| Downtown Alliance, En Garde Arts & The Tank Present DOWNTOWN LIVE - A New Performing Arts Festival | |
| Posted by: Official_Press_Release 11:14 am EDT 03/25/21 | |
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| DOWNTOWN ALLIANCE IN ASSOCIATION WITH EN GARDE ARTS AND THE TANK PRESENT DOWNTOWN LIVE A NEW PERFORMING ARTS FESTIVAL LIVE AND IN-PERSON IN LOWER MANHATTAN MAY 15-16 & MAY 22-23, 2021 FEATURING EISA DAVIS WITH KANEZA SCHAAL & JACKIE SIBBLIES DRURY, MEGHAN FINN WITH KAARON BRISCOE, DAVID GREENSPAN, GROUP .BR, BABA ISRAEL & GRACE GALU, JAMES & JEROME, KATIE MADISON, KUHOO VERMA WITH JUSTIN RAMOS, ELLEN WINTER WITH MACHEL ROSS INFORMATION AND RESERVATIONS AVAILABLE AT ENGARDEARTS.ORG (New York) The Alliance for Downtown New York (Jessica Lappin, President), in association with En Garde Arts (Anne Hamburger, Artistic Director; Heather Cohn, Executive Director) and The Tank (Meghan Finn, Artistic Director; Johnny G. Lloyd, Director of Artistic Development) are proud to announce Downtown Live,a new free performing arts festival.Over two weekends in May, Downtown Live's nearly 30 in-person shows will bring live art performances to unexpected places across Lower Manhattan, including a covered loading dock (4 New York Plaza), an arcade along the Stone Street Historic District (85 Broad Street) and a plaza with harbor views near The Battery (1 Battery Park Plaza). After a year of lockdowns, Downtown Live offers audiences a long-awaited chance to see live theatre, contemporary performance and music from a lineup that features many Obie Award and Pulitzer Prize winners, as well as emerging voices. Audience members will have a chance to engage with live, pandemic-responsible programming and explore all that Lower Manhattan has to offer. "New York City has a long history of being the cultural epicenter of live theater, music and the performing arts. It's embedded in our DNA and an essential component of what makes our city tick," said Jessica Lappin, President, Alliance for Downtown New York. "Our festival, Downtown Live, will be an exciting and safe way to help bring live performances back to Lower Manhattan and a great signal of what lies ahead." En Garde Arts Artistic Director Anne Hamburger conceived Downtown Live as a way to reinvigorate live performance while putting dozens of theatre artists, technicians and support artists back to work quickly with an opening date that was feasible during COVID. "Downtown Live can help to alleviate the isolation that we have all felt since the shutdown," says Hamburger. "It provides a safe pathway back to live theatre while providing greatly needed financial support to a group of risk-taking visionary theatre artists and musicians." "We've put together an incredible line-up of established and emerging artists-audiences are going to relish the chance to catch these music and theatre performers at work. We're thrilled for the support of the Downtown Alliance-this event will enliven the street life, supporting local businesses in lower Manhattan," says The Tank Artistic Director Meghan Finn. Confirmed artists participating in Downtown Live include Pulitzer Prize finalist and celebrated writer and performer Eisa Davis with Kaneza Schaal & Jackie Sibblies Drury; Artistic Director of the Obie-Award winning theater The Tank Meghan Finn with playwright/actress Kaaron Briscoe; Obie Award-winning, Off-Broadway favorite playwright and actor David Greenspan; award-winning New York-based Brazilian Theater Company, Group .BR; hip-hop, spoken word and performance artists Baba Israel & Grace Galu; popular downtown music and storytelling duo James & Jerome; classical singer/musical theatre composer and performer Katie Madison; Lucille Lortel Award-winning performer Kuhoo Verma with Justin Ramos; and genre-bending songwriter, theatre-maker and solo performer Ellen Winter with Machel Ross. Tickets will be free with reservations required and will be available starting Monday April 19th at TheTankNYC.org and EnGardeArts.org. All attendees will be required to follow COVID Safety Protocols, including mask and social distancing guidelines. Space is extremely limited. Overseeing the physical production of the festival is Mosaic NYC, a Women- and Black-owned event design and production company specializing in bespoke theatre, music and branded events. To learn more, visit www.mosaicnyc.com. Downtown Live extends great thanks to Rudin Management Company, Inc. (1 Battery Park Plaza), Edge Funds (4 New York Plaza) and Ivanhoe Cambridge (85 Broad Street) for extending use of their properties to host these performances. ABOUT DOWNTOWN ALLIANCE The mission of the Alliance for Downtown New York is to provide service, advocacy, research and information to advance Lower Manhattan as a global model of a 21st century Central Business District for businesses, residents and visitors. The Downtown Alliance manages the Downtown-Lower Manhattan Business Improvement District (BID), serving an area roughly from City Hall to the Battery, from the East River to West Street. For more information visit downtownny.com. ABOUT EN GARDE ARTS When the pandemic shut down theatres across the country, En Garde Arts harkened back to its site-specific roots. En Garde Arts is launching three major projects happening in 2021, including an immersive theatrical project meets art installation called A Dozen Dreams, in which En Garde Arts asked a dozen women playwrights to share their dreams, and they brought them to life through sets, lights, video and sound. En Garde is also presenting site-specific festivals in association with business improvement districts in May and September. These three projects will enable En Garde Arts to employ nearly 200 artists, technicians and production personnel at a time when opportunities are scarce. www.engardearts.org All ofEn Garde Arts productions reach across artistic, physical and social boundaries. From 1985 until 1999, En Garde Arts was the first exclusively site-specific theatre in New York, re-envisioning the city as a stage that interwove story with location in places such as Central Park, Penn Yards, East River Park, the Chelsea Hotel, the Meatpacking District and beyond. En Garde was honored with six Obie Awards, two Drama Desk Awards and an Outer Critics Circle Special Award - with The New York Times proclaiming the organization to be "an invigorating urban presence." En Garde Arts recent productions include BASETRACK Live at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), named one of the top ten productions of the year by The New York Times, that culminated in a 40-city national tour that included the military base Fort Hood in Texas. En Garde's most recent production was Fandango for Butterflies (and Coyotes), a New York Times Critics Pick inspired by interviews with undocumented immigrants from Latin America living in New York, which embarked on a five-borough tour and was shut down early due to the pandemic. In 2019, En Garde Arts launched a new series, "Uncommon Voices," that was greenlit for eight episodes by WNET's ALL ARTS and can be seen on allarts.org. ABOUT THE TANK Founded in 2003, The Tank is an Obie Award-winning, multi-disciplinary non-profit arts presenter and producer, which provides a home to emerging artists working across all disciplines, including theater, comedy, dance, film, music, puppetry, and storytelling. Led by Artistic Director Meghan Finn, Managing Producer Danielle Monica Long King and Director of Artistic Development Johnny G. Lloyd, The Tank champions emerging artists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas and forms of expression. In doing so the company removes the economic barriers from the creation of new work for artists launching their careers and experimenting within their art form. From the company's home with two theaters on 36th Street, The Tank serves over 2,500 artists every year, presents over 1,000 performances, and welcomes 36,000 audience members annually. The company fully produces a curated season of 13-18 theatrical World or New York premieres each season. During the ongoing COVID-19 public health crisis, The Tank has launched CyberTank, a virtual gathering space and programming platform for artists to share work. With weekly themed variety shows, ongoing series and evening-length shows made for the virtual frame, CyberTank has already presented the work of over 2,555 artists in over 317 performances to over 13,844 audience members across the country and the world. Recent Tank-produced work includes The New York Times Critics' Picks OPEN by Crystal Skillman, directed by Jessi D. Hill (2019); Red Emma & The Mad Monk by Alexis Roblan, directed by Katie Lindsay (2018); and The Offending Gesture by Mac Wellman, directed by Meghan Finn (2016), as well as Drama Desk Award-nominated productions The Hunger Artist (2018), The Paper Hat Game (2017), the ephemera trilogy (2017), Ada/Ava (2016) and youarenowhere (2016). www.TheTankNYC.org # # # BIOS KAARON BRISCOE(she/her) is a native of New Orleans who has made Brooklyn her home. Kaaron loves learning and is extremely curious about all the world has to offer. She has been studying French for the past few years and can order pastries like a pro! Kaaron's first "starring role" on stage was as Miss Grasshopper in a riveting adaptation of The Grasshopper and the Ant. She was eight and hooked on the thrill of being in front of an audience. It doesn't matter whether that audience is right there or on the other side of a camera lens, there is something about telling a story that she cannot resist. Kaaron's love of storytelling has moved into writing and creating her own work. She has full length plays, a few shorts, and some very salty Facebook posts. Kaaron's written work mirrors what she looks for in acting: fantastic, absurd, and funny. She likes stories that surprise or take people out of their comfort zones. EISA DAVIS (she/her) is an award-winning, multi-disciplinary artist working onscreen, on and off-Broadway, and in hybrid performance spaces. She has originated roles in The Secret Life of Bees, Preludes, This and Passing Strange. Her own works include two albums (Something Else and Tinctures), The Essentialisn't (2020 Creative Capital Award), Bulrusher (Pulitzer finalist) and Angela's Mixtape. She is thrilled to premiere Kathleen Collins' work in conjunction with AFROFEMONONOMY // WORK THE ROOTS at Performance Space New York. Follow for more of her work on Instagram @eisadavis. MEGHAN FINN (she/her) is the Artistic Director of The Tank. Her work has been seen at the Tank, the V&A Serpentine Galleries, The Wexner Center, SCAD, The Logan Center for the Arts, Museo Jumex Mexico City, The Power Plant, Canadian Stage, Carnegie Mellon, Brooklyn College, MIT, the Great Plains Theater Conference and others. She has directed three world premieres by esteemed playwright Mac Wellman, including most recently The Invention of Tragedy. She is a frequent collaborator of conceptual artist and sculptor Pedro Reyes and directed Doomocracy for Creative Time and with a team of artists recently launched Mañanaland, an AR Scavenger hunt in the five boroughs of NYC, co-created with Reyes. She has collaborated with photographer Mitch Epstein on a live performance with cellist Erik Friedlander as well as premieres by Erin Courtney, Peggy Stafford, Gary Winter, Ben Gassman, Alexandra Collier, Carl Holder, Eliza Bent and Cori Copp. When We Went Electronic by Caitlyn Saylor Stephens which premiered at The Tank in 2018 will tour in 2021 to ART HOUSE, The Koun Theater in Athens Greece and OnStage! FestivalRome. thetanknyc.org GRACE GALU (she/her) is a vocalist, actor, guitarist and composer. She combines the sounds of her Irish and Congolese heritage and her LES upbringing in a soulful and gritty twist. She began her career in musical theater in the children's theater company TADA! Grace then received a scholarship in composition from Third Street Music Settlement. There she studied guitar and ensemble composition under Liam Wood and Jeff Peretz. Her composition, "Ordinary Sentiment" was featured in the Ed Burns film Purple Violets which premiered at the TriBeCa Film Festival. Grace devised the Mendelssohn Electric with Trusty Sidekick, and was cast as the lead in their production, The Gospel Electric, commissioned by the Park Avenue Armory. She is a core member of the band Soul Inscribed and was twice selected as a cultural ambassador for the American Music Abroad program. She is a finalist for their next residency program. Soul Inscribed has recently been signed to the music label, Tokyo Dawn and just released their EP, Tune UP. Grace is also an artist in residence at HERE Arts Center and the composer for Cannabis! The Theatrical Concert. She is an ensemble member in Nia Witherspoon's production, The Dark Girl Chronicles. Grace has toured schools, theaters, and festivals internationally and can't wait to travel again! DAVID GREENSPAN (he/him) is perhaps best known for appearing in his own plays, most notably Dead Mother, She Stoops to Comedy, Go Back to Where You Are, I'm Looking for Helen Twelvetrees and his solo plays The Argument and The Myopia - and for performing solo renditions of Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, Barry Conners' The Patsy, Gertrude Stein's lectures "Plays," "Composition as Explanation" and "What are Masterpieces." He has worked with many contemporary playwrights and is a recipient of Guggenheim, Lortel and Fox fellowships, Alpert, Lambda Literary, Helen Merrill Playwriting awards, a RUTHIE and six OBIES. GROUP .BR started with a public reading of Cerimônia do Adeus by Mauro Rasi (2011) followed by The Serpent by Nelson Rodrigues (2012); Infinite While It Lasts, based on the works of Vinicius de Moraes (2013 & 2014); and Inside the Wild Heart, an immersive theatrical experience based on the works of Clarice Lispector (2016 & 2018). Group Dot BR offers workshops and community engagement events. Most recently, Group Dot BR was awarded the Best Reimagining of an Immersive Show by This Week in New York. Follow their Facebook and Instagram for more @groupdotbr. Group Dot BR's mission is to present the "calor" and diversity of Brazilian culture through the performing arts. By using avant-garde, physical, choreographic, and contemporary theatre as tools, Group Dot BR engages a multicultural community with a cutting-edge and forward-thinking approach to its "presencial" and online programs. As the longest-operating Brazilian theatre company in New York, Dot BR supports artists by creating a bridge for exchange beyond borders and holds up Portuguese as a heritage language. group.br.com BARUCH "BABA" ISRAEL (he/him) is an ?artist, educator and consultant. He was a resident artist at BRIC creating his last multimedia performance The Spinning Wheel in collaboration with London-based company Unfinished Business. He is a core member of Hip Hop/Soul project Soul Inscribed who released their second album Tune Up on Tokyo Dawn Records. He holds an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts from Goddard College and is the Artistic Director of the Performance Project based at the University Settlement. He is a proud member of HERE's HARP program where he recently received both the 2020 Map and NEFA NTP Grants. Follow for more @babaisrael @soulinscribed. Baba Israel and Grace Galu, both members of live Hip Hop and Soul band Soul Inscribed, share a duet performance that uses the human voice to create a diverse range of musical traditions. Using live looping, beatbox, and vocal layering they create uplifting beats, soundscapes, and songs that make people wanna move and be moved. JAMES & JEROME (James Harrison Monaco and Jerome Ellis) are a duo of musician-storytellers based in New York. They make hyper-literary, live-music story performances for theaters and other spaces. Their work has been presented by The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Lincoln Center Education, La MaMa, the Under the Radar Festival, Joe's Pub at The Public Theater, Ars Nova and The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, among others. They often collaborate with directors Rachel Chavkin, Andrew Scoville and Annie Tippe. Recent James & Jerome projects include: The Conversationalists (The Bushwick Starr), Piano Tales (La MaMa, Joe's Pub at The Public Theater, Lincoln Center Education, etc.), Ink (Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Brick, BRIC Arts Media), Aaron/Marie (Under the Radar Festival, Ars Nova), and They Ran and Ran and Ran (HERE Arts). They have developed their work at residences with The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts, The Public Theater, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, and BRIC Arts Media, and they were members of the Public Theater's inaugural Devised Theater Working Group. KATIE MADISON(she/her)is a Brooklyn-based musical theatre artist. She received her B.F.A. in Musical Theatre from the University of Michigan in May of 2011, and her M.F.A in Musical Theatre Writing and composition from New York University's Tisch Graduate Musical TheatreWriting Program in May of 2019. Her compositions have been commissioned by the University of Michigan's School of Music, Theatre and Dance Musical Theatre Department. Her show [ taking ] space was a finalist for the 2020 Sundance Theatre Lab Residency, and a concert version was set to premiere off-Broadway at The Tank Theatre in April 2020. Katie was one of three finalists for the National Black Theatre's Soul Producing Residency in 2019. She has written, composed, directed, performed in, and produced works throughout New York City at venues such as The New School, New York University, 54 Below, The Dramatists Guild, Playwrights Horizons, NewYork Fashion Week, the 52nd Street Project, The Stonewall Inn, Judson Memorial Church, Dixon Place, Wow Cafe Theatre, Molloy Studios, Don't Tell Mama, and Rockwood Music Hall. Follow their Instagram for more: @kvmad @i.deborah.cowell @jarrettmurraymusic @jude.12. Katie's work fuses spoken word with classic and contemporary genre defying musical theatre sounds. [ taking ] space is a song cycle about the journey of releasing the anxieties of occupying a Black body. SUN SONGS is an exploration of Our ability to leave Our bodies and look to the sky to help guide Us where We were always meant to be. MACHEL ROSS (she/her) is a Dominican American director and creative collaborator based in NYC who specializes in the development of new work and aesthetic world building. She's developed work with Aziza Barnes (NANA), PigPen Theatre Company (Phantom Folktales), and directed the world premiere of Jeremy O. Harris's Black Exhibition at The Bushwick Starr. Machel is a 2020 Sundance Theater Lab fellow, and WP Director's Lab fellow. BFA-NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School. KANEZA SCHAAL (she/her) is a New York City-based theater artist. She received a United States Artists Fellowship, SOROS Art Migration and Public Space Fellowship, Ford Foundation Art for Justice Bearing Witness Award, and Creative Capital Award. Her new original work, KLII, an exorcism of King Leopold II drawing on Mark Twain's journalistic account of the Belgian King's reign of terror King Leopold's Soliloquy, was co-commissioned by Walker Art Center, REDCAT and CAC Cincinnati, and as part of the Eureka Commissions program by the Onassis Foundation. Schaal's work has shown at BAM, The Shed, The Kennedy Center, Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, The New Victory Theater, PICA and On the Boards. Most recently, she directed Triptych (Eyes of One on Another), which premiered at LA Philharmonic, then traveled to The Power Center, MI; BAM Opera House, NY; and Holland Festival, Amsterdam. Schaal's piece GO FORTH premiered at Performance Space 122 and then showed at the Genocide Memorial Amphitheater in Kigali, Rwanda; Contemporary Arts Center New Orleans; Cairo International Contemporary Theater Festival in Egypt; and at her alma mater Wesleyan University, CT. JACKIE SIBBLIES DRURY is a Brooklyn-based playwright and the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning play Fairview. Other plays include the Obie Award-winning Marys Seacole; We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915; Really and Social Creatures. Drury's plays have been presented by the Young Vic, Lincoln Center Theater, New York City Players and Abrons Arts Center, Soho Rep, Berkeley Rep, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Company One and The Bush Theatre in London, among others. Her work has been developed at The Bellagio Center, Sundance, The Ground Floor, Manhattan Theatre Club, Ars Nova, A.C.T., The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, NYTW, PRELUDE, The Bushwick Starr and MacDowell. Drury is a NYTW Usual Suspect and a United States Artists Gracie Fellow. She has received a Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists, a Jerome Fellowship at The LARK, a Windham-Campbell Literary Prize in Drama, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Steinberg Playwright Award. KUHOO VERMA (she/they) is set to lead the cast of Hulu's upcoming film Plan B. She previously starred in Dave Malloy's Octet at the Signature Theatre (Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical, Drama Desk Award for Best Ensemble). Her film credits include the Oscar-nominated The Big Sick. Follow their Instagram and Twitter for more @therealkuhoo. ELLEN WINTER (she/they) is a composer, performer and teaching artist with roots in theater and an affinity for synthesizers. She released her debut album in 2020, Every Feeling I've Ever Felt, a ten-track glitter-fueled indie-pop celebration of self-acceptance. In 2017, she and Chris Littler, co-wrote/directed/composed the world's first Broadway-calibur podcast musical, 36 Questions, starring Jonathan Groff and Jesse Shelton. She lives in Brooklyn with her partner, her dog and 80+ plants. @itsellenwinter. ellenwinter.com |
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