Tanner has brought Victoria to his father’s beach house as part of a game she likes to play–getting random guys to kidnap her. It’s how she lets off steam between modeling gigs. For Tanner, it’s a last ditch effort to make something of his life. Victoria seems to think he has what it takes to become a model too, and she’s promised to introduce him to her all-powerful manager.

But the fantasy goes sour when they discover that Tanner’s younger brother Calvin is also hiding out at the house. He’s given up on grad school, he refuses to eat, and he also refuses to leave. As the brothers battle over their father’s house, Victoria gleefully plays alternating favorites—until the game stops being fun.

Playwright Eric John Meyer and director Hondo Weiss-Richmond have been collaborating since 2010. Their work on the Scavengers began early in 2011. While in residence at IRT, Hondo and Eric will rehearse and mount a workshop production of The Scavengers within a ten-day period. This will be the first time this version of the play gets explored on its feet, after previous readings at The Flea Theater and elsewhere.

Featuring Lauren Ferebee, Parrish Hurley, Richard Lovejoy and Ted Schneider*

*AEA Member

Performances:
Friday, December 30th at 8:00pm
Saturday, December 31st at 2:00pm
At IRT: 154 Christopher St., #3B (third floor)

Artists

Eric John Meyer is a playwright and performer based in New York. His work has been performed at The Flea Theater, The Brick Theater, and The Bowery Poetry Club; with The Nabokov Theatre Company in the UK, the New Orleans Fringe Festival, and the Mother Lodge Live Arts Exchange in Louisville, KY. His plays have received development at The Public Theater, The Flea, and New Dramatists. He was the 2010 Artist in Transit for The Truck Project, which he established with Jean Ann Douglass. He holds an MFA from Sarah Lawrence College.

Hondo Weiss-Richmond directs new work off-off-Broadway and regionally. Recent New York productions include 7 Lies of an Unbeliever by JT Rogers (‘Sticky’); The Riverside Symphony by Michael Niederman (Planet Connections Theater Festivity); The Greater Good by Jeff Carter (‘Sticky’); Don’t Talk to Strangers by Daniel McCoy (Crosstown Playwrights); Free Play by Michael Niederman (Samuel French 2009 Off-Off-Broadway Festival); The Mushroom Pickers by Jacqueline McCarrick (Alloy Theater); The Turn of the Screw by Jeffrey Hatcher (Door-to-Door Drama). Regionally, he has directed The Fetishist by Michael Edison Hayden and Man Up and Away by Joe Tracz (both at Williamstown Theatre Festival). Hondo was the ’09-’10 Robert Moss Directing Resident at Playwrights Horizons.

Work-in-progress showing December 19 at 8pm
At IRT: 154 Christopher St., #3B (third floor)

Featuring Lisa Clair, Donna Costello, Peter Musante, and Mary Kate Schellhardt
Original text contributed by Cynthia Polutanovich
Music by Tony Melone
Devised by Lisa Clair, Donna Costello, Jennifer Sargent, Mary Kate Schellhardt, David Arkema, Peter Musante, Jennifer Stokes
Directed by Jennifer Sargent

Tickets:
$5 – Student/ Low Income Donation
$10 – General Donation
$15 – Supporter Donation

More information at vagabondinventions.com.

“surreal vaudeville”…”I think that Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman belong in some kind of genius category. One is reminded of silent film comedians and European circus clowns, who hone their material to its essence.”
— David Cuthbert, Theatre Critic, New Orleans Times-Picayune

SIX PERFORMANCES ONLY!

Thursday, December 8th at 8:00 PM
Friday, December 9th at 8:00 PM
Saturday, December 10th at 8:00 PM
Thursday, December 15th at 8:00 PM
Friday, December 16th at 8:00 PM
Saturday, December 17th at 8:00 PM

Purchase tickets
$20 Suggested
$10 “pay what you can”
$5 “pay what you can”

At IRT: 154 Christopher St. #3B (3rd floor)

(Look for future announcements of workshops)

ARTISTS

“Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman have the consummate professionalism of a longstanding comic team. While undoubtedly their short theater pieces contain comic moments, their real intent is to go to the center of human movement, habit and meaning…Chillingly depicts where we are now.”
— Paige Listerud, Chicago Theatre Blog

“achieved dazzling sophistication“…”the performers were intercutting between scenes locatable on a single stage… The piece then became an anatomy of power relationships as the two struggled for dominance in their changing personas… I’ve seen a lot of theater fail to reach this virtuoso level of characterization.”
— Kyle Gann, The Village Voice, New York

“…the end results were hilarious but intellectually challenging, simple in execution yet extremely difficult to execute.”
— John Cutler, The Lincoln Star Journal, Nebraska

From Lisa Fay and Jeff Glassman:

We are a composing and performing movement-based theatre duo, working together since 1991. We are known for applying complex composed structures to ordinary daily human behavior and originating the performance techniques required for these compositions to manifest in the medium of live theatre—embodied composition. Subjected to contortions, subversions and convolutions, “natural” behavior reveals its socially constructed face. On stage, without digital mediation and undeniably live, characters play out stark contradictions with an air of stubborn continuity, seemingly impossible worlds are inhabited with ease and disjointed logical systems clash in jarring coherences. The results, ranging from humorous and disarming to mesmerizing and disorienting, arise as metaphors for social processes.

(In order to handle the complexities of a proposed performance idea, our compositions for movement-based theatre are often conceived first as scores or graphic notations designed for each piece. These scores are presented for viewing during the run of our performances at IRT and will be used during workshops to demonstrate the designing of abstractions for the stage.)

lisafayandjeffglassmanduo.org

Jessica Lewis, writes a play heavily influenced by the music and poetry of the Beat Generation, by combining all of these genres to create a work that attempts at defying classical genres of theater. By combing jazz music, spoken word poetry, live theater, history, and dance, she tells the story of a young woman who looses her sense of “reality,” while getting swept up in the romanticism and nostalgia of the end of Bohemia, as it had previously been known.

Through this play we see how the music and words of the Beat Generation moved and inspired so many around it, but also how it enabled a whole generation after to get lost in a world of excess and unrealistic views of what it meant to be an artist.

A love of the music and the language of poetry, as an expression of what jazz musicians were doing with their music at the time was what the Beat Generation was attempting to do. A Map of the Ocean’s Floor, we see how these ideas and objectives got misconstrued by many who were in search of something “real,” and of a “real artist’s life,” and how this distance from reality has impacted youth from all generations.

Friday, December 2nd @ 8pm
Saturday, December 3rd @ 8pm
Sunday, December 4th @2pm
At IRT: 154 Christopher St. #3B (third floor)

$10 for students/seniors
$20 regular

Cast and Crew

Paloma- Jessica Lewis
Joe- Rowan Meyer
Grant- Matthew Stapleton
Victoria- Natalie Hegg
Michael- Kirk Miller

Stage Manager: Denise Lum

Music/Band Directed and Arranged by Adam Caine
Choreography by Jessica Lewis and Andrew Jannetti
Lighting Design by Justin Ayers
Costume/Wardrobe Design by Claire Matern and Zack Hoge
Advised by Andrew Jannetti and Brian Breger

“A ‘literary review’ premised on verbal embellishment…without sacrificing a genuine love for words and their power to effect and affect.”
- Jordan Hruska, Art in America

A verbal varieté strategizing the aesthetics of discourse, Semiospectacle stages sites of exceptional linguistic exchange. The poet’s theater becomes an academic lecture hall fronting as vaudeville house. Its players dispense with disciplinary demarcations, highlighting language-based practices across scholarship, poetics, digital cinema, and visual art performance. Co-curated by Mashinka Firunts and Danny Snelson.

James Hoff reads from the Argot Dictionary, a compendium of new colloquialisms and revised anachronisms. Alejandro Crawford performs a player piano installment of his video organ, the vonome, mixing digital aesthetics with the history of spectacular mechanics. Yelena Gluzman demonstrates her School for Salomés, performed by Amy Huggans, Danusia Roberts Trevino, Cecilia Lynn-Jacobs, Olivia Jorgensen, and Jeffrey Joe Nelson. Danny Snelson presents an ongoing cinema lecture “The Dark Cloud of Dr. Mabuse,” exploring haunted technology and criminal dispersion alongside Fritz Lang’s 1922 film Dr. Mabuse Der Spieler. Mashinka Firunts delivers micro-lectures on tactics of theatricalized linguistic exchange. Vaginal Davis’s performance Hippo Narcissus will be screened, a cantata wherein Davis portrays Theodor Adorno’s mother channeling 1930s opera diva Grace Moore. Intertitular tap by Gin Minsky of the Minsky Sisters.

The first installment of Semiospectacle was presented at Performance Space 122 in March 2010. For more information, please visit semiospectacle.com.

All proceeds go directly to artists.

a CTown workshop
THE FUNNY PAIN
an apology by Jordan Seavey
directed by May Adrales

featuring Boo Killebrew*, Geoffrey Decas O’Donnell, Jenny Seastone Stern* and Jennifer Dorr White*

WORKSHOP SHOWINGS:
November 19 @ 4pm
November 20 @ 1pm
IRT: 154 Christopher St. #3B (third floor)

FREE – Reservations strongly recommended

*Appearing courtesy of Actors Equity

collaborationtown.org

What really happened inside Henry David Thoreau’s cabin at Walden Pond? Wonder no more! Self-proclaimed Thoreau scholar, Charles Rucklemore III, will show you the exact truth – or something really, really close to it.

Part fantasy, part mythology, part clown-show, and all inspired by Thoreau’s Walden, WALLED IN is the story of one man’s determination to live the life he has imagined.

A Frances Black Production
WALLED IN
a new comedy by The Room (theatre company)

Written and performed by Zack Fine*
Directed by Diana Buirski
Created in collaboration with Christopher Tramantana
Clown Coacher – Christopher Bayes

Set Design – Katherine Akiko Day
Costume Design – Luke Aaron Brown
Original Music & Sound Design – Daniel Kluger
Lighting Design – Melissa Mizell
Production Manager/Technical Director – Justin Elie
Stage Manager – DarrylLee VanOudenhove

*Appearing courtesy of Actors Equity

Walled In was developed with generous support from SPACE at Ryder Farm

Performances October 21 – November 12
At IRT: 154 Christopher St. #3B (3rd floor)

Fri 10/21 – 8pm (Preview)
Sat 10/22 – 9pm (Opening)
Sun 10/23 – 7pm (Artichoke Sunday!)
Mon 10/24 – 7pm
Tues 10/25 – 7pm
Sat 10/29 – 9pm
Sun 10/30 – 7pm (Artichoke Sunday!)
Mon 10/31 – 7pm
Tues 11/1 – 7pm
Sat 11/5 – 3pm and 9pm
Sun 11/6 – 7pm (Artichoke Sunday!)
Mon 11/7 – 7pm
Fri 11/11 – 9pm
Sat 11/12 – 3pm and 9pm

Artichoke Sundays (Oct. 23, Oct. 30 and Nov. 6) are generously sponsored by Artichoke Pizza. Chill out and enjoy hot, fresh pizza before every Sunday show. It is complimentary with your admission. Yum yum yum!

ARTISTS

Morgan Rowe is a graduate of The Theater School at DePaul University, founded as the Goodman School of Drama. She has worked all over the United States from New York (The New Victory Theater) to Florida (Florida Studio Theater) to Seattle (ACT Theatre, The Seattle Children’s Theater, Seattle Shakespeare Company, The 14/48 Theatre Festival and many others).

Jean-Michele Gregory works as a director, editor, and dramaturg, focusing on extemporaneous theatrical works that live in the moment they are told. Her latest work with longtime collaborator Mike Daisey, The Agony and the Ecstasy of Steve Jobs, is currently running at the Public Theater, following runs at the Sydney Opera House, Seattle Rep, Woolly Mammoth, Berkeley Rep, and a five-city tour of India. She has also developed solo shows with Martin Dockery (Wanderlust, The Surprise) and Suzanne Morrison (Yoga Bitch, Optimism).

Full of humor and hope, Lake Water sheds some light on an all-too-common small-town American tragedy.

By Troy Deutsch
Directed by Daniel Talbott

Starring: Troy Deutsch* and Samantha Soule*

Set design by Eugenia Furneaux-Arends
Costume design by Tristan Raines
Lighting design by Brad Peterson
Sound design by Janie Bullard

Stage managed by Hannah Woodward*
Assistant directed by Ashley Monroe

Line produced by Amanda Feldman of Neighborhood Productions

Performances:
September 17th – Oct. 2nd
Tuesdays @ 7pm
Wednesdays – Fridays @ 8pm
Saturdays @ 2pm – 8pm (no matinee on Saturday Sept. 17th)
Sundays @ 3pm

At IRT: 154 Christopher St., #3B (3rd floor)

Tickets $18

*Appears courtesy of Actors’ Equity Association

A reading of a new play by Lisa Kohn

Performances:
September 9 at 3pm
September 10 at 4pm

At IRT: 154 Christopher St., #3B (3rd floor)

Tickets: FREE (space is limited so advanced reservation is suggested)

Angela Baxter was just another suburban housewife performing in the community theater, when an FBI agent exposed her true identity as an ex-seventies terrorist. Now, Angela has been sentenced to twenty years in prison for crimes she committed thirty-years-ago. Although Angela is trying to focus on bidding adieu to her “perfect” son (a secret Adderall and orgie addict), others seem hell bent on spoiling her final hours of freedom. There’s the FBI agent, who’d sell his soul to pulverize Angela, and Angela’s daughter in-law, the leader of a fringe anti-vaccination organization, whose hobby is hating her mother-in-law. But Angela’s fate could change for the better with the help of a wanna-be revolutionary, who’s full throttle committed to her liberation.

This is a dark and funny play about extremism gone horribly wrong… and, of course, a tale about family.

Written by Lisa Kohn
Directed by Jessica Bauman

With:

Pete Bradbury*
Darcy Fowler
Ken Glickfeld*
Chad Hoeppner*
Julie Kline*
Deirdre O’Connell*

* Appear courtesy of Actors Equity

ARTISTS

Lisa Kohn has been working in television for the past eight years. She has written and produced for networks including but not limited to CBS, MTV, TLC, A&E, and Bravo. Her credits include soap operas, documentaries, and reality shows, and she has had her own comedy pilot in development. Her first play, I Am the Chicken Man, Cluck was read at SALAAM and the Lark. She is a graduate of UCLA film school and Stanford University.

Jessica Bauman recently directed Making Up The Truth by and with journalist Jack Hitt, which premiered at the International Festival of Arts and Ideas in New Haven in June. She has been working as a director in New York and regionally for almost 20 years. Her work has been seen at theatres such as New Georges, New York Theatre Workshop, Soho Rep, the Public, Juilliard (including the world premiere of Fuddy Meers by David Lindsay-Abaire), Rising Phoenix Rep and the 52nd Street Project. Regionally, she has worked at the Huntington Theater, Portland Stage Company, Shakespeare Theatre of NJ, Theatre Outlet (Allentown, PA) and the O’Neill. She has collaborated with playwrights such as David Lindsay-Abaire, Kia Corthron, Tracey Scott Wilson, Emily DeVoti, Jenny Lyn Bader, Diana Son, Napoleon Ellsworth and Kirsten Greenidge. She is the founder and Artistic Director of New Feet Productions, for which she directed and produced Into the Hazard (Henry 5), her own six actor adaptation of Shakespeare’s Henry V, All Day Suckers by Susan Dworkin and Milk by Emily DeVoti (co-produced with New Georges). For the 24 Hour Plays on Broadway, she has directed the premieres of Terrence McNally’s Teachers Break with Cynthia Nixon and Maura Tierney and Harrison Rivers’ and it seems to me a very good sign… with Naomi Watts and John Krasinski. She has been an Artist-in- Residence at Tribeca Performing Arts Center, a Drama League Directors Project fellow, and is an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, a NYTW Usual Suspect and New Georges Affiliated Artist. Jessica was a finalist for the 2007-2009 TCG/NEA Career Development program for Directors. She is a graduate of Yale College.