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| The Flea announces 2019/20 Season with Mac Wellman and Taylor Mac | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 05:06 pm EDT 06/27/19 | |
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| THE FLEA ANNNOUNCES 2019-2020 SEASON Following on the success of the 2017/18 SEASON OF WOMXN and 2018/19 COLOR BRAVE SEASON, The Flea announced today that its 2019/20 Season will be the SEASON OF ANARCHY: THE RETURN OF THE MACS as they welcome back playwrights, poets and activists Mac Wellman and Taylor Mac. Niegel Smith, The Flea’s Artistic Director says of the two Macs that will grace the stages of The Flea, “In both Mac Wellman and Taylor Mac, we have poet playwrights with an absurdist’s sense of the world around us and a showman’s love of the power of theater. They are surrealists and dreamers and they choose the stage to let us know that while we might be close to the edge – all is not lost!” Adds Carol Ostrow, The Flea’s Producing Director, “It is high time that we honor Flea Founder Mac Wellman. His plays have influenced a generation of writers and his voice needs to be heard. As for Taylor Mac, aren’t we all waiting with bated breath to see what he does next? Well The Flea knows!” In Fall 2019, MAC WELMAN: PERFECT CATASTROPHES, A FESTIVAL OF PLAYS will feature a rotating repertory of five new incarnations – including two world premieres – of works by Wellman. Meghan Finn, a frequent Mac Wellman interpreter, will direct the world premiere of The Invention of Tragedy in The Sam Theater. Resident Director Dina Vovsi will tackle Sincerity Forever, Resident Directors Kate Moore Heaney and Tyler Thomas will direct The Sandalwood Boxand Associate Artist Michael Raine will direct The Fez(world premiere) all in The Siggy Theater. Associate Artist Kristan Seemel will direct Bad Penny in The Pete Theater. • SINCERITY FOREVER Directed by Resident Director Dina Vovsi August 24 through October 7 in The Siggy Sincerity Forever is a comedy about a group of young residents from the fictional southern town of Hillsbottom, a place with a prominent community of Ku Klux Klan members, many of them in their teens. They hang out in their cars on serene nights with friends and crushes, and question, as teens do, absolutely everything. • BAD PENNY Directed by Associate Artist Kristan Seemel August 24 through October 7 in The Pete 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 a penny in her pocket. The mythical Boatman of Bow Bridge is coming. He is coming to take away the person who is in possession of the penny. How do we make choices in the face of the end of the world as we know it? • THE INVENTION OF TRAGEDY World Premiere Directed by Guest Artist Meghan Finn September 7 through October 14in The Sam 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. The Invention of Tragedy is Wellman’s examination of the post-9/11 world and America’s general and genial acceptance of the Iraq war. • THE SANDALWOOD BOX Directed by Resident Directors Kate Moore Heaney and Tyler Thomas September 26 through November 1 in The Siggy In a surreal landscape on the border between dream and reality we follow the journey of Marsha Gates, a young college student who has lost her voice. On her way to speech therapy, Marsha meets Professor Claudia Mitchell, who captures the most captivating catastrophes of the world and preserves them in a sandalwood box. • THE FEZ World Premiere Directed by Associate Artist Michael Raine September 26 through November 1 in The Siggy 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! In October, The Flea will hold a symposium examining 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. MAC WELMAN: PERFECT CATASTROPHES, A FESTIVAL OF PLAYS runs August 24 - November 1, Thursdays - Mondays at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m., with Sunday matinees at 3 p.m. Tickets start at $37 with a limited number of $17 tickets available on a first-come, first-served basis.Tickets are now on-sale for members. Memberships start at $25. Public tickets are on-sale starting July 1 with ticket packages available. Also playing this fall in The Pete will be the next installment of CEREALS, The Flea’s foray into family programming. In October, we welcome Sara Farrington’s commission of Cosmicomics, a children’s theater piece based on the short stories by Italo Calvino. In Cosmicomics, the play’s non-gendered protagonist, Qfwfq, a young dinosaur who miraculously survived the ice age, makes 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. Conceived and directed by Resident Director Marina McClure, Cosmicomics will play Saturdays October 19 through November 10. The Flea’s spring 2020 centerpiece will be the world premiere production of THE FRE by Tony Award nominee and Bat Theater Company alum, Taylor Mac, and directed by The Flea’s Artistic Director and frequent Taylor Mac collaborator, Niegel Smith. THE FRE tells the story of an intellectual aesthete who is trapped inside a mud pit in the middle of a swamp by the swamp’s fatuous inhabitants who call themselves the “Fre.” Using a combination of potty-mouthed prose versus heightened verse and loosely based on The Frogs by Aristophanes, THE FRE will take audiences literally and figuratively into a mud pit to hash out the current political divide. It is a play for all ages; children and their families are encouraged to come. THE FRE will run March 9 through April 13 in The Sam. SERIALS, The Flea’s late-night episodic series produced entirely by The Bats, is now entering its ninth year.Monthly cycles of this raucous play competition where five plays enter and only three plays survive kick off on June 20. SERIALSfeatures the work of the SERIALSWriters Room, including Niccolo Aeed, Oscar A. L. Cabrera, Chloé Hayat, Lily Houghton, Brian Kettler, Yilong Liu, Liz Morgan, Jessica Moss and Marina Tempelsman. SERIALSis now at 10 p.m. in The Siggy. In addition, The Flea welcomes the following Anchor Partners, music, dance and theater companies in residence that will perform at The Flea this fall and winter in all of our spaces. Music companies include new music groups Experiments in Opera, Mango Baroque and MATA; modern dance companies include Tiffany Mills Company, The Bang Group and Elisa Monte Dance; and theater companies include New York City Children’s Theater, EPIC Players, Page 73 and Notch Theater Company. _____ BIOGRAPHIES: Mac Wellman’s work includes: The Offending Gesture, directed by Meghan Finn at the Connelly Theater in 2016; Horrocks (and Toutatis Too) Woo World Wuat Emerson College in Boston in 2013 (with Erin Mallon & Tim Sirgusa); Muazzez at the Chocolate Factory (PS122’s COIL Festival) with Steve Mellor, in 2014; 3 2’s; or AFARat Dixon Place in October 2011, The Difficulty of Crossing a Field (with composer David Lang) at Montclair in the fall of 2006 and 1965 UUfor performer Paul Lazar, and directed by Stephen Mellor at the Chocolate Factory in the fall of 2008. He has received numerous honors, including NEA, Guggenheim, and Foundation of Contemporary Arts fellowships. In 2003 he received his third Obie, for lifetime Achievement. In 2006 his third novel, Q’s Q, was published by Green Integer, and in 2008 a volume of stories, A Chronicle of the Madness of Small Worlds, was published by Trip Street Press as well as a new collection of plays The Difficulty of Crossing a Field from Minnesota Press. His books of poetry include Miniature (2002), Strange Elegies (2006), Split the Stick (2012) from Roof Books, and Left Glove (2011), from Solid Objects Press. His novel Linda Perdidowon the 2011 FC2 Catherine Doctorow Prize for Innovative Fiction. He is Distinguished Professor of Play Writing at Brooklyn College. Taylor Mac—who uses “judy” (lowercase sic unless at the start of a sentence, just like a regular pronoun), not as a name but as a gender pronoun—is a playwright, actor, singer-songwriter, performance artist, director and producer. Judy’s work has been performed in hundreds venues including on Broadway and in New York’s Town Hall, Lincoln Center, Celebrate Brooklyn, and Playwrights Horizons, as well as London’s Hackney Empire and Barbican, D.C.’s Kennedy Center, Los Angeles’s Royce Hall and Ace Theater (through the Center for the Art of Performance), Chicago’s Steppenwolf Theatre, the Sydney Opera House, The Melbourne Festival (Forum Theater), Stockholm’s Sodra Theatern, the Spoleto Festival, and San Francisco’s Curran Theater and MOMA. Judy is the author of many works of theater including, Gary, A Sequel to Titus Andronicus, A 24-Decade History of Popular Music, Hir, The Walk Across America for Mother Earth, Comparison is Violence, The Lily’s Revenge, The Young Ladies Of, Red Tide Blooming, The Be(a)st of Taylor Mac, Cardiac Arrest or Venus on a Half-Clam, The Face of Liberalism, Okay, Maurizio Pollini, A Crevice, and The Hot Monthand the soon to be premiered play, Prosperous Fools. Sometimes Taylor acts in other people’s plays (or co-creations). Notably: Shen Teh/Shui Ta in The Foundry Theater’s production of Good Person of Szechwan at La Mama and the Public Theater, in the City Center’s Encores production of Gone Missing, Puck/Egeus in the Classic Stage Company’s A Midsummer’s Night Dream, and in the two-man vaudeville, The Last Two People On Earth opposite Mandy Patinkin and directed by Susan Stroman. Mac is a MacArthur Fellow, a Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Drama, a Tony Award® nominated playwright, and the recipient of multiple awards including the Kennedy Prize, a NY Drama Critics Circle Award, a Doris Duke Performing Artist Award, a Guggenheim, the Herb Alpert in Theater, the Peter Zeisler Memorial Award, the Helen Merrill Playwriting Award, 2 Bessies, 2 Obies, a Helpmann, and an Ethyl Eichelberger Award. An alumnus of New Dramatists, judy is currently a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect and the Resident playwright at HERE. Niegel Smith is a theater director and performance artist who sculpts social spaces into unique communal environments where we make new rituals, excavate our pasts and imagine future narratives. Directing credits include Southern Promises(The Flea, 2019), How to Catch Creation(Goodman Theatre, 2019), Scraps(The Flea, 2018), Father Comes Home From the Wars (Parts 1, 2 & 3) (Goodman Theatre, 2018), Syncing Ink(Alley Theater, 2017; The Flea, 2017), Take Care(The Flea, 2015-2016), Hir(Magic Theatre, 2014; Mixed Blood, 2015; Playwrights Horizons, 2015), A 24 Decade History of Popular Music…(New York Live Arts, et al., 2015), The Perils of Obedience(Abrons Arts Center, 2013–ongoing), and Neighbors(The Public Theater, 2010). His participatory performances have been produced by American Realness, Dartmouth College, The New Museum, Prelude Festival, PS 122, and the Van Alen Institute, among others. He is the Artistic Director of The Flea; Associate Artistic Director of Elastic City; and ringleader of Willing Participant - an artistic activist organization that whips up urgent poetic responses to crazy stuff that happens. www.niegelsmith.com. Meghan Finn is the Artistic Director of The Tank. She previously directed the World Premieres of Mac Wellman's The Offending Gesture (The Tank/3LD) and 3,2's; or AFAR (Dixon Place) as well as several other productions of his work. Other highlights include: WHEN WE WENT ELECTRONIC by Caitlyn Saylor Stephens (The Tank); Manufacturing Mischief: A Noam Chomsky Puppet Play (Pedro Reyes at The Tank, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, The Power Plant Art Gallery/Canadian Stage, Serpentine Gallery London, Museo Jumex Mexico City, Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, The Night of Philosophy at the Brooklyn Public Library, the Savannah College of Art and Design); DOOMOCRACY (Pedro Reyes for Creative Time); American Power by Mitch Epstein and Erik Friedlander (V&A London, The Wexner Center), The Service Road by Erin Courtney (Adhesive Theater Project); CHARLESES by Carl Holder (The Tank); Sam's Tea Shack by Sam Soghor and Ben Gassman (The Tank). www.thetanknyc.org Dina Vovsi is a New York-based director and theatermaker. Current and upcoming: The Only Ones(Working Theater 5 Boroughs 1 City commission co-created with Liba Vaynberg). Recent: Drive (The Civilians' R&D Group), Iphigenia and Other Daughters (LIU Post), Untitled Parlor Play, or, For Home Amusement (Access Residency), First by Faith: The Life of Mary McLeod Bethune (United Solo, Best Educational Show), The Bastard (Dixon Place), Visiting Hours (TheaterLab). Dina has developed new work at The Culture Project’s Women Center Stage, The Barn Arts Collective, FringeNYC, Working Theater, Atlantic Acting School, Pipeline Theatre Company, Fresh Ground Pepper, Theatre 167, The Flea. Assistant directing: Broadway, off-Broadway, and regionally, with Roundabout, Playwrights Horizons, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Spoleto Festival USA. Dina is a Resident Director at The Flea and a member of the 2018-2019 Civilians R&D Group. She has been a Robert Moss Directing Fellow at Playwrights Horizons, the recipient of an SDC Foundation Observership, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors’ Lab, an O'Neill National Directors Fellowship Finalist, and a Mass MoCA Assets for Artists Grantee. www.dinavovsi.com Kristan Seemel, before coming to New York, was a freelance director in Oregon for the better part of a decade. While on the other coast, he worked for eight seasons at Portland Center Stage, first as a Literary Associate and later as Corporate Development Associate during the organization’s transition into the historic Armory Theater, a world-renowned Green Building project. Kristan came up in the theater working on new plays, serving as dramaturg on a score of premiere productions and developmental workshops. His passion for new American writing is clear from his direction of premiers such as Mary-Kate Olsen is in Love by Mallery Avidon and The Electric Lighthouse by Ed Himes (The Flea). Other new plays Kristan has directed include Mutt by Lava Alapai (Many Hats Collective) and The Verspiary by Matthew Zrebski (Stark Raving Theatre) as well as NW regional premieres of Carlos Murillo’s Mimesophobia (Sand & Glass Productions), The Long Christmas Ride Home by Paula Vogel (TheatreVertigo) and Mac Wellman’s A Murder of Crows (defunkt theatre). He has developed new plays with Playwrights Horizons/Clubbed Thumb (SuperLab), The Lark, Brave New World Repertory Theater, Spookfish and The Barn Arts Collective. Kristan is a graduate of the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA program in directing and, while in Providence, he helmed workshop productions Oh Guru Guru Guru by Mallery Avidon and The Darkson Chronicles by Theo Goodell. Favorite revivals include Brecht & Weill’s The Threepenny Opera, John Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi (Brown/Trinity Rep) and Hamlet (CoHo Productions). Kristan’s staging of Gertrude Stein’s Doctor Faustus Lights the Lights (defunkt theatre) garnered him a Portland Dramatic Critics Circle award (Drammy) for Outstanding Direction. Some of his favorite assisting credits include Gurney’s AJAX, The Mysteries (The Flea), A Raisin in the Sun, A Christmas Carol and Camelot (Trinity Rep). Kristan is a proud alumnus of the 2012/13 Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab and the SDCF Observership Program. www.kristanseemel.com Kate Moore Heaney is a NYC-based director, producer, and dramaturg committed to promoting empathy and investigating social, political, and human rights issues through theatre. Kate is Artistic Producer at Noor Theatre, Co-Program Director of the Amoralists’ ‘Wright Club, and a Resident Director at The Flea. She has directed with the Amoralists, The Civilians’ R&D Group, The Shakespeare Society, The PIT, Theatre 4the People, Directors’ Gathering Jam, and more. She has worked, trained, and/or assistant directed with Ibex Theatricals/The New Vic, McCarter Theatre, Second Stage, Clubbed Thumb, CRY HAVOC, Yale Institute for Music Theatre, Théâtre du Châtelet, and 24 Hour Plays on Broadway. BA: Yale. www.katemooreheaney.com Tyler Thomas is a NYC-based theater maker, focused primarily on ensemble-driven, multidisciplinary work reframing marginal space, narrative, and event. Her work has been shown at Signature Theatre, The New Ohio, The Flea, New York Musical Festival, HERE Arts Center, Paradise Factory, and various theaters across NYU. She is a former SDCF Observer, member of the Lincoln Center Directors' Lab, Visiting Artist at the Athens Conservatoire in Greece, and current Resident Director at The Flea Theater. As an assistant director, she has worked with Lear deBessonet, Taibi Magar, Jo Bonney, Niegel Smith, Lee Sunday Evans, Katie Brook, and as associate dramaturg for The Builders Association. Tyler holds a BFA in Drama and MA in Arts Politics) from NYU Tisch. She is a native of Louisiana. Michael Raine is a NYC based director and choreographer. A long-time rabble-rouser at the Flea, Michael joined the Resident Director program in 2014. During his time at The Flea, Michael has directed the Grand-Guignol classic The System, Catya McMullen’s LOCKED UP BITCHES and two installments of Flea Fridays: Appropriation, Inspiration and Representation, written by Liz Morgan and How Color Brave Are You? co-directed with Niegel Smith. Michael is currently the artistic producer of SERIALS, where he has directed dozens of episodes, including recent hits The Factory by Brian Kettler and Cats: In the Original Dialect, also with Liz Morgan. A life-long tap dancer at heart, Michael’s choreography has been seen regionally and around New York, including Yale Rep, Joe’s Pub, Theater for a New City, NYMF, and the Folksbiene, five seasons at the Weston Playhouse and the Japanese tour of Rent. Michael has choreographed productions for Juilliard Drama, CAP21, Brooklyn College and University of Miami as well as over 20 productions as a member of the faculty for NYU’s graduate acting department, where he has been teaching un-gendered social and ballroom dancing. Sara Farrington is the co-founder of Foxy Films, her theater company w/ Reid Farrington. MFA: Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman. HARP Artist @ HERE Arts for CasablancaBox, nominated for two Drama Desk Awards: Unique Theatrical Experience & Outstanding Projection Design. Upcoming: BrandoCapote(Tank), Honduras(Michael Chekhov Theater Fest), Recent: Honduras (AFO SoloCollective, IHRAF), Leisure, Labor, Lust(Tank, The Mount, Art House), The Return (commissioned/performed at The Metropolitan Museum), Near Vicksburg (Incubator Arts), Mickey & Sage (Incubator, Great Plains Theater Conf., NTI @ O'Neill, ShelterBelt, Omaha.) Supported by: Venturous Fund, MediaTHE, NYSCA, Axe-Houghton, Arch & Bruce Brown Foundation. MacDowell Colony fellow, Connecticut College & NTI @ O'Neill grad, Wooster Group intern. Published by Broadway Play Publishing. Sara is the Artistic Associate at Art House, Jersey City, freelances for The Brooklyn Rail, is an advocate for rights of asylum-seekers & champion of #MeToo. Sara & Reid Farrington have two boys. www.ladyfarrington.com Marina McClure creates emotionally-charged theater, opera, and spectacles by fusing striking visual design and physical performance. Projects in development include Tear a Root from the Earth, a new musical that examines the legacy of American intervention in Afghanistan, with Qais Essar and Gramophonic (Creative Capital: “On Our Radar”, The Kennedy Center, BRIC, New Ohio Ice Factory); Letters from Home, a multimedia performance in collaboration with an intergenerational Cambodian-American team that explores the impact of the Khmer Rouge genocide on their artistic practices. Marina recently directed the world premiere of Steph del Rosso’s Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill Fill(The Flea), Wing It!,a large-scale community performance for Handspring Puppet Company in celebration of South Africa’s National Day of Reconciliation, and collaborated on Casablancabox (2017 Drama Desk Nomination for Unique Theatrical Experience, HERE). She has developed new plays and musicals with The Playwright’s Realm, The Flea, Northern Stage, Independent Shakespeare, Boston Court, REDCAT, Peterborough Players, Toronto’s Theatre Centre, and teaches directing at the National Theater Institute. MFA: CalArts. www.marinamcclure.com The Bats are the resident acting company members of The Flea Theater. Each season, hundreds of actors audition for a place in this unique company. The Bats perform in extended runs of challenging classics, as well world premieres of new plays. They are the lifeblood of The Flea. The Flea Theater, under Artistic Director Niegel Smith and Producing Director Carol Ostrow, is one of New York's leading Off-Off-Broadway companies. Winner of several Obie Awards, a Special Drama Desk Award for outstanding achievement and an Otto Award for political theater, The Flea has presented over 100 theatrical, musical and dance performances since its inception in 1996. Past productions include premieres by Steven Banks, Thomas Bradshaw, Erin Courtney, Bathsheba Doran, Will Eno, Karen Finley, Amy Freed, Sarah Gancher, Sean Graney, A.R. Gurney, Jennifer Haley, Hamish Linklater, Enrique Gutiérrez, Ellen McLaughlin, Ortiz Monasterio, Itamar Moses, Anne Nelson, NSangou Njikam, Qui Nguyen, Adam Rapp, Jonathan Reynolds, Kate Robbins, Roger Rosenblatt, Todd Solondz, Elizabeth Swados, and Mac Wellman. Successes include Drama Desk nominated She Kills Monsters, New York Times Critics’ Pick Inanimate, Syncing Ink, These Seven Sicknesses, Restoration Comedy, The Mysteries and ten World Premiere productions by A.R. Gurney, including the WSJ Best New Play of 2013, Family Furniture. The Flea Theater is located at 20 Thomas Street between Church and Broadway, three blocks north of Chambers, close to the A/C/E, N/Q/R/W, 4/5/6, J/M/Z and 1/2/3 subway lines. Purchase tickets by calling 212-352-3101 or online at www.theflea.org |
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