Summer Theater Lab, 2018: New York Theatre Workshop Residency

THE NEW YORK THEATRE WORKSHOP SUMMER RESIDENCY

August 4 @ 4:00 & 7:30 pm
August 11 @ 4:00 & 7:30 pm
August 18 @ 4:00 & 7:30 pm
The Bentley Theater

Tickets $13
Dartmouth students $5; all other students $9
General admission; available at the Hop Box Office

The New York Theatre Workshop produces challenging and unpredictable new theatre, fostering the creative work of both established and emerging artists. Every August, the company brings their work to Dartmouth for a three-week residency, developing and performing six new works-in-progress by some of today’s most iinnovative professional playwrights and directors.

2018 PERFORMANCE SCHEDULE

Americana Psychobabble (or, my favorite way to die right now in this room)
Saturday August 4 @ 4:00 pm
Written and Performed by Alexandra Tatarsky
Directed by Adrienne Mackey

Described as “Phyllis Diller meets Artaud!,” Americana Psychobabble exists somewhere between irrational healing ceremony, sad clown song, dance in the abyss, and desperate diatribe to take back ecstatic nonsense as an act of resistance. A delirious anti-narrative of American emptiness, violence and nonsense—with Styrofoam wings, Christmas lights and ketchup. Called “a hilarious, finely tuned absurdist” (Theatre Jones) and “endlessly entertaining” (NY Theatre), Tatarsky makes performances combining comedy, theater and dance and has performed at MoMA PS1, La Mama, Brooklyn Museum, Judson Church and many other New York venues. Mackey is an interdisciplinary creator who has directed over 14 original works using non-traditional spaces and interactive frames, and teaches theater for Pig Iron's MFA in Devised Theatre and at Drexel University.

After the March
Saturday August 4 @ 7:30 pm
Written by Itamar Moses
Directed by Michelle Tattenbaum

On the way home from a protest march, a woman encounters the embodiment of what she is protesting. A college essay instructor tries to help his bewildering array of students tell their own stories. A stand-up comic tries some crowd work and ends up getting more than he bargained for. An evening of short plays about the places where our theories meet our actual lives. Moses is the author of plays and musicals that have been produced Off-Broadway and elsewhere in New York, at regional theatres across the country and in Canada, Hong Kong, Israel, Venezuela, Turkey and Chile. He’s received new play commissions from The McCarter, Berkeley Rep, Manhattan Theatre Club, Lincoln Center and The Goodman, among others, and he has also written for such television shows as TNT’s Men Of A Certain Age, HBO’s Boardwalk Empire and Showtime’s The Affair.

Mention My Beauty
Saturday August 11 @ 4:00 pm
Written and Performed by Leslie Ayvazian
Directed by Martha Banta

A funny, poignant and revelatory autobiographical journey through the 1960s and ’70s by an award-winning playwright and a performer seen on Broadway, Off-Broadway and television. It was a time of rebellion, action and indignation but Ayvazian’s intentions were elsewhere. From the mountains of the Adirondacks to the projects of Columbus, Ohio, and many places in between, she tells a story of her immigrant family, what it meant to be pegged “the pretty one,” her search for sex and love, and the secrets of it all.

We Live in Cairo
Saturday August 11 @ 7:30 pm
by Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour
Directed by Taibi Magar

Cameras. Spray paint. Guitars. Laptops. These were the weapons of young Egyptian activists. Three years after the fall of President Hosni Mubarak, six friends are confronted with their past and the aftermath of their revolution. Through music that speaks to a contemporary Arab world, We Live in Cairo explores the realities of today's Cairo and illuminates those still searching for freedom.

Memoirs of a Native American Princess from Brooklyn
Saturday August 18 @ 4:00 pm
Written and performed by Murielle Borst-Tarrant
Dramaturgical input from Morgan Jenness

Keeping traditions alive at the same time experiencing the tragedy of unspoken secrets of a house and family that survived genocide, and survived through family love and community; the triumph of will made through laughter; a personal tapestry of stories of childhood in Brooklyn in a Mafia-run neighborhood before gentrification; tackling issues of race and urban life through portrayals of a family who were the only Indians on the block in an all-Italian neighborhood.

Untitled Project on Reality Leigh Winner (based on found material)
Saturday August 18 @ 7:30 pm
Devised/Directed by Tina Satter

With an evocative original score and spare design, director Tina Satter stages the (almost) verbatim official transcription of the June 2017 FBI interrogation that led to the arrest of Reality Leigh Winner, a 25-year-old woman from Texas accused of leaking top-secret U.S. intelligence. As the verbal dance unfolds in Winner’s kitchen between the knife-sharp, unexpectedly charming protagonist and three FBI agents, Winner’s autonomy shrinks before her eyes. A simmering real-life thriller emerges—offering considerations of access, identity, language, and honor in this particular national moment. Satter is a playwright and director who received a 2016 Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award and a 2014 Doris Duke Artist Impact Award, and was named an Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch by Time Out New York.

CLICK HERE for more information about the NYTW Residency at Dartmouth.

RELATED EVENTS

Meet the Artists of the New York Theatre Workshop!
Tuesdays: July 31, August 7, August 14
12:00 pm
The Bentley Theater
FREE

Brown-bag lunch discussions with the innovative and daring directors, performers, writers, and other theater professionals involved in each week's NYTW productions. Join us!

Public Talk: Cairo in Spotlight
Friday, August 10
5:00 pm
The Loew Auditorium
FREE
Professor of Middle Eastern Studies Ezzedine Fishere sits down with We Live in Cairo playwrights Daniel Lazour and Patrick Lazour and director Taibi Magar to discuss art, activism, the Arab Spring, and Egypt after Mubarak.