Friday, April 6, 2007
Save the date
Production Company
The Production Company exchanges challenging new work for the theater between Australia and the United States. Their work promotes and deepens cultural exchange, and encourages artists to explore the relationship between the two countries. Founded in 2004, The Production Company believes this is an exemplary time for playwriting and supports writers by staging full productions of their plays. We believe everyone involved in the creative process is there to support the vision of the playwright. Our productions are either world premieres or New York premieres, and our writers are intimately involved with the production process. At our performances, the story of the play and intentions of the playwright stand at the center of the theater experience.
Hailed by nytheatre.com as “Indie Theater at its very best”, The Production Company’s previous productions include the American premiere of Falling Petals, the award-winning play by Australian playwright, Ben Ellis; the world premiere of Elise McCredie and Trudy Hellier’s The Furies, which starred the Australian Film Institute’s Best Actress winner Maria Theodorakis; and the New York premiere of Alan Berks’ Goats (“one of the smartest, warmest, funniest and wisest new works I’ve seen in some time” - Martin Denton).
The company’s signature series, “The Australia Project”, asked each of 13 American writers to create a short play based on their perception of Australia. US playwrights Trista Baldwin, Courtney Baron, Frank Basloe, Stephen Belber, Michael John Garces, Brett C. Leonard, Elizabeth Meriwether, Brett Neveu, Kate Moira Ryan, Betty Shamieh, Ken Urban, Kathryn Walat and Beau Willimon contributed to the first Australia Project series. In 2007, Australian playwrights will respond by creating short plays about their perception of the US.
Ateh Theater Group
Our mission is to create fantastic and surreal plays to explore the struggle and hilarity of everyday life. Working collaboratively, we seek to tell unusual stories while reinventing the theatrical language in which we tell them.
Ateh’s inaugural production of Aimee Bender’s The Girl in the Flammable Skirt featured freakish characters with fairytale deformities, struggling to find their place in a weird and wonderful world. This season’s productions of The Girl Detective, adapted by Bridgette Dunlap from the acclaimed short story by Kelly Link, and Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, adapted by Ms. Dunlap from the Lewis Carroll classic, feature reluctant heroes learning to make sense of the chaos surrounding them. The Girl Detective re-envisions the iconic sleuth on a desperate journey to find her missing mother, leading her to an extraordinary experience in the underworld. It is an exploration of the strangeness and pain of loss. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland follows a young adventurer who learns she isn’t at the mercy of the world around her, but a force to be reckoned with herself.
The Ateh Theater Group is committed to not only creating daring theater, but also to arts education as a means of engaging young people in their studies and of preserving the American theater’s vitality through the cultivation of a diverse audience for innovative work. To that end, The Ateh has taught in an alternative school for high risk students in Trenton, New Jersey . We offer free classes to New York City public school students and free tickets to low-income theatergoers. In March, we will host a benefit performance of Alice for The Brooklyn Bureau of Community Service, an organization serving children at risk of foster care placement and disabled adults.
"as this mesmerizing play progresses, it comes to resemble a dream ... In the under world, words and images are slippery, memory is unstable, and things that mean the most to us (like the color of our lover's eyes) threaten to disappear faster than the Girl Detective can change disguises."
-Katie Baker, The Village Voice
"Thanks to crisp direction, winning performances by a talented cast, and above all, brilliant choreography, the Ateh Theater Group’s production, at the beautiful Connelly Theater in Manhattan’s East Village, is a pleasure."
-Jon Sobel, Blogcritics
Anyone who has read Lewis Carroll’s original knows that his convoluted rhymes and incessant puns can be daunting. But Bridgette Dunlap, the writer and director of this adaptation, has created so much stunning visual comedy that children don’t need to understand every word.
-The New York Times
Sum of Us Theatre Co.
Founded in August 2002 and currently a fiscally sponsored organization through Fractured Atlas, The Sum Of Us produced its first project as part of the 2002 New York International Fringe Festival with Stephen Belber’s Death of Frank at Performance Space 122. The production earned playwright Stephen Belber the 2002 FringeNYC Playwrighting Award, and, as a contender on many must-see lists, the production received some rare attention from both The New York Times and New York Magazine. In February 2004, we took a look at functional dysfunction with writer/novelist Denis Johnson’s edgy new play Hellhound On My Trail at the Kraine Theater. Later that year, collaborations began on the creation of an original piece with Bixby Elliot, an up-and-coming young playwright finishing his MFA at Columbia University. Our process followed the great traditions of The Joint Stock Company and Anne Bogart’s SITI Company: using collaborative and improvisational techniques to create a play that incorporates the sum of the individuals involved.
The Sum Of Us is currently in rehearsals for a March 2007 run of the World Premiere of Hotel Oracle, written by Bixby Elliot and directed by Stephen Brackett at Walkerspace in Tribeca. In this searing and lyrical new drama, Hotel Oracle brings together a lonely reporter, a con man, an expectant mother, a mysterious messenger, a pill popper, and a kindly hotel clerk. Revealing pivotal moments in their personal histories, this play looks at the roads we choose, why we choose them and how far we travel them. Our company’s mission is to tell new and undiscovered stories, to entertain while inspiring thought, to maintain the powerful element of true ensemble work, and to build and nurture the passion for live theater.
Thirsty Turtle Productions
Thirsty Turtle Productions, Inc. is a New York City-based ensemble of young writers, directors, actors, and designers that has been working together since 2004. Thirsty Turtle has embarked on new works, revived classics, and has mounted productions of contemporary plays, always bringing their individual passions and insight to enliven text. Our mission is threefold: (1) to create and produce new and established works of theatre that are thought-provoking and that speak to the issues we find important to our world; (2) to work in a new way, forging our theatre from a collaboration of artists on equal ground, taking advantage of the best everyone has to offer and nurturing the talents of individuals to produce diverse, eclectic work reflective of the individuals who have created it; and (3) to teach, share, and pass on the importance of theatre and the powerful effect it can have on and for community by leading theatre workshops for students.
From our first production of executive director Dennis Tseng’s adaptation of Chekhov’s Seagull, Thirsty Turtle has strived to dream up theatre in a new way, creating a theater of and by themselves. We draw from the defining characteristics of all company members and collaborators to form art as a reflection of the artists; resonating on that thin line between here and the future, here and far away, here and reality. We proceeded to create productions lauded separately as “Quite touching”, “Well worth watching” (Dan Bacalzo, TheaterMania); “Smart, political theater without becoming a polemic”, “Brilliant” (Josselyn Simpson, Time Out New York), and “Vivid and vital” (Glory Sims-Bowen, HiDrama). Thirsty Turtle members have worked with renowned artists such as Mark Wing-Davey, Stephen Earnhart, Erica Schmidt, and Edward Albee.
Thirsty Turtle, now in its fourth season, has produced six full-scale productions in various Manhattan venues; entered an original one-act into the Midtown International Theatre Festival; held three annual gala fundraisers; created an epic original photographic art project; and provided theatre workshops for visiting and local high schools. Thirsty Turtle is currently in preparations for a new adaptation of Dark of the Moon by Howard Richardson and William Berney. To be directed by their new Artistic Director Ian Crawford, Dark of the Moon is at its heart a simple folk tale but through the use of music, larger-than-life puppets, and an ensemble-based process, they will explore the role of the Other in society, the balance of religion and religious fundamentalism, and the place of sex and sexuality in America today.
chashama
chashama is a NYC arts organization whose mission is to support artists of all genres. chashama "adopts" vacant properties that are donated by their owners and converts them into theaters, galleries, studios, and window performance sites; chashama then regrants this space for free or at heavily subsidized rates. Since 1995, chashama has transformed more than 20 vacant properties and has given more than 5,000 artists access to space."
Collective P.A.S.T in residence at Chashama!
COLLECTIVE
Production Company ● Ateh Theater Group ● Sum of Us Theatre Co ● Thirsty Turtle Productions ●
About Us ●
Collective P.A.S.T.is a consortium of four emerging theater companies in residency at Chashama's 217 E. 42nd Street theater from May 2006 through October 2006. The companies joined together to support one other, combine resources when needed, and share information with each other and similar emerging companies. Each company produces on its own, but Collective P.A.S.T. serves as a community of producing artists with a variety of experiences, backgrounds and strengths.
Join Us ●
Collective past is accepting proposals. This is an excellent opportunity for emerging theater, film, visual and musical artists to be part of our residency:
We are currently accepting submissions for consideration from anything ranging from musicians
with single night performances to theatrical works looking for multiple week runs. Accepted artists will be offered a place to put on their work as a part of this collaborative endeavor.
To be considered: please send an email including all of the following information to Kathryn Ekblad at kathrynekblad@gmail.com.
-your name
-the name of your company
-the project title, and type of art (theater piece, photography showing, etc.)
-phone number
-address
-website
-Has this piece ever been performed or presented before? Please describe when, and where, and in what venue.
-please include a brief description of the project, and any bios of primary collaborators
-(for visual artist) how many pieces are you hoping to present?
-two references who would be able to talk about your work
This is an excellent opportunity for artists to show their work while being a part of the amazing energy produced by emerging artists of all genres in New York City.
Please send submissions as soon as possible to receive the highest amount of consideration.
To receive specific information about the space, dimensions, etc., please go to chashama.org, and see the space at 217.