The Maiden

The Maiden
Conceived by Chance D. Muehleck
Directed and Choreographed by Melanie Armer
Composed by Admiral Grey
Produced by La MaMa in association with The Nerve Tank

Nomination: The Maiden is nominated for Outstanding Performance Art Production


       Photos by Raymond Haddad

About this Production
The Maiden was constructed to explore questions of power and showmanship in the context of a trailer park nightclub. We blended found text, choreographed movement, and live music to reboot the myth of Persephone’s abduction, creating a visceral, overlapping experience of her journey to the Underworld. That journey took her from ignorant bliss to the realm of pure knowledge, allowing her to turn the tables on her captor.

The show featured a three-piece band of Chorus members who played a variety of instruments, all of which were literally built into the set design. Hades rode an absurdly tall and specially designed and constructed bicycle contraption. And Demeter was present in voice only--heard over a unique audio speaker suspended above the audience--until the show’s final moments when she made a slow and silent walk across the playing space.

Melanie Armer talks about how the creative team reimagined this classic Greek myth.

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What inspired you to create The Maiden?

Melanie: The Maiden grew from an element of Glory Road, which was our installation piece about Sisyphus that was presented by Arts Brookfield last year. Persephone was there as overseer, but she wasn't the focus of the project. Our way in to Persephone's story was through the psychic wormhole of innocence to pure knowledge--that is, knowledge untethered from moral or practical concerns. The versions of the myth we’re familiar with don't give her much of a voice. She's taken to the Underworld, she's tricked (or not) into staying there half the year, and her mother wanders the earth crying after her. But approaching it from the perspective of Hades as a knowledge-giving source complicates Persephone's journey in all sorts of ways. It tends to come back to the nature of power: Who wields it, what feeds it, and how is it transferred?

  

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Melanie: The Maiden was conceived by Chance D. Muehleck and then workshopped over one full year in its development with Director/Choreographer Melanie S. Armer & Composer/Performer Admiral Grey. This was a slight shift in the collaborative process for The Nerve Tank which allowed these three collaborators equal impact prior to the written text and rehearsal process. The addition of a collaborator, new to the Nerve Tank at this core level was another joyful and exciting change. The Maiden is a true culmination of the work the Nerve Tank has been doing for the past 6 years incorporating evidently strong design, and a more audience- accessible finished piece than ever before.

What was the most challenging part of working on this production?

Melanie:The main challenge for us is often: What’s the conceptual frame for the themes we want to explore, and how much explication of this frame does an audience need to feel engaged? With a classic Greek myth, you’re starting with something that many people have some familiarity with. But they might not know the details, or even the most important twists in the story. So we kept that balance in mind throughout our process.

What makes The Maiden so different?

Melanie: We first encountered Admiral Grey's work when we saw a bizarre version of the film Metropolis projected with live dance, costumes and 4 bands. One of these bands was Admiral Grey's "Glass Lamborghini" We were smitten, and began stalking her online. When Mio Yoo at LaMama asked us to pitch a project for the Club space we proposed a joint venture and when Mia expressed interest in the project, we connected directly with Admiral Grey hoping she'd love the idea. It turned out that she had recently completed a solo performance project centered on Persephone and was delighted to delve deeper into her mysteries with us. From such auspicious beginnings, deep collaboration was no surprise.

What do you want the audience to come away with after watching your production?

Melanie: If the audience comes away with anything from The Maiden, we’d like it to be these 3 things: A light mind. A deeper breath. Full ears and eyes.

The Importance of Being Earnest

The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
Directed by Kevin Connell
Produced by Take Wing And Soar Productions

Nominations: Debra Ann Byrd is nominated for Outstanding Actress in a Lead Role and Gail Cooper-Hecht is nominated for Outstanding Costume Design

                    Photos by Hosea Johnson

About this Production
In order to give classically trained actors of color center stage opportunities Take Wing And Soar Productions, in partnership with New Heritage Theatre Group, created a main stage production of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest. This production of is transported to 1920's Harlem with high style, dynamic dialogue and the music that changed a nation.

Producer and actress Debra Ann Byrd and Costume Designer Gail Cooper-Hecht discuss how they brought a fresh perspective to Wilde's classic story of social hierarchy and class structure by transporting it.

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What attracted you to working on this project?

Debra Ann: I was attracted to working on this production of The Importance of Being Earnest for two reasons. First, I really love this play and it's quirky characters and secondly, it was while performing the show, as a senior in college that I was inspired to start my production company.

Gail: Since I like working with Debra Ann and Take Wing And Soar Productions, I decided to do this play that I love. I had done several projects with them including Lorey Hayes’ Massinissa.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Debra Ann: My favorite part of working on The Importance of Being Earnest was having the opportunity to work on period and style with the director Kevin Connell. He is an exceptional teacher of this style of heightened language theater and I loved every moment of collaborating with him to find the similarities in upper class British manners and those of the American Black Bourgeoisie.

Gail: Taking this play, set in England at the turn of the century and changing it to Harlem in the 1920’s was already an interesting project. The idea that I was possibly designing the first all-black production of this Oscar Wilde play made it even more challenging and fun.

  

What was the most challenging part of working on this production? And why?

Debra Ann: The most challenging part of working on The Importance of Being Earnest is linked to my favorite part of working on the project. I had a difficult time working on Oscar Wilde's text and not using a British dialect because that is how I learned it at college. The challenge was to find an American way of saying these words while still keeping the pace and rhythm of the style they were written in. I eventually got it by finding a living American person who I thought matched all of Lady Bracknell's qualities, BIG, BOLD BRASSY, WEALTHY and WISE. I found her and she just so happened to be someone I loved and admired. A woman who had mentored me. It was perfect! Challenge conquered, it became a great joy to perform the role with her in mind.

Gail: Scheduling a fitting with Debra Ann Byrd, who not only played Lady Brackenell, but was also the Producer and Company Manager was the most challenging part of designing this play.

What do you want the audience to come away with after watching your production?

Debra Ann: Our production of The Importance of Being Earnest was wildly innovative and funny. It called for many creative artistic minds to conceive it, create it, produce it and perform it. It was great reimagining history by taking a classic and transmuting it to create a new American classic. I really wanted the audience to come away with joy in their hearts at experiencing such a funny show. But, I mainly I wanted them to come away with the thought that we have more in common than we do differences. I wanted to inspire understanding and unity through the arts, and we did that by setting a traditional British play in a new Black American setting. It made people think. It gave great history lessons. It made many proud.

The best part is... It did what it was intended to do.

Fire. Water. Night

Fire. Water. Night
Conceived and Directed by Virlana Tkacz 
Produced by Yara Arts Group in Association with LaMaMa

Nominations: Alla Zagaykevych and Lemon Bucket Orkestra is nominated for Outstanding Original Music; Fire. Water. Night is nominated for Outstanding Production of a Musical
    Photographs by Volodymyr Klyuzko

About this Production
Fire. Water. Night by Yara Arts Group adapted spring and summer rituals into a World Music Theater piece that moved throughout the lobby, risers and playing areas of La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre, reveling in the imagery of the spring thaw, of awakening forests and of midsummer fire rituals. The work, conceived and directed by Virlana Tkacz, interwove performances in English and Ukrainian, including fragments drama, poetry, dance and song. It featured a score by electronic music composer Alla Zagaykevych, traditional ritual songs from Ukraine and raucous dance music by Toronto’s Lemon Bucket Orkestra. The experience was highly visual and musical and is completely accessible to all audiences which followed the performers to witness and take part in the scenes.

Director Virlana Tkacz, and composers Alla Zagaykevych and Mark Marczyk (of Lemon Bucket Orkestra) give us some insight into the creation of this sight specific production that explores the relationship between nature and technology.

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What attracted you to working on this project?

Virlana: I wanted to address our disruption of the cycles in nature and the simultaneous disappearance of an entire layer of traditional culture. The production moves through the spaces of La MaMa’s Ellen Stewart Theatre to explore our relationship to water, trees, fields and our entrance into a digital landscape. I wanted to retrace this journey viscerally for the audience, make it engaging and fun, yet chilling. Through various levels of engagement the audience becomes a participant or witness to the constantly moving performance, becoming immersed, activated and taking part in the action. We move from elements deciding to turn into a frozen river, to a rushing spring flood, to the first entrance of people into a forest, to the transformation of this landscape into an agricultural field, to a harvest that becomes mechanized and digitized to the elements deciding to freeze.

Mark: The opportunity to work with Alla Zagakevich and living in New York for a few weeks

Alla: I was excited to work with such a wide arsenal of artists. As a composer, I was given the opportunity to work with all a variety of performing artists - instrumental group "Lemon Bucket Orkestra", vocal group, performing Ukrainian folk songs and soloists that sang in different manners ... and - the possibilities of electronic music.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Virlana: I loved the moment when the women appeared high up on the bleachers and sang the traditional songs that were used to chase the spirits into the forest. Then they come down the steep seating platforms of La MaMa clapping and chasing our living forest through the audience that was sitting on carpets on the floor. Then the curtain in back opened to reveal the three-sided huge projections of a magical forest and as we turned, we found ourselves sitting almost in the center of this beautiful and strange new world.

Mark: Making music.

Alla: The most interesting part of the project was creating the music for the different performance mediums. We created music for projections, and actors, and dancers and an interaction of these elements

What was the most challenging part of working on the production?

Virlana: The challenges were many: I had to convince one group of performers that they were going to play trees and have them work for hours on movement with our choreographer, Shigeko Suga. Another group performed songs in a language they did not know and in a manner that was totally foreign to them with Alla Zagaykevych. It was also hard to rehearse a site-specific piece in a rehearsal hall. But once people really understood how everything related viscerally and in space, it all came together.

Mark: Sitting around and waiting to make music.

Alla: The most difficult part was the combination of different cultural environments in this production. The main text was originally Ukrainian that was adapted by Lesya Ukrainka into English but there were still lines and lyrics in different languages and the artists themselves were from a number of different cultures.

What was the most interesting part of working on this production?

Virlana: Working with so many people from so many places many quirky and funny things happen, but I was most moved how all these very different elements and people came together in the performance.

It was also great that the midsummer night party we created as an intermission in our show that involved the public singing and dancing often spilled out after with the performers singing and dancing in various parts of New York.

Alla: It was very interesting to watch the performers discover how to sing with the "voice of the wind" or the “voice of fire" And I was very impress by how quickly and masterfully everyone learned all of the elements.

What do you want the audience to come away with after watching your production?

Virlana: The environment and culture are deeply linked. Traditional culture, with its special magic and joy, disappears as agriculture transforms into mechanical and our landscape becomes digital. I want the audience to think about, or more importantly to feel and experience what we are losing and what we are gaining.

Lights Narrow

Post Contributed by Gabrielle Weinstein 

Lights Narrow
By Vincent Marano
Directed by DeLisa White
Produced by Teatro Oscuro in association with The WorkShop Theatre

Nominations: DeLisa White is nominated for Outstanding Director; Vincent Marano is nominated for Outstanding Original Full-Length Script; and Lights Narrow is nominated for Outstanding Premiere Production of a Play

          Photos by Ridley Parson and James Edward Becton

About this Production
Two men meet in a place that could or could not be the afterlife. One man is supposed to guide the other,a man the guide instantly dislikes and finds unworthy of help. In the defending and accusing each other, they try find common understanding of what the future may hold for all of us.

Playwright Vincent Marano and Director DeLisa White talk about working on this production that explores some of the most provocative and profound ideas about the afterlife.

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What attracted you to working on this project?

Vincent: I wrote it. I have always had a fascination with the afterlife and what happens after we die and I was trying to reconcile the deaths of my parents and the disparate way they lived their lives. Also, my growing antipathy to the wave of self-righteousness among religious groups and the discrimination they promote.

DeLisa: I love Vinnie and his writing and have loved working with him before (I directed a short play of his Artistic License which was nominated for an IT Award two years ago.) This script in particular asks big questions about the human condition in way that is inspiring and provocative, but never pretentious or preachy.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Vincent: The casting of the play. I had an incomplete work before I gave to two actor/friends and within a few readings I found the arc and end of the play. The tone was brought but by the director and allowed me to see how much farther I could go.

DeLisa: I have rarely been a part of work that struck home so deeply for all involved - it moved us all working on it and it was very powerful to watch it move audiences inspire their minds to churn with their own answers to the big questions it raises.

 

What was the most challenging part of working on the production?

Vincent: Promoting the play, especially to industry. Marketing the piece proved challenging and convincing people how strong the script, direction and performances were was daunting.

DeLisa: Time. Indie Theatre is important, but we necessarily all have day jobs and life obstacles. Doing our best work when pressed for time and juggling life is always the challenge of Indie Theatre. Its only love and passion for the work that drives us through it.

What was the most exciting part of your experience with this production?

Vincent: We did in the Fringe and feedback was incredible. The amount of discussion, both at the feedback and online with people who saw the show and wanted to share their beliefs about the afterlife and heaven and hell and all that. People have really deep feelings about what's next, but are often too private or embarrassed to discuss them openly. Some people came to see it more than once because they found it to be a profound, spiritual experience.

DeLisa: These parts were written specifically for these actors. That’s a gift, but a daunting one. They were valiant and brave in realizing the writer’s vision of what they could give.

What do you want the audience to come away with after watching your production?

Vincent: A renewed sense of hope and compromise... Belief that the world, both this and next is made for everyone and gratitude is the key virtue.

Life on the Mississippi

Life on the Mississippi
Book, Music & Lyrics by Philip W. Hall
Directed by Susanna Frazer
Produced by WorkShop Theater Company

Nomination: Life on the Mississippi is nominated for Outstanding Production of a Musical

            Photos by Gerry Goodstein

About this Production
A musical tale based on the memoirs of a young Samuel Clemen’s (Mark Twain) as he shares his rousing adventures working to obtain his captain’s license on a steamboat on the Mighty Mississippi.


Thomas Cote (Producer) “I loved the storytelling, and the adaptation of the source material.”

The Glory of Living

The Glory of Living
By Rebecca Gilman
Directed by Ashley Kelly Tata
Produced by Revolve Productions

Nomination: Hannah Sloat is nominated for Outstanding Actress in a Lead Role

           Photos by Hunter Canning


About this Production
Empty beer bottles.  Crumpled-up potato chip bags.  A sweaty, soiled clump of sheets.  The TV blares.  The Glory of Living follows the story of Lisa, a girl who leaves her trailer home and prostitute mother to join Clint, a man who loves her very much. The two take off and travel through the rural south of our not-too-distant-past, living in motel rooms, paid for with cash from minor theft.  As their crimes turn from petty to depraved we are confronted with a portrait of America that no one wants to call home, an America slipped-through-the-cracks of nameless victims and their equally nameless perpetrators.  A handcuff.  A jacked car.  A ride through the woods.  A distant gunshot.  The TV blares


Hannah Sloat talks about making a long-time ambition come to fruition by producing and acting in The Glory of Living.

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What attracted you to this project?

Hannah: I first came into contact with The Glory of Living when it was assigned to me in a scene study class at acting school. I was disturbed and enthralled by the piece, especially the character of Lisa. The role stuck with me and I've always wanted to take her on in a full production. So when I finished out the run of War Horse at Lincoln Center and began looking for my next project, I quickly came back to The Glory of Living and decided to produce it myself.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Hannah: It was a thrill to finally work on this role that had been calling out to me for years, and to share that experience with a great company, director, design team, and eventually an audience, was to see a dream realized.