Coming Soon: DECODER: Nova Express (Mallory Catlett / Restless NYC)

 

Remember the future? Nova Express is the final edition of DECODER, a sound and image cutup machine, that has been turning out concerts, digital transmissions, video art, and sound recordings for the last 8 years. This Machine is for everyone – according to William Burroughs whose instructions were followed closely to create it. With two tape recorders and a microphone, performers Jim Findlay and cassette tape artist G Lucas Crane take you on an interstellar adventure into the prophetic imagination of The Nova Trilogy, Burroughs’ 1960’s space odyssey whose central character is the virus. Acting as both fictional characters and real-time systems operators, our time travelers cut internet debris into kaleidoscopic dreamscapes, prophetic pronouncements, and surreal routines of colonial fantasies and alien eroticism that expose their complicity in the systems that control them. Created pre, mid and “post” pandemic, Nova Express is a fever dream turned time machine that confronts the physical sensation of living today by traveling back to a time when the political problems we now face, became unavoidable.

Director: Mallory Catlett. Performer and Set: Jim Findlay. Performer, Sound and Video Manipulation: G Lucas Crane. Video: Keith Skretch. Interaction Design: Ryan Holsopple. Dramaturg: Alex Wermer-Colan. Lighting: Yuki Nakase Link. Costume: Enver Chakartash.

DECODER: Nova Express

June 24 – July 9, 2023
Thursdays through Saturdays at 7:30pm

The Chocolate Factory Theater
38-33 24th Street, Long Island City

Tickets + Info: CLICK HERE

Sarah Einspanier’s LUNCH BUNCH is Back!

 

Last seen at Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks, Sarah Einspanier’s wonderful LUNCH BUNCH  has returned courtesy of Play Company.  A rare Critics' Pick from The New York Time's Alexis Soloski should tell you not to miss this second chance to see this show!

“Dragon Fruit! Black Beluga Lentils! Perfectly Soft-Boiled Eggs!”

Seven public defenders seek meaning, belonging, and some semblance of order via their frenzied quest for the perfect lunch – while battling ACS, inequality, burnout, and a big ole serving of existential dread.

 _____

LUNCH BUNCH

March 15-April 15, 2023 

Written by Sarah Einspanier 

Directed by Tara Ahmadinejad 

Featuring: Janice Amaya Tala Ashe Ugo Chukwu David Greenspan Louisa Jacobson Francis Mateo Jo Mei Julia Sirna-Frest

122CC 
2nd Floor Theatre 
150 1st Avenue 
New York, NY

Tickets + Info: CLICK HERE

Taylor Mac on Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus with Laura Collins-Hughes

Taylor Mac on Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus with Laura Collins-Hughes

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 15, 2023 @ 7PM [EDT] 

The Center for Fiction, a 200-year-old literary nonprofit, and TCG will co-present Story/Teller Arts: An Evening with Taylor Mac on Wednesday, March 15 at 7pm ET at The Center for Fiction (15 Lafayette Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11217) and via livestream.

Gary: A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, which centers around the cleanup crew called in the day after Shakespeare’s famously sanguineous first tragedy, premiered on Broadway in 2019 starring Nathan Lane and was nominated for seven Tony Awards. Jesse Green of the New York Times named Gary a Critic’s Pick, and called it “the unlikeliest bird to land on Broadway in many a year.” Hilton Als of the New Yorker wrote that his ears “shivered with pleasure” upon hearing the play’s dialogue, which is written largely in verse. Mac will be joined in conversation by theatre critic Laura Collins-Hughes. 

CLICK HERE FOR TICKETS 

 

CLICK HERE TO BUY THE BOOK

A New Karen Finley Performance: COVID VORTEX ANXIETY OPERA KITTY KALEIDOSCOPE DISCO

 

Two-time OBIE and BESSIE award winner, the GREAT Karen Finley is opening a new show at The Laurie Beechman Theatre! 

In COVID VORTEX ANXIETY OPERA KITTY KALEIDOSCOPE DISCO, Finley will present a new solo performance written during the pandemic that reflects on the traumas, politics, world events amidst the coping strategies with isolation, death, loss and a culture of anxiety. The text will be a poetic reflection/ response that explores the pandemic, and all its emotional consequences, embodiment, vision and courage, agency, absurdity and humanity. Being in New York City, as the hotspot will reflect on an earlier NYC as an AIDS hotspot while encountering the rage and sorrow that still remain. Such as the reversal of Roe vs Wade and the feminist intersections with other challenges. This look back while trying to look forward creates the performance purpose, passion and vulnerability of how to employ love despite the hate, to circumvent humanity despite the violence that proliferates. And the gratitude within the creative gesture as possibility of re-imagining anew.

Any new performance by Karen Finley is cause for celebration, so get your tickets Now at www.spincyclenyc.com.

COVID VORTEX ANXIETY OPERA KITTY KALEIDOSCOPE DISCO 
written and performed by Karen Finley

April 8 – May 6, 2023

Laurie Beechman Theatre
407 W 42nd Street
New York, NY 10036

Tickets: General Admission: $24
Reserved VIP Seating: $35
Plus $25 food/drink minimum

For tickets and information: CLICK HERE

2016 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards

Winners of the 2016 FringeNYC Overall Excellence Awards were announced by festival Producing Artistic Director Elena K. Holy  at DROM in New York.  As selected by an independent panel of over 30 theater professionals,  the winners are as follows:

Overall Play:
Pucker Up and Blow
The Radicalization of Rolfe
Black Magic

Overall Musical:
Mother Emanuel

Direction:
Kristin Skye Hoffmann - Dream Ticket
Leslie Kincaid Burby - Zamboni
Jessi D. Hill - Brewed

Ensemble:
The Gorges Motel
Colorblind'd
The Further Adventures of...
ChipandGus

Solo Performance:
The Box Show
Honour: Confessions of a Mumbai Courtesan
At The Flash
Pryor Truth
Rent Control

Playwrighting:
Kevin R. Free - Night of the Living N-Word!!
Dahn Hiuni - Murmurs & Incantations
Meghan Gambling - Bonnie's Future Sisters
Louis Aquiler & Chris D'Amato - Dementia Americana

Acting:
Taylor Turner - The Illusory Adventures of a Dreamer
Nadia Brown - Hysterical!
Meg Kelly - Kerrmoor
Dave Droxler - Walken on Sunshine

Choreography:
Tom Gold - Joey Variations

Scenic Design:
Jason Lee Courson - Cyrano: a love letter to a friendship

Music/Lyrics:
Aaron Michael Krueger - Super!

Music Composition:
Matthew Lowy - Fallen Skies
Ben Singer - At the Crossroads: Music for Faust

TheaterMania Audience Favorite:
Walken on Sunshine

John Epperson: The Artist Principally Known as Lypsinka

Coming to Joe's Pub for only 4 performances, John Epperson: The Artist Principally Known as Lypsinka, "an evening that encompasses a personal and rarified experience of moving to and living in New York City." This unique cabaret performance will weave together Stephen Sondheim, Frank Loesser, Jule Styne, Kay Thompson, Kander + Ebb, Comden + Green, Rodgers + Hammerstein, and transgender icon Christine Jorgenson. 

Anyone who's seen John as Lypsinka, knows that his knowledge of theater, film and music is incomparable and this new show is sure to be filled with humor and heart. Filled with anecdotes of growing up in Hazlehurst, Mississippi and his early years in New York, Epperson illustrates his life by affectionately making Broadway classics his own personal story. Jay Rogers directs.

The New York Times has called his style "zany chic" and we'd have to agree. 
This will not be a drag!

Tickets are available HERE - and don't wait to get them as this is sure to sell out.

John Epperson: 
The Artist Principally 
Known as Lypsinka 

August 15th + 17th @ 9:30pm
Sept. 13th + 16th @ 7:30pm

Tickets: $25 

Joe’s Pub at The Public
425 Lafayette Street
New York, NY 10003

10 Exciting Shows For Fall 2014

Axis Theater
SOLITARY 
LIGHT 
directed by Randy Sharp 
music and lyrics by Randy Sharp and Paul Carbonara 

September 10 - October 4, 2014  
Axis Theater

Solitary Light tells a story through the eyes of those who witnessed New York's Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire that resulted in the death of 146 people in 1911. It depicts the lives of Frank and Louise, two young politically minded immigrant workers in love, as they navigate the financially strapped owners and the incredibly rich families of 1911 New York who had little concept of the horrors of the working class experience. 

Info: CLICK HERE

Nature Theater of Oklahoma 
THE GREAT 
NATURE THEATER 
OF OKLAHOMA 
IS CALLING YOU!

Fri, Sept 12 at 7:30pm
Crossing The Line Festival/FIAF: Tinker Auditorium   

New York’s Nature Theater of Oklahoma spent the summer of 2013 in a wildly creative residency culminating in the Berlin premiere of Life and Times Episodes 1–5 and a work-in-progress showing of Episode 6. In the midst of this artistic frenzy, the company filmed an intimate documentary about their creative process, exposing with humor and heartache the reality of negotiating life, work, collaboration, institutional politics, and the public. 

Info: CLICK HERE

Soho Rep
GENERATIONS  
by debbie tucker green 
directed by Leah C. Gardiner 
composition, arrangement and music direction by Bongi Duma 

September 30 - October 26
Soho Rep

You’re invited into a kitchen in a South African township where a fragrant meal is being prepared. As they cook, three generations of a close-knit family banter, share stories and food. Both urgent and exuberant, debbie tucker green’s formally daring play tackles what’s transmitted and lost through generations of a family—and a nation. Generations reunites playwright debbie tucker green and director Leah C. Gardiner following their 2011 Obie award-winning production of born bad and features a 12-person community chorus led by Bongi Duma (Broadway’s The Lion King). Join us after every performance to share South African music, drink, and food from Madiba Restaurant.

Info: CLICK HERE

Big Dance Theater 
ALAN SMITHEE 
DIRECTED THIS PLAY 
directed by Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar 
choreography by Annie-B Parson and the company 

September 30 - October 4, 2014
BAM/Next Wave  Astronauts, Bolsheviks, and middle-American families mingle on a stage littered with lawn chairs, telephones, fur coats, and pistols in this collision of early-20th-century Moscow, midcentury Paris, and late-20th-century Houston. Big Dance Theater directors Annie-B Parson and Paul Lazar sample fragments of iconic film scripts and novels, divorced from their narrative contexts, to create a kinetic collage of political rhetoric, pathos, paranoia, and suburban love. With a titular nod to the Hollywood pseudonym[1] for directors who disavow their work after creative interference, Alan Smithee Directed This Play contemplates the slippery nature of creative control, history, its fictions, and the inextricable link between the personal and the historical. 

Info: CLICK HERE

600 Highwaymen
EMPLOYEE OF 
THE YEAR

October 15th and 16th at 7:30pm
Crossing The Line Festival/ FIAF Florence Gould Hall

A child's house burns down, leaving everyone and everything she has behind. From this moment, a singular journey begins. Combining 600 Highwaymen's arresting theatrical style with original songs by David Cale, this New York premiere, performed by five young girls, intimately investigates the process of transformation over a lifetime. 

Info: CLICK HERE

Dynasty Handbag
DYNASTY 
HANDBAG

Friday, October 17th

BAM/Next Wave/Fishman Space

Dynasty Handbag offers a feminist gloss on Homer’s Odyssey as part of Brooklyn Bred, a performance art showcase curated by Franklin Furnace Archive founder and director Martha Wilson. 

Info: CLICK HERE

Dave Malloy
Ghost 
Quartet 
music, lyrics, and text by Dave Malloy 
developed and arranged by Ghost Quartet
directed by Annie Tippe 

October 8 - November 1, 2014
The Bushwick Starr  

A song cycle about love, death, and whiskey. A camera breaks and four friends drink in an interwoven tale spanning seven centuries, with a murderous sister, a treehouse astronomer, a bear, a subway, and the ghost of Thelonious Monk. 

Info: CLICK HERE

Sister Sylvester
THE MAID'S 
THE MAIDS

October 30 - November 9, 2014
Abrons Arts Center/Experimental Theater

A performance involving Jean Genet’s The Maids, two professional housekeepers, two professional actors, and a lot of Fritos. Performed in English, Spanish and Portuguese, the show is a tale of separate — but overlapping — cities, labor and language, parallel worlds, and the possible violence of contact.   

Info: CLICK HERE

Andrea Kleine
SCREENING ROOM, 
OR, THE RETURN 
OF ANDREA KLEINE
(as revealed through a 
re-enactment of a 1977 
television program 
about a ‘long and baffling’ 
film by Yvonne Rainer.) 

Dec 03 - Dec 06, 2014
Chocolate Factory Theater   

Andrea Kleine resurfaces as the choreographer/filmmaker Yvonne Rainer and Rainer’s lion-tamer-turned-dancer character “Kristina,” transforming a verbatim  talk show interview into an imaginary film recounting Kleine’s journey of disappearance.

Info: CLICK HERE

Motus Theatre
NELLA 
TEMPESTA
conceived and directed by Enrico Casagrande and Daniela  Nicolo

December 11, 2014 - - December 21, 2014 
Ellen Stewart Theatre

Motus Theatre Company explores questions of freedom, control and power in Nella Tempesta. Reflecting on the turmoil in our society: the impact of Hurricane Sandy, the consequences of the economic crisis and questioning of future landscapes, Nella Tempesta is created from fragments of novels by authors including: Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Aldous Huxley as well as Shake- speare’s The Tempest and Une Tempête by Aimé Césaire. 

Info: CLICK HERE