Blank Canvas Give Away Finalists!
Art Party Theatre Company
www.artpartytheatercompany.com
art.party.theater.company creates bold performances for an audacious audience; our work is irreverent, intelligent, physical, magical, and surprising. Founded in 2008 by Mary Birnbaum (Artistic Director), art.party is now in season.two. In February 2009, art.party’s SCHOOLED: or m. moliere’s the learned ladies, directed by Birnbaum, had audiences exploring the play through salons of New York City apartments. Birnbaum and Jess Burkle (Artistic Producer) co-conceived Bryant in the Park featuring the fictional Bryant Park Croquet Society playing on the Bryant Park lawn while spouting the poetry of William Cullen Bryant. In October, Burkle headed art.party’s residence at chashama’s Times Square location, presenting the daily performance installation so much depends upon [a red wheel barrow], while Birnbaum directed the co-conceived Duchess in the Dark, which plunged audiences into a pitch-black telling of Webster’s The Duchess of Malfi armed with flashlights. Most recently, art.party joined forces with American Opera Projects in Brooklyn to present BAD ROMANCE, two Schumann classical song cycles in the format of couples therapy session. “…a young company with a taste for smart and generous experimentation in form.” (nytheatre.com)
Sonnet Repertory Theatre
www.sonnetrepertorytheatre.org
Sonnet Repertory Theatre, Inc., is dedicated to classic theatre for the modern planet. SRT promotes classic plays and adaptations, providing forums for collaboration between emerging artists and established professionals. With Classics in the Classroom, SRT aims not only to entertain, but also to educate young people by engaging them with timeless literature through expressive theatre.
The New Ensemble
thenewensemble.com
The New Ensemble is a company of experienced theater artists based out of New York City making sensory immersive stories. Through a lucky series of events, this particular group of designers, actors, composers, and lyricists came together in the spring of 2009 to create nonplay, an original journey where the audience moved through the danger, music, poetry, and humor of the signs in one’s own dreaming life. This group of theater-makers is led by Artistic Director Mikhael Tara Garver, who made a name for herself creating work in Chicago with Uma Productions (a beloved storefront theater company known for its unique umaenvironments) and has spent the past ten years developing and now teaching immersive theater nationally. She now leads The New Ensemble in making both fantastical and truthful productions. By acknowledging the ridiculous event of making theater, and the wondrous possibility between audience and performance, The New Ensemble surrounds you with musicality, physicality, and honesty of the shared moment.
Currently the ensemble is continuing its development of nonplay (which is inspired by Strindberg’s dream play & e.e. cummings’ writing, with original composition by Andrew Gerle and Royce Vavrek) and developing a new rock experience titled Fornicated from the Beatles.
The New Ensemble is Ken Barnett, Nathan Dame, Jeremiah Davis, Dani Karliner, Ava Eisenson, Jason Fleitz, Mikhael Tara Garver, Mary Guiteras, Kyra Miller, Will Pickens, Seith Reiser, Elizabeth Rich, Andrew Gerle, Alexandra Seal, Eric Slater, Taylor Valentine, Royce Vavrek, and Cassie Wooley. This particular group of individuals brings varied talents and lengthy experience to The New Ensemble, and look forward to including you in our unique community. More information on all of these artists and our work isavailable at www.thenewensemble.org
CockEyed Optimist
Ceotheatre.org
CockEyed Optimists strives to create theatre which examines the human condition in all of its complex absurdity.
Our optimism stems from the belief that the power of imagination and creativity can better a world too often full of cynicism and negativity.
We see ourselves as cockeyed because we are drawn to material that sees the world in an unpredictable light. We also seek to find the humor in life’s struggles and laugh in the face of adversity.
These beliefs are at the core of who we are as an ensemble and as individual artists.
Political Subversities
www.politicalsubversities.com
Political Subversities is a fast-paced topical-comedy cabaret about culture, politics and the crazy F-ed up world we live in. New sketches and songs every week in a theatrical coup de political comedy conceived by Tony Nominee and Obie Award winner Elizabeth Swados and written by a cast of actors, writers, singer and sketch comedians. Playing weekly at the P.I.T. – 154 W 29th street every Saturday night in June, July and August, 2010.
Lynx Ensemble Theater
www.lynxtheater.org
Lynx Ensemble Theater is a NYC based non profit theater company using theatre to explode stereotypes, and to explore the nature of identity. Lynx seeks to serve audiences who are not used to seeing their stories told onstage, challenges artists and audiences to look at themselves beyond their own type, to recognize themselves in characters who at first seem very different, and to empower artists and audiences to discover and become their fullest, freest, most empathetic selves.
Lynx has been producing plays, readings, and developmental workshops since 2003. Notable productions include the premieres of stellYY and CONTRACTS (both by Justin Deabler), and a staging of Christopher Durang’s LAUGHING WILD (directed by Liesl Tommy). Lynx always hosts post show discussions which give our audiences a chance to respond to the work, and to engage in a dialogue with each other, the artistic team, as well as guest panelist speakers. Themes of past discussions have included marriage equality, family diversity, people with disabilities, elder abuse, among others. Panelists have included former president of the ACLU, Nadine Strossen, comedian Judy Gold, and disabilities/arts consultant Simi Linton.
Monster In My Brain
www.jodykaylitman.com
Everyone is a monster in my life. Some are good. Some are bad. There is a monster inside me. There is a monster in my brain. I can’t kill them or make them go away, but I can acknowledge them, understand them, and embrace them.
Boomerang Theatre Company
www.boomerangtheatre.org
The Boomerang Theatre Company is an award-winning Off-Off-Broadway theatre company based in New York City. Boomerang annually produces a season composed of three programs: free outdoor Shakespeare productions in parks throughout NYC; an indoor repertory series of new, classic and neglected plays; and FIRST FLIGHT, a new play development series of workshops and readings.
In the past eleven years, the Boomerang Theatre Company has produced 42 full productions, including six world premieres, seven New York City premieres and reinvented producing in repertory for small theatres. In 2008, the company was the recipient of the Caffe Cino Fellowship from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards for consistent production of outstanding work. Boomerang has been awarded two New York Innovative Theatre Awards for Burning the Old Man by Kelly McAllister (out of six nominations), a 2002 OOBR Award for The Misanthrope by Moliere, and was selected as a September 2005 recipient of The STAR Initiative from WNYC radio. The company also presented the United States premiere of Irvine (Trainspotting) Welsh’s You’ll Have Had Your Hole in the NYC International Fringe Festival. Two plays produced by Boomerang have been published in annual Plays and Playwrights anthologies.
Through the FIRST FLIGHT series, Boomerang has developed 45 new works through readings and workshops. We are honored to work with some of the most exciting emerging playwrights in America, including John Pielmeier, Sharyn Rothstein, Bill C. Davis, Isaac Rathbone, Kelly McAllister, Mike Folie, Francis Kuzler, E.M. Lewis, Mary Jett Parsley, Greg Romero and Colin McKenna. Plays developed in FIRST FLIGHT have gone on to win awards and receive productions both with Boomerang and with other theaters across the country and around the world.
