| Theater in Quarantine Premieres Liza Birkenmeier's HONESTLY SINCERE on March 18 | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 11:06 am EDT 03/17/21 | |
|
|
|
| THEATER IN QUARANTINE PRESENTS WORLD PREMIERE OF LIZA BIRKENMEIER'S HONESTLY SINCERE Publicity Images by Katie Rose McLaughlin "Virtuosic… some of the new medium's most imaginative work." - Jesse Green, New York Times "Makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination." - Helen Shaw, Vulture "The closet in question contains astounding multitudes." - Alexandra Schwartz, The New Yorker Theater in Quarantine, a pandemic performance laboratory from writer, director, and performer Joshua William Gelb and choreographer Katie Rose McLaughlin, is proud to present the world premiere of Honestly Sincere, a new play written by Liza Birkenmeier, whose 2019 play, Dr. Ride's American Beach House, was a New York Times critic's pick. Set to premiere on March 18 on YouTube, Honestly Sincere features direction by Gelb, choreography and additional direction by McLaughlin, sound design by M. Florian Staab (Bill Irwin's On Beckett), and visual design by Sara C Walsh (Queen of the Night). Honestly Sincere is set in 2002 and centers on Greta, a 13-year-old girl who accesses a Nokia mobile phone that feels supernatural. Without the language or means to articulate her own unruly yearnings, Greta fantasizes about being a middle-aged man; she is embodied by Gelb. Greta gets to chase her wild and secret hopes with confidence, but the erotic danger of humiliation might be the only thing more powerful than her phone. In addition to Gelb on screen, Honestly Sincere features the vocal talents of teenage actors Alexander Bello, Hailey Lynn Elberg, and Remi Elberg as well as Jes Bedwinek and Morgan Lindsey Tachco. Live streamed performances of Honestly Sincere will take place on Thursday, March 18 at 7pm and 9pm on Theater in Quarantine's YouTube page. Following the live broadcast, the on-demand recording of Blood Meal will be available at www.youtube.com/theaterinquarantine, along with the complete Theater in Quarantine archive, in perpetuity. Theater in Quarantine isJoshua William Gelb (founder and co-creative director), Katie Rose McLaughlin (co-creative director), Morgan Lindsey Tachco (creative producer), Brian Bose (social media), and Everyman Agency (public relations). Theater in Quarantine is made possible in part with public funds from Creative Engagement, supported by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by LMCC. Theater in Quarantine's work is generously supported by a Creative Residency with La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club, as participants in LaMaMa and CultureHub's Experiments in Digital Storytelling program, the Mental Insight Foundation, and by their many individual donors. About the Artists Joshua William Gelb is an East Village-based director, performer, and librettist currently building theater out of his converted closet christened the Theater in Quarantine. On its YouTube channel, Theater in Quarantine has presented nearly 20 different evenings of live digital performance with institutional supporters LaMama, CultureHub, Theater Mitu, and The Invisible Dog, as well as "a New York rogue's gallery of experimental makers and designers" (Helen Shaw, Vulture). Prior to the pandemic, Gelb created both Jazz Singer and The Black Crook in residence at Abrons Arts Center, while his Drama Desk-nominated adaptation of A Hunger Artist, created with Sinking Ship, continues to tour. Gelb participated in the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, is an associate artist with Sinking Ship, teaches Theater Collaboration at Cooper Union, and is a 2021 artist in residence at LaMama and CultureHub's Experiments in Digital Storytelling program. Katie Rose McLaughlin is an NYC-based choreographer and director originally from Minneapolis, MN. Katie Rose is the Associate Choreographer of the Tony award-winning Broadway show Hadestown directed by Rachel Chavkin and choreographed by David Neumann. Recently she has been creating work as the co-Creative Director for Theater in Quarantine which has produced over 20 different evenings of work. Notable theater credits include Orlando (Williamstown Theatre Festival), Indecent (Weston Playhouse), Bear Slayer (Ars Nova), Triplight (Joes Pub), SEAGULLMACHINE (La Mama ETC), and The Black Crook (Abrons Arts Center). She was an artist-in-residence at LMCC's Process Space, Dance Lab New York, Kaatsbaan International Dance Center, the Barn Arts Collective, and LMCC's SPARC program and is a 2021 artist-in-residence at La Mama and CultureHub's Experiments in Digital Storytelling program. In 2013, she co-founded and became the Artistic Director of Designated Movement Co., a dance/theater company interested in blurring the lines between forms. Visit Katierosemclaughlin.com for more information. Liza Birkenmeier was recently the Tow Playwright-in-Residence at Ars Nova, where her play Dr. Ride's American Beach House premiered in 2019. She is collaborating with director Katie Brook on Islander, a verbatim NHL piece, which has been postponed at NYTW Next Door. Her musical collaboration with Jill Sobule, F*ck7thGrade, is currently streaming online, produced by City Theatre. Her short performance piece/personality assessment, Please Welcome Our Guest, created specifically as a virtual experience and directed by Trish Harnetiaux, will premiere as part of MTC's Snapshot Series this spring. She is a New Georges Resident Artist and a Millay, Yaddo, and Macdowell Fellow. M. Florian Staab (sound design) is a German-American Composer and Sound Designer. He was born and raised in Germany and is now based in Brooklyn, New York. Staab writes music and designs sound for Theater, Opera, Dance and other live performance events. He also records and mixes live music performances. Recently he has been doing post-production audio and video design from his home studio. He is an associate artist with Sinking Ship Productions and the resident sound designer at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference. He holds a BA from Oberlin College and an MFA from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. In his spare time, he enjoys backpacking in the woods. In "The Before Times" you may have heard Staab's work at the Public Theater, the Irish Repertory Theatre, Trinity Repertory Company, City Theatre Pittsburgh, Center Theatre Group, the Mint Theater Company, the Pearl Theatre Company, the Drama League, New Saloon, the Cell, Partial Comfort, Culture Project, Keen Company, Chicago Opera Vanguard and the Metropolitan Museum. He has been a visiting artist at several educational institutions such as Brown University, Williams College, Princeton University, Juilliard, Fordham University, Northwestern University and the Dalton School. www.florianstaab.com Sara C Walsh (visual design) is a New York based artist, designer, and teacher. Her interests span many genres. She works in immersive and environmental theatre as well as traditional venues. She works with directors, choreographers, composers, and playwrights. She largely designs temporal spaces for performers and people. She also creates puppets and performs - most recently at The Object Movement Puppetry Festival through The Center at West Park in NYC. She helped create Queen of the Night (as Head of Design), a large scale immersive theatre/circus/food experience built in the Diamond Horseshoe, the club in the Paramount Hotel in Times Square. New York Magazine called it "New York's hottest nightlife event". She won a New York Dance and Performance award ("Bessie") for 837 Venice Blvd. with Faye Driscoll. She designed the Obie award-winning Great Lakes for Lee Sunday Evans, and Kerrigan & Lowdermilk's immersive house party musical called The Bad Years for Stephen Brackett. Next up is a ZOOM production of Block Association for the Humana Festival at Actors Theatre of Louisville. Sara is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hamilton College in upstate NY and last year taught The Performance of Design at Stanford University as the Mohr Visiting Artist. www.saracwalsh.com About Theater in Quarantine Shortly after the coronavirus pandemic closed all theaters, Joshua William Gelb transformed a 2' x 4' x 8' closet inside his East Village apartment into a white-box theater. Starting on March 27, Gelb and his collaborators began releasing pre-recorded studies in movement, clown, camera orientation, and perspective, building towards more complex theatrical experiences. On April 23, they premiered Theater in Quarantine's first live-stream performance: an adaptation of Kafka's The Neighbor which was followed by an unauthorized edit of Beckett's Krapp's Last Tape and collaborations with artists like Scott R. Sheppard (Underground Railroad Game), Nehemiah Luckett (Jazz Singer), and Ellen Winter (36 Questions). Theater in Quarantine's productions of The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy and Footnote for the End of Time were met with critical acclaim. Jesse Green in his New York Times critic's pick review declared that Theater in Quarantine has produced "some of the new medium's most imaginative work from some of its simplest materials." Helen Shaw in Vulture wrote that Theater in Quarantine "makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination." Maya Phillips in The New York Times noted, "These small-scale, digitally savvy productions have matched the texts in their idiosyncratic approaches." Theater in Quarantine's first musical, I Am Sending You the Sacred Face, by Obie award-winner Heather Cristian was one of Vulture's Best Theater Moments of 2020. Helen Shaw found it "as beautiful a cause for meditation as anything in the Book of Psalms - and as worthy an object for devotion." Jesse Green in his New York Times critic's pick review noted, "Theater in Quarantine turns the constraints of its odd conditions into a marvelous style." Additional works include Mute Swan by Pulitzer-prize finalist Madeleine George and the New York Times critic's pick production of Blood Meal by Obie award-winner Scott R. Sheppard. The complete archive of original works by Theater in Quarantine is available for free at www.youtube.com/theaterinquarantine. Please visit www.theaterinquarantine.com for more information. |
|
| Link | http://www.theaterinquarantine.com |
| reply | |
|
|
|
| Previous: | THE DRAMATISTS GUILD’S SECOND ANNUAL END OF PLAY.™ MONTH BEGINS APRIL 1, 2021 - Official_Press_Release 11:07 am EDT 03/17/21 |
| Next: | Performance for One's one year anniversary - Official_Press_Release 11:05 am EDT 03/17/21 |
| Thread: | |
Time to render: 0.022786 seconds.