Text by Robert Lyons
Directed by Daniel Irizarry
Composer: Rhys Tivey
Set Designer: Deb O.
Costume Designer: Meghan E. Healey
Lighting Designer: Matthew Deinhart
Sound Designer: M Florian Staab
Stage Manager: Emily Hart
CAST: Pepper Binkley, Daniel Irizarry, Rhys Tivey, Folami Williams
Imagine two activists hashing out a freely-associated anti-capitalist manifesto. While their favorite professor slides into dementia as he expounds on the unwritten books of our esteemed author. And a poet of privilege performs love poems inspired by her stay in a prestigious artist colony. Then add live music, a couple of songs, and a different guest artist at each performance. Something like that.
Ultra Left Violence reunites playwright Robert Lyons and director/performer Daniel Irizarry. Their Fall 2022 hit My Onliness was called “a welcome gust of weird” (New York Times) and “the most insane show now playing in New York City” (Theatremania). Their earlier collaboration Yovo has been performed in NYC, Poland, Cuba, and South Korea; and has been translated into Spanish and American Sign Language. Both plays are included in My Onliness and Others, a collection of six plays by Lyons published in Fall 2022 by Mercer Street Books. Ultra Left Violence will be further developed in residences at Mercury Store and NACL in late 2023.
IRT Theater is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. Tucked away in the old Archive Building in Greenwich Village, IRT’s mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts and the New York State Legislature; New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council; A.R.T./New York’s NYC Small Theatres Fund made possible with support from the Howard Gilman Foundation & support for ASL interpretation provided in part through funding from Access A.R.T./New York.