Pool Plays: Production Management Associate

Above the Noise

Sweet Shop

PEA Fest 2019

Dutchman

The New Dramatists Composer-Librettist Studio, presented in collaboration with Nautilus Music-Theater, is designed to provide an opportunity for five writers and five composers to work with professional performers, exploring the possibilities and basic elements of music-theater. The studio focuses on the process of collaboration through a series of brief exploratory assignments for the writers and composers. The exercises are then sight-read by the performers in brief working sessions. The participants rotate partners, and the process is repeated four more times. Within the two-week period, all composers work with all writers and all performers. Toward the end of the studio, an informal reading of all the compositions is held. The studio is co-directed by Ben Krywosz (Artistic Director of Nautilus Music-Theater) and music director Roger Ames. 

The collaborative atmosphere of the studio is relatively free from the performance pressures usually associated with the commercial musical theater or opera field. New Dramatists has sponsored the studio annually since 1984. Over the years, Krywosz has conducted other studios around the country in such cities as Minneapolis/St. Paul, San Francisco, Washington, Chicago, Portland, Los Angeles, and Miami. All the studios have nurtured collaborative teams that have gone on to develop and produce new work.

2019 Composer Librettist Studio Participants

Playwrights: 
Naveen Bahar Choudhury
Hammaad Chaudry
Barry Jay Kaplan
Mona Mansour
Andrea Stolowitz

Composers:
Trevor Bachman
Nils Olaf Dolven
Erato A. Kremmyda
Teresa Lotz
Luna Pearl Wool

Performers:
Paul An
Sevan K. Greene
Camille Harris
Tracy Michailidis
Tais Szilagi

Studio Coordinator: Emily Bubeck
Studio Assistant: Chloe Hayat

Photos by Taylor Edelle Stuart, Courtesy of New Dramatists

After realizing she spent three years on Tinder swiping right on exclusively white men, a young Singaporean woman found herself plagued with one simple question: Why??? In this auto-fictional stand-up drama, YY takes us through her investigative journey through white worship and postcolonial baggage, attempting to uncover how we can work through our own problematic desires.

Presented as part of Ars Nova’s ANT FEST 2019.

Director: Renee Yeong

Dramaturg: Nicholas Chan

Lighting Design: Chris Voegels

Projection Design: Tate Rehklau

Photos by: Zenzali Lael

Photos by John Quilty

Commissioned by En Garde Arts Undocumented is a new piece of documentary theater that intertwines the stories of Undocumented immigrants and a Fandango style of performance.

Written by Andrea Thome and directed by José Zayas with music by Sinhué Padilla: Undocumented received a reading in December of 2018 through En Garde Arts at Alchemical Studios.

Undocumented is slated for a full production through En Garde Arts in early 2020.

Tori Lassman’s new play: Unadjusted AKA Milk is Dairy Days are Daily was produced as Breaking & Entering Theatre Collective’s first Rooftop Reading on Saturday, June 15th.

As Artistic Director of Breaking & Entering Emily not only served as a producer for the reading, but also directed the piece with the assistance and collaboration of Tori.

After getting bludgeoned by a Lesbian at a bar, Lucian wakes up in a 1940s speakeasy and gets the literal gay ripped out of him. A reborn Lucian must navigate the consequences of his newfound straightness in a world that’s only known him as a leading figure of the alt-right gay movement.

Lucian/Lucien was performed as part of HotFest! at Dixon Place. The show ran one night to a sold out house.

Photos Courtesy of Juan HQ

Written by Andres Osorio

Directed by Rachel Horwitz

Dramaturged by Renee Jarrett

Scenic Design by Benny Pitt

Costume Design by Ben Stevenson

Sound Design by Beth Golison

Lighting Design by Ariana Finamore

Spirit Journeyz is a new play by Chloé Hayat. The piece was performed as a staged reading at the Wild Project, produced through Clubbed Thumb’s Young Writers Group.

Spirit Journeyz is about a disenfranchised, feuding ghost hunting reality show hired to cleanse a deeply troubled family of "evil spirits." Big changes and a crisis of faith in the Spirit Journeyz Gang have frayed the once-harmonious friendship to a breaking point and have set up a dramatic “lockdown” investigation at the Brigg’s family home. Hugo Briggs and his daughter Rikki have been seeing demonic apparitions, and the family is desperate to return to their normal lives. The family of die-hard fans are in for a rude awakening when they learn that their favorite celebrity Paranormal Investigators are not the impassioned believers they expected. The play is highly theatrical and deals with issues of loss of friendships, the exploitation of mental illness and masculinity, delusion vs. reality, shared trauma, questions of religion and the afterlife. 

“Avant Garde is in fact French for the advanced guard, or ‘front lines.’ The Avant Garde changes the boundaries, redraws the map. It’s hard work, dangerous work. It takes commitment combined with reckless sense of abandon to cross into enemy territory. The Celts would send their pregnant women into battle first, because they were the most fearless, and the most frightening. They would careen down the hill, swords swinging, battle cry sounding, the next generation, literally leading the way. The Avant Garde leads the charge. We pave the way. We are the first to arrive and we are the first to die”

-Shihu Shallnotbenamed: Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant: A Snowball’s Chance

Bubeck served as the Rehearsal Stage Manager for Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant. In coordination with production stage manager Jennifer Caster she facilitated and helped to run all New York City rehearsals in preparation for their run at Cleveland Public Theater (Cleveland, Ohio) in December of 2018. She was also able assist with the load in and Tech process at CPT and even filled in for one of the “nurse” roles during the preview performance. (Yes, you do see her in some of the production shots!)

A devised piece: Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant has been performing non-dinner-theater performances (which include theater and dinner) for over 10 years. Lead by Director Cynthia Croot each performer transforms into an Artist in Residence at Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant where the company not only entertains the audience for the evening but also prepares and serves them a 5 course meal.

Photos courtesy of Cleveland Public Theater.