Name of the Mother Tree
The Exploding Piano
A series of solo concerts by Kathleen Supové, one of America’s most acclaimed and versatile contemporary music pianists, known for continually redefining what a pianist, keyboardist and performance artist is in today’s world.
The Flea’s Juneteenth Public Performance Symposium
The Fre
In the land of two bridges The Fre, a rambunctious group of fun loving anti-intellectuals spend their days cavorting in the mud. Into their midst descends Hero, a dandy aesthete, who longs to cut the bridge and finally escape the mud pit. But first he must convince the leader Frankie Fre and the other fatuous inhabitants that there is a better life outside of the swamp. In this queer love story, audiences will literally and figuratively jump into the mud with the Fre to hash out the current cultural divide. The play is set in a giant ball pit with audience seating inside and out.
The Great Novel
For most of her adult life, Bertha has served as the Brennans’ housekeeper. While polishing the silverware and washing the windows, she dreams of honoring the promise she made to her grandmother long ago to write the next great American novel. But as she drafts her story, she can only see the imprints of the Brontë sisters, Dickens, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, and most of all, the Brennans. Spurred on by recurring visits from her Jamaican Granny in the afterlife, Bertha seeks a new language for a narrative that only she can tell, uninhibited by the ghosts of literary convention.
The Invention of Tragedy
A chorus of students, all alike and all unalike, are trying like the devil to tell a simple story—perhaps the story about the tragedy of the Sandwich Man, with sandwich boards upon which nothing is written, and hence, say nothing. Wellman’s examination of the post-9/11 world and America’s general and genial acceptance of the Iraq war.
The Little Prince
The Little Prince, based on the novella Le Petit Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, tells the story of a world-weary and disenchanted Aviator whose sputtering plane strands him in the Sahara Desert, where he meets a mysterious, regal young boy, the Little Prince.
The Pool
A pop-up theater company, a temporary consortium formed by playwrights Lynn Rosen, Peter Gil-Sheridan and Susan Bernfield to drive their own processes and produce their ready-to-go plays, to be presented in rotating rep. The Pool is a participant in New Georges’ Supported Productions program, in which the company provides resources, mentorship and an institutional platform to its affiliated artists who are producing their work independently.
The Rape of Lucretia
This rendering of the tragic story will confront the harsh reality of a woman’s experience with rape, suppression, and being silenced by men. These elements of voicelessness resonate particularly loudly in this #MeToo era. The role of Lucretia will be sung by Allison Gish, and played by deaf actress Amelia Hensley who will use American Sign Language to address the element of not being heard that is at the heart of the story. Maestro Justin Bischof leads the Modus Opera Orchestra in the performance of this groundbreaking score.
The Sandalwood Box & The Fez
In The Sandalwood Box, college student Marsha Gates lost her voice. On her way to speech therapy, she encounters Professor Claudia Mitchell, who captures the most captivating catastrophes of the world and preserves them in a sandalwood box. In The Fez, the charmed spell of the theater has somehow absented itself, and something strange happens. A play that was originally printed on a tee shirt is finally produced!
The Tempest
The third production of EPIC Players 2017-18 season is a neuro-inclusive adaptation of Shakespeare's The Tempest.
The Trojan Women
Adapted by Ellen McLaughlin
The Worthy
The Worthy is sponsored in-part by its Tribeca neighbor, The Hemingway Gallery
Venus and Adonis & Savitri
Based on an episode in the Mahabharata, Gustav Holst's Sāvitri was innovative in its day and still mesmerizes. This production will honor the Indian culture which gave us this story and feature singers of South Asian heritage.
Waiting for Giovanni
“Waiting for Giovanni,” a new play by Jewelle Gomez, in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr., imagines a moment in the mind of James Baldwin in which he struggles with writing a novel that he’s been told will ruin his career. The play will have its New York premiere presented by TOSOS (The Other Side of Silence), the city’s oldest LGBTQ theater.
You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown
EPIC Players presents a neuro-inclusive musical production of YOU’RE A GOOD MAN, CHARLIE BROWN (Revised). EPIC Players Inclusion Company (EPIC) is a theater troupe for actors living with (and without) developmental disabilities such as autism.