11 OBIE Awards |
4 DRAMA DESK Nominations |
The Peter Zeisler Award |
2012 | 2011 | 2010 | 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004 | 2002 | 2001 | 2000 | 1999 | 1998 | 1997 | 1995 | 1994
2012
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH?
OUR VALUES IN QUESTION
WRITTEN BY KIRK LYNN
CO- CREATED & DIRECTED BY MELANIE JOSEPH
Performed at St. Ann's Warehouse
Would you rather be smarter or taller? If you could have one extra hour today, what would you do with it? What’s the most important thing you’ve ever done that you didn’t want to do? How much change, just change, do you think is in the pockets and bags of the people in this room?
How Much is Enough? explores notions of "value" -- in all its poetic iterations -- quantitatively through our relations to money and qualitatively by asking what we hold dear. The piece itself is built entirely out of questions posed by three performers to audience members, to each other, to the universe, and then some, about how we live our lives, what plans we’ve made for the future and what advice we can offer one another as we attempt to create lives of value.
Equal parts town hall meeting, party, guide for the perplexed … and then some, How Much is Enough? gathers its greatest theatricality from the most interesting people in the theater – those who usually sit in the dark.
HOW MUCH IS ENOUGH? website
2011
"Struggle is par for the course when our dreams go into action. But unless we have the space to imagine, and a vision of what it means to realize our humanity, all the protests and demostrations in the world won't bring about our liberation. " Robin D.G. Kelley
NYC... JUST LIKE I PICTURED IT
A festival of performances re-imagining the city we live in
FUREE in Pins and Needles
A NEW REVOLUTIONARY MUSICAL IN BROOKLYN
STARRING MEMBERS OF:
Families United for Racial and Economic Equality (FUREE)
DIRECTED BY KEN RUS SCHMOLL
MUSICAL DIRECTION: RICHARD HARPER
CHOREOGRAPHY: CAMILLE A. BROWN
Performed at The Irondale Center
In 1937 P&N was a hit musical written for and performed by the members of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union – this amateur company ran on Broadway for 4 years and sent three different touring companies across the US. We adapted this historic musical to be performed by the members of FUREE – Families United For Racial and Economic Equality. FUREE in Pins and Needles is a community musical performed by a community that knows too well what they were singing about in 1937 and what they are singing about in 2011.
AND FIVE NEW PLAYS CREATED BY THE ULTIMATE DREAMERS: ARTISTS AND SOCIAL JUSTICE COMMUNITIES
Active Ingredients
Third Root Community Health Center + Eisa Davis & Morley
Yatra Samudra Samma: Journey to the Ocean
Adhikaar + Aya Ogawa & Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew
Mira al Horizonte/Look at the Horizon
NICE (New Immigrant Community Empowerment) + Lisa Rothe & Carlo Albán
Emergence
Green Oasis Community Garden + Maureen Towey & Jason Grote
A Point in Time
United Playaz + Universes
2010
THE MYOPIA
AN EPIC BURLESQUE OF TRAGIC PROPORTION
WRITTEN & PERFORMED BY DAVID GREENSPAN
DIRECTED BY BRIAN MERTES
Performed at The Atlantic Theater 2
Performed weekends w/ PLAYS by Gertrude Stein
THE MYOPIA is a comedy about Barclay who is secretly writing a play about his father, Febus who is struggling to finish a musical about Warren G. Harding that features his grandmother, Yetti, his mother, a Jewish Rapunzel named Koreen, Mrs. Harding, the 16 U.S. Senators in a smoke-filled room and a cameo performance from Carol Channing. This entire cavalcade is erformed by one character, our Raconteur for the evening, who in turn is performed by the inimitable David Greenspan from a single armchair on a bare stage. An hilarious Escher painting in theatrical form, THE MYOPIA celebrates the remarkable power of imagination in us all.
"The Myopia is nothing short of revolutionary. No one is like Greenspan ... a one-man cabinet of wonders. Anyone can stage pictures but so few can bedazzle the mind's eye." - TimeOut NY
"You emerge from this production feeling dazzled and disoriented, as if you'd just seen a splashy Disney musical crossed with a Greek tragedy and a kitchen-sink drama, or an evening of Samuel Beckett plays as staged by Florenz Ziegfeld. Greenspan fills the imagination of the audience with images of pathos and comedy, of fantasy and absurdity, that leaves a fizzy sense of excitement, the giddy elation that follows a great fireworks display." - The New York Times
MYOPIA // PLAYS website
2009
THE PROVENANCE OF BEAUTY
A SOUTH BRONX TRAVELOGUE
CREATED BY MELANIE JOSEPH & CLAUDIA RANKINE
WRITTEN BY CLAUDIA RANKINE
DIRECTED BY MELANIE JOSEPH & SHAWN SIDES
Performed on a tour bus traveling through the South Bronx
THE PROVENANCE OF BEAUTY is a poetic travelogue performed on a bus touring the South Bronx; the audience boards the bus in East Harlem, puts on headphones and crosses Willis Ave. Bridge, and for 90 minutes eavesdrops on the voice -- live and recorded -- of this historic place. Rankine's evocative text points out and reflects upon the sites that pass by outside the windows; views that to an outsider might go by unnoticed -- a factory dressed up as townhouses, the theatre where La Lupe once held court, now a pentacostal church -- complicated places that ask what creates a neighborhood in a city in a country in the world. PROVENANCE is a theatrical experiemce that both responds to and redoubles the landscape, mapping out a poetic cartography of a neighborhood -- of any neighborhood -- in its eternal state of evolution.
"PROVENANCE makes the bustle outside the bus throb with history, mystery and meaning, as the best of live performances do. An elegant theatrical meditation on a pocket of the city you might never think of exploring." - The New York Times
"The enterprising Foundry Theatre has outdone itself. PROVENANCE is a journey you will never quite forget." - The New York Post
PROVENANCE website
2009
BY ARIANA REINES
DIRECTED BY KEN RUS SCHMOLL
Inspired by "The Telephone Book," by Avital Ronell.
Performed at the Cherry Lane Theater
Winner of 2 OBIE Awards: Best Direction & Best Performance
Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas A. Watson presented their invention to the public, vaudeville-style, in theatres. TELEPHONE begins with both of them onstage again, but their task is more complicated than it used to be. A biography of the phone and a meditation on the nature of the disembodied voice, TELEPHONE operates like a switchboard connecting places and people across time and space. Miss St (Jung?s notorious schizophrenic madwoman) takes over in act two, she suffers the slander of invisible telephones and tells you all about it. Finally, act three, people who love each other make cell phone phone-calls. Reines? TELEPHONE is a delicate and tender yet ferociously poetic work that asks what it means to 'take a call' not knowing what or who might be on the other end.
"TELEPHONE is an inspired and utterly original new tone poem of a play" - The New York Times
"With TELEPHONE, Reines has vaulted into a distinctly uncrowded category of next-generational thinkers." - VARIETY
TELEPHONE website
2008
OPEN HOUSE
BY AARON LANDSMAN
DIRECTED BY MELANIE JOSEPH
Performed in peoples' living room in the 5 boroughs of NYC
OPEN HOUSE was a small play about the big city ? small enough to be performed in living rooms throughout all 5 boroughs of New York City and big enough to ask how we live in our city now, and into the future. the play follows two narratives: the evocative sales pitch of a real estate salesman named Three; and the story of Rick and Jane, a young couple trying to figure out how to sustain a relationship, start a family and live as active members of a city that is out of control.Set against the backdrop of turbo gentrification, rising rents, and the insecurity of urban living, Open House asks how we can participate in the ongoing evolution of our city.
"Aaron Landsman has a dry, subversive wit" - The New York Times
"bleakly funny and elegaic" - Time Out NY
2008
ETIQUETTE
CREATED BY ROTOZAZA
Performed At Veselka Restaurant, NYC
"Staged" at a table in a working restaurant and delivered entirely through headphones, two synchronized soundtracks transforms two audience members per performance into a young girl and an aging philosopher. As the piece unfolds, they are lead through a series of situations, where the bubble shared between the "characters" splits and re-forms incessantly. At one moment, you may be in a separate world from your partner, the next joined together in a kind of engineered conversation, where audience and performer roles are imperceptibly assumed and exchanged. Etiquette exposes human communication at both its rawest and its most delicate, exploring the difficulty of turning our thoughts into words we can trust.
"Etiquette makes the point, quite creatively, that every conversation is a performance." - The New York Times
2007
THE BROTHERS SIZE
BY TARELL ALVIN McCRANEY
DIRECTED BY TEA ALAGIC
Performed in the Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival
Playing fast and loose with West African myths, The Brothers Size brings contemporary rhythms together with traditions of ceremonial presentation to tell the modern-day story of the Size brothers - Ogun, an auto mechanic, and Oshoosi, a recent parolee. This breakout hit from our 2007 Under The Radar Festival is an imaginatively fresh new drama, in which the audience is at once the community, the witness and the judge.
"Listen closely, and you might hear that thrilling sound that is one of the main reasons you go the theater, that beautiful music of a new voice." - The New York Times
PRODUCED UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE FOUNDRY PRODUCERS CHAIR PROGRAM
2006
MAJOR BANG OR
HOW I LEARNED TO STOP WORRYING AND LOVE THE DIRTY BOMB
BY KIRK LYNN
DIRECTEDBY PAUL LAZAR
Performed at St. Ann's Warehouse
Part suspense thriller, part magic act, part instructional seminar, MAJOR BANG is a dark and comic take on our new era of global (in)security. Sprung from the contents of a backpack left on the subway, the piece samples Kubrick's Dr. Strangelove and the true story of David Hahn, a boy scout who built a nuclear reactor in his parents' garage to earn his Atomic Energy Badge. The result is a 75-minute ride through 21st century concepts of fear- both real and manufactured.
"MAJOR BANG proves that laughter in the dark need not be desperate. This Foundry production is surely the happiest show to have been inspired by the horrors of 9/11." - The New York Times
"MAJOR BANG never shies away from how scared we actually are." - The New York Sun
MAJOR BANG website
2005
K.I. FROM CRIME
BY DANIL GINK
DIRECTED BY KAMA GINKAS
A Site Specific Performance in a storefront on W. 38th St.
The explosive, haunting "K.I. from 'Crime'" depicts the last living moments of Katerina Ivanovna, a character drawn from the margins of "Crime and Punishment". K.I. performs to an audience of 'guests' at a memorial for her recently deceased husband. Penniless, K.I. sees the encroaching despair his death will bring to her life and the lives of her children. The audience soon discovers that this "memorial" is not for her husband, it is for her own soul. A signature work from renowned Russian director Kama Ginkas, "K.I. From 'Crime'" features a virtuosic central performance by Oksana Mysina, who all but channels Dostoyevsky's timeless investigation into the persecution of the human spirit. Performed in Russian.
"...visceral, beyond language, the consummate expression of an unfathomable need." - The New Yorker
"Raw, masterly stagecraft that leaves you aghast, with a renewed sense of theater as art." - Time Out NY
"[A] kind of vehement clarity. Ginkas has a commanding theatrical vision." - The New York Times
2004
BY ALICE TUAN
DIRECTED BY MELANIE JOSEPH
Performed at Baruch College Performing Arts Center
Born in 1579 in Aldersgate Street, died of dropsy in Fleet Street 1650, the notorious Moll Cutpurse was both a pickpocket and an expert fencer, a cross dresser and self-proclaimed "governess of the underworld." In her cheeky, quick-witted adapatation of the original Jacobean citizen play, Alice Tuan brings Moll into the 21st century, a world where the days of the week have corporate sponsors, free speech costs a fortune, beauty is mandatory and theatre has been declared illegal. Against this backdrop, Moll will stage a performance of her forbidden "Show of Shows," rallying her fellow citizens into a roar against the stultifying authoritarianism of the day.
"A smart, cutting adaptation ... so much spice, it seems exotic." - The New York Times
"A lively playful inteligence energizes the Roaring Girle." - New York Newsday
ROARING GIRLE website
2002
TALK
BY CARL HANCOCK RUX
DIRECTED BY MARION McCLINTON
Performed at The Public Theater
Winner of 2 OBIE Awards: Best Production & Best Performance
In the age of McCarthy and the Beat poets, controversial African-American artist Archer Aymes became an overnight sensation for his first book, "Mother and Son"; ten turbulent years later he was found dead in a prison cell. Tonight, five panelists convene to uncover the meaning of Aymes' legacy. Commissioned in response to The Foundry's "Conference on Hope", Talk is a fierce exploration of identity and the struggle to maintain an original voice, from an artist The New York Times called "One of 30 Artists Under 30 Most Likely to Influence Culture for Another 30 Years."
"Original, provocative, and entertaining... One of the best evenings this season." - The New York Times
"The most ambitious play in years. Talk wins the case for a renewed theatre of ideas." - TimeOut NY
2001
LIPSTICK TRACES
ADAPTED BY KIRK LYNN
DIRECTED BY SHAWN SIDES
Performed at The Ohio Theater
Austin-based Rude Mechanicals brings its trademark blend of physicality, intelligence, and caustic wit to this manic adaptation of Greil Marcus? cult classic. The intrepid Dr. Narrator joins British pop impresario Malcolm McLaren to recount an alternative history of the last century via the Sex Pistols, The Cabaret Voltaire, the May '68 riots, and a handful of medieval heretics. Lipstick Traces is a physically ecstatic and intellectually nervy theatrical vision of "movements in culture that raised no monuments, movements that barely left a trace."
"Smart, spirited ... pulsing with verve and ingenuity." - The New York Times
"Stylish, dangerous fun ... a witty rip-roaring, mad 75 minutes of theater." - New York Post
2000
AND GOD CREATED GREAT WHALES
COMPOSED & PERFORMED BY RINDE ECKERT
DIRECTED BY DAVID SCHWEIZER
Performed at Dance Theater Workshop & 45 Bleecker Theater
OBIE Award Winner for Best Performance
Drama Desk Nomination for "Unique Theatrical Experience"
An extraordinary and haunting musical adventure into the psyche of an artist, And God Created Great Whales follows a gifted composer on a quest to finish his opus: an opera based on Moby Dick. Desperately fighting the advance of a disease eating away at his memory, he is forced to rely on a tape recorder hung around his neck, each day pressing "Play" and hearing yesterday's instructions to himself.
"One is overwhelmed by the power of quest and loss and by the beauty of the music." - The New York Times
"It made me feel alive at a time when little in the musical theater does." - The Village Voice
1999
GERTRUDE AND ALICE
BY LOLA PASHALINSKI AND LINDA CHAPMAN
DIRECTED BY ANNE BOGART
Performed at The Signature Theater
OBIE Award Winner for Best Performance
GLAAD Media Award Nominee
Composed entirely from Stein's plays, texts, and letters, this moving piece explored the ways in which Stein's work emerged from her "daily life" with Toklas.
"Stage with poetic precision and beautifully conceived." - The New York Times
"Perceptive, humorous ... another sterling premiere from The Foundry Theatre." -The Star Ledger
1998
THE RACE OF THE ARK TATTOO
BY W. DAVID HANCOCK
DIRECTED BY MELANIE JOSEPH
PERFORMED BY MATTHEW MAHER
Performed at PS 122
Winner of 2 OBIE Awards: Best Production & Best Performance
Part shopping trip, part haunting, all play, The Race of the Ark Tattoo takes place inside a mysterious, idiosyncratic flea market run by Mr. P. Foster, who is selling the artifacts of his deceased foster father. Each object in the flea market offers its own story, and each performance is different as the order of these stories is determined by the random selection of objects from the salvaged "story ark." The audience discovers that this flea market is, in effect, a mausoleum - a repository for the memories of Foster's own life within the relics of his father's.
"... a terrific concoction that calls up searing fear and pity." - The New York Times
"one of the rarest theatrical sights in our "seen-it-all age." - The New York Press
"Nothing quite like it has appeared before on the American stage; to fully honor its originality means entering the theater knowing no more than you should go." - South End Press
1997
HOT MOUTH
CONCEIVED AND COMPOSED BY GRISHA COLEMAN
DIRECTED BY TALVIN WILKS
Performed at The Ohio Theatre, Classic Stage & Mnhtn. Ttr. Club
Drama Desk nominee for "Most Original Theatrical Experience"
Hot Mouth is a post-modern oratorio for a cappella voices, fusing Yoruba chants with jazz and field hollers with funk. With infectious harmonies and intoxicating rhythms, the highly theatrical, often ironic performance leads to deeper considerations of identity, communication, and even meaning itself.
"Lively and inventive, HOT MOUTH pushes the boundaries of theater." - The New York Times
"A swift, well-designed 70 minutes of almost indesribably melodic madness." - TimeOut New York
1995
DEVIANT CRAFT
BY W. DAVID HANCOCK
DIRECTED BY MELANIE JOSEPH
Performed in The Brooklyn Bridge Anchorage
Drama Desk nominee for "Most Original Theatrical Experience"
Mr. Snow runs the theatre program at The Phlogiston Foundation, a fictional reformatory for women who have committed violent crimes but who have remarkable aptitudes in science, technology and art. The audience arrives expecting to see the inmates perform The Tempest, but on this night, the performance is delayed when the wrong costumes and props arrive for the performance. Events will arise from this mishap that forever alter the course of The Tempest, the prisoners' lives and our own notions of creativity.
"Rigorously metaphysical ... rough magic has never been more raw, more visionary." - The Village Voice
"Watching Hancock's elaborate environmental piece, DEVIANT CRAFT, is like cutting into what looks like an ordinary cake and discovering that it has twenty layers, each with a different flavor and consistency. Don't ask what kind of cake it is. Just dig in." - The New York Times
1994
THE CONVENTION OF CARTOGRAPHY
BY W. DAVID HANCOCK
DIRECTED BY MELANIE JOSEPH
Site Specific Performance
OBIE Award Winner for Best Play
Drama Desk nominee for "Most Original Theatrical Experience"
Equal parts folk art museum, lecture, and "happening," Cartography invites its audience into a traveling museum featuring the collected works of Mike, an itinerant folk artist. The museum is curated by David Hancock, who since the Mike's death has retraced his peregrinations across America, retrieving his idiosyncratic art and poetry from diners, gas stations, rest areas, shops, and private homes. At the end of the museum visit, a "play" is revealed, creating a reality-inside-a-reality which leaves audiences to reflect on the intersection of truth and imagination?and to reconsider the relationship of art to society.
"From the tactile to the analytical ... a precious feast for all the senses." - The Village Voice
"One of the most arresting pieces I've seen ... a tantalizing new wrinkle in the art of participation. " - New York Newsday
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