Men of Tortuga

Written by Jason Wells
Directed by Randolyn Zinn
Produced by Living Room Theatre 

Nomination:  Outstanding Ensemble: Michael Broadhurst, Curzon Dobell, Ken Forman, Benim Foster, Allen McCullough

 

About the Company: The Living Room Theatre focuses on new and classic plays in intimate settings.

About the Production: Four powerful men plan an assignation of a rival to maintain their status. The Three Stooges meet Mamet. Reason is trumped in this very serious comedy. What are the boundaries of politics and business?


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What first attracted you to this project?

Ben: The script was fast paced and smart.

Allen: The script had a very topical theme in advance of last year’s Presidential Election.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Ben: My favorite part was working with my fellow actors and director.  It was a total collaborative creative experience.

Allen: A great new play; smart, funny odd, with wonderful dialogue, five distinct voices, a great director, and four other great actors. It was an ensemble piece in the truest sense.

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

Allen: Acting and producing at the same time.

Ben: The script is like music. So many natural overlaps and cutoffs. As actors, we needed to choreograph which words needed to be in the clear and which were ok to cut off or overlap. It was a beautiful dance.

What did you want the audience to come away with after watching Men of Tortuga?

Allen: That the game of politics probably doesn't change much, over time.

What was it like working with the other artists involved with this production?

Ben: Everyone involved with Living Room Theatre is fantastic, my fellow actors, the director, EVERYONE!

Allen: I loved working with this group. The actors listened and then moved the played forward. Each performance was like a jazz jam session.

Make sure to follow The Living Room Theatre on Twitter and Instagram  @lrtvt

Old Turtle and the Broken Truth

Book by Catherine Bush & Music and Lyrics by Dax Dupuy
Directed by Sarah Sutliff
Produced by Rebel Playhouse

Nominations: Outstanding Choreography / Movement, Sarah Sutliff; Outstanding Production of a Musical

Photos by Theik Smith Photography

About the Company:  Rebel Playhouse is a non-profit, educational theater company that produces shows for children and families based on stories that break traditions and challenge normative thinking, and offers classes designed to foster creative development.

About the Show: Old Turtle and the Broken Truth was an interactive musical for all audiences based on the children's book of the same name by Douglas Wood. The production included dance, puppetry, and audience participation. In Old Turtle and the Broken Truth, a truth falls like a star from the sky and breaks into two pieces. When the villagers discover only half of the truth, it causes so many problems that Little One, a brave young girl, decides to search for the missing half. With the help of Old Turtle, and many animal friends, Little One is able to mend the broken truth and make it whole again creating a better world for everyone. Old Turtle and the Broken Truth is a powerful allegory about accepting and welcoming differences.


Producer Clara Kundin and Director/Choreographer Sarah Sutliff talk about staging this innovative morality tale.

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What first attracted you to this project?

Sarah: My connection to this production is twofold: first as the Artistic Director of the Rebel Playhouse I knew I had to select an inaugural production that would pack a punch and show that children's theatre could be deeper and darker than what many think of in regards to Theatre for Young Audiences. The message of Old Turtle... can be challenging, but I felt that it was particularly relevant and important in light of our current national climate of distrust and miscommunication. As soon as I selected the piece to serve as our season opener, I knew that I wanted to be the one to tackle it as Director and Choreographer.

Clara: Rebel Playhouse wanted to present an inaugural production that was outside of the norm of the typical stories presented in theatre for children, and would be appealing to both child and adult audiences. Old Turtle and the Broken Truth tackled challenging themes of war, religious belief, communication, discrimination, and morality in a delightful package of a one hour musical with dance and live instrumental performances. It permitted our younger audience members to reflect on issues that effect our current world, and showed adults how deep and complex theatre for young audiences can truly be.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Sarah: I had the most talented, authentic, and passionate team of performers and artists. They made every day working on Old Turtle... an exploration and a joy. They made my job easy, and they dove into every suggestion, every musing, with 110%.

Clara: The best part of working on this production was seeing how truly universal the themes and messages the piece explores truly are. They moved our actors, they moved our production team, and they moved our audiences, young and old. Listening to the audience feedback after each show was profound, particularly realizing just how much our younger audience members were able to comprehend of some very challenging moments in the piece. They were able to speak about and reflect on Old Turtle and the Broken Truth in a very conscious and honest way.

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

Sarah: We put on a 13 person musical with live music and full choreography in a very small black box theatre. The greatest challenge was definitely making the best use of the space without allowing the staging and choreography to leave the audience feeling cramped or overwhelmed.

Clara: We realized at the offset what a lofty undertaking this production was. To have a 13 person cast in which all performers had to play instruments and sing and dance and had devising experience seemed a daunting task... but shockingly that was the easy part! The greatest difficulty was finding a performance space. As a brand new company with limited funding, trying to find a performance space that was in our budget, could accommodate us for the full duration of our run, and was large enough to serve our staging and choreography was quite a challenge. The Dorothy Strelsin Theatre wound up being a magical space for us to call home for our three week run, but it came after many weeks of searching and inquiring.

What did you want the audience to walk away with after watching Old Turtle...?

Clara: We wanted audiences to leave our production with greater expectations for the quality and content in theatre for children, and a new appreciation of what musical theatre can look like. There is so much more range to the genre than the huge big budget dance musicals you see on Broadway.

What was one of the most notable elements of this production for you?

Sarah: I took inspiration for a great deal of the choreography from the tradition of the Haka; a Maori war dance/cry. The New Zealand All Blacks Rugby team is notorious for their pre-game Hakas, and I must have watched about 3 dozen Haka videos compiling the physical vocabulary of a dance that would suggest intimidation and battle. The climactic fight/dance in Old Turtle... was the first number I choreographed, and although I feared it may intimidate younger viewers, the feedback from the children in our audiences was overwhelmingly positive.

Clara: We were so lucky to have our incredible composer Dax Dupuy not only serve as our Musical Director, but she was also the production's pianist and she played Old Turtle herself! How's that for range!? Dax was onstage playing piano for the whole show, and she emerged from behind the piano in a great reveal to "enter" as Old Turtle. We loved the magic of the ever-present pianist turning out to be the wise Old Turtle, so in our programs we listed Dax as "The Pianist" so her appearance as Old Turtle would be a complete surprise to our audiences. We adored that in almost every show a child in the audience would exclaim "Old Turtle was playing the piano this whole time!!!"

Did you learn anything from your experience of working on this production?

Sarah: I learned so much. I guess my biggest take away is that regardless of how many curveballs may be sent your way, you never have to settle. Old Turtle... wound up being all I could have wished for, and more. As a brand new company presenting a new work, there is a great potential for roadblocks. We just never accepted them as absolutes and pushed through them all.

What was it like working with Rebel Playhouse?

Sarah: Well, I am a bit biased because Rebel Playhouse is my baby. Clara Kundin, Greer Samuels and I founded Rebel Playhouse in the Fall of 2016 in the hopes of promoting stories that challenged traditional thinking, advocating for truly non-biased and non gender/age/or race specific casting, and encouraging children's theatre as a whole to dive deeper and push harder. I like to think that we accomplished all of these things in our first production.

What was it like working with Sara Sutliff?

Clara: Sarah Sutliff is a force to be reckoned with in all that she does. The choreography of this show didn't end with each song. With a cast of 13 actors onstage at almost all moments and a small theater, each scene was a delicately choreographed ballet. She made a tight space feel open and inviting. As a person, her enthusiasm, talent, and professionalism set a high bar for those she works with, and we are all the better for it.

Make sure to check out Rebel Playhouse on Twitter and Instagram @rebelplayhouse

 

Hamlet

Written by William Shakespeare
Directed by Ashley Griffin
Produced by A.N.O.N. Productions

Nominations:  Outstanding Director & Outstanding Actress in a Lead Role, Ashley Griffin;  Outstanding Revival of a Play

Photos by Micah Joel

About the Company: A.N.O.N (Any Other Name) Productions is dedicated to producing plays by, adapted from, and inspired by The Bard.

About the Production: Is equality a state of mind or state of affairs? Can gender ever be freed from the masculine/feminine paradigm? The patriarchal state may seem a thing of the past but what if the struggle for power and survival make it our future. Inspired by the "He For She" Campaign, a first of its kind, which acknowledges the need for men in the women's movement. Set in the near future, in a militarized surveillance state, this production was a gender-bending equality driven take on Hamlet.

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What first attracted you to this project?

Ashley: I’ve always felt more connected to HAMLET than to any other Shakespeare play, and more connected to the character of Hamlet than any other Shakespearian character. As my theatrical career developed I had wonderful opportunities to play some of Shakespeare’s great women. When I was cast as Rosalind a lot of people told me, “Oh! She’s the female Hamlet!” I understand the comparison – they are both very intelligent and speak a lot. But Rosalind is expounding on love in a romantic comedy. Hamlet is talking about life, death and what it means to be human. The things Hamlet was talking about were the things that spoke to my heart. That I wanted to express, explore and communicate. And then I realized, all at once, that I would never get the chance to because I’m a woman. In truth, there is no female equivalent of Hamlet, because there is no female protagonist of a Shakespearian tragedy.

Around this time I happened to discover two things that greatly resonated with me – one was Emma Watson’s wonderful UN Speech about the He For She Campaign - which calls for men to be a part of the gender equality movement. (We eventually partnered with He For She on HAMLET.) The second was a fascinating article on “Sworn Virgins” – women in Eastern Europe who, not allowed to own property or be the head of household, choose to live their life as a man in order to be granted male privileges in their society.

Ms. Watson says in her speech, “Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong.” I have experienced gender inequality as a woman, but I know many wonderful men who have experienced it as well – being mocked for being vulnerable, or sensitive and feeling like they aren’t able to show their emotions. I realized that just as there is no female equivalent of Hamlet, there is no male equivalent of Ophelia. And just as there are things in Hamlet that I longed to express, so there are things about Ophelia that men long to.

So I decided to do a selective gender reversed HAMLET. In our production Hamlet is a woman raised as a man for succession purposes and Ophelia is a man bullied his whole life for being too sensitive. Through the refractive lens of overlapping masculinity and femininity we come to see that, far from a slightly misogynistic young prince and his wilting damsel of a girlfriend, we are ALL Hamlet and we are ALL Ophelia. We are all rageful, and sensitive, and vulnerable, and strong, and scared and smart. I wanted to show that the issues Hamlet and Ophelia deal with are universal. To make HAMLET immediate, applicable to our times and vital to all of us.

 

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Ashley: Getting to dive into one of my favorite plays of all time from both an actor and director perspective was an extraordinary experience. To attack the moments in HAMLET that I’ve always felt drawn to, and connected with as well as asking questions of those moments that always bothered, or confused me and finding answers to them was an incredible opportunity. Saying words that have resonated so deeply in my heart and soul ever since I first fell in love with this play when I was eight years old meant so much to me. And collaborating with a wonderful company of actors – most especially my costar Ryan Clardy (Ophelia) who went on this remarkable, unique journey with me, and was the most incredible acting partner anyone could ask for, created the kind of ensemble feeling that artists dream of.

What was the most challenging part of working on this production?
Ashley: Being both the director of this production and playing Hamlet was immensely challenging. Often I would have rehearsals by myself with a video camera – watching my performance and giving myself notes while completely alone. Being the captain of the ship, and maintaining the stamina to perform this role was both incredibly difficult and incredibly rewarding.

 
What lessons did you take away from this experience?

Ashley: My incredible mentor Stephen Schwartz once told me: “The more personal you make something, the more universal it becomes.” It was wonderful and very meaningful to discover how universal the issues I was drawn to, exploring and wrestling with in this production were. After every performance young men came up to us in tears saying “I’m Ophelia. I never realized that. I’ve never seen myself portrayed on stage before.” And likewise young women who never realized how much they related to Hamlet, and struggled with the issues he was dealing with. The very visceral realization that I’m not alone in the things I feel, struggle with, and experience and how important it is that we examine these things – especially in our art was truly incredible. Making Hamlet a woman and Ophelia a man, along with other directorial decisions really brought this play to life in a brand new way.

What was it like working with this company of artists?

Ashley: A.N.O.N. Productions, and especially artistic director Jennifer-Elizabeth Cooper have been incredible supporters of me, and my work and that means more than I can possibly say. All artists should have such champions in their corner. Their willingness to work on innovative productions should be hugely applauded and I wish more theater companies would be as joyously fearless as they are.

Both our 2015 and 2016 casts of this production were wonderful to work with – such special, collaborative ensembles with great respect for everyone on the team and the work being done.

Follow A.N.O.N. Productions on Twitter @production_anon

Anais Nin Goes to Hell

Written by David Stallings
Directed by Antonio Minino
Produced by Manhattan Theatre Works (MTWorks) in association with Goode Productions


Nominations: Outstanding Costume Design, Izzy Fields

Photos by Jody Christopherson

About the Company: MTWorks is dedicated to discovering new plays that challenge our perception of diversity (ethnic, economic, geographic, gender, sexuality or creed).  They foster  innovative playwrights that boldly take risks in theme, structure, time-period and location by collaborating with exceptional theatre artists to develop their plays through our Living Room Series, Newborn Festival and mainstage productions.

About the Production: Anaïs Nin Goes to Hell is an existential comedy centered around some of the most powerful and memorable women of history (Queen Victoria, Cleopatra, Andromeda, Heloise, Joan of Arc) as they wait on an island in the river Styx for the final leg of their soul’s journey to eternal peace or damnation. Their monotonous afterlife is shaken up when women’s lib icon and erotica writer Anaïs Nin arrives to the island planting seeds of change.

“Izzy Fields' costume design is the perfect marriage of historical accuracy and theatrical representation.” ~Ran Xia, Theatre Is Easy

 
What first attracted you to this project?

Izzy: The director's personal connection to the show and how inventive the world was!

What was your favorite thing about working on this production?

Izzy: The people. It was a great cast and crew.

What was the most challenging thing about working on this production?

Izzy: Finding a good balance between the darkness of the set and the darkness of the costumes. When you have dark on dark you run the risk of having actors be just floating heads.

What was it like working with MTWorks?

Izzy: Our producers and directors, its a really tight knit group and everyone is so supportive.

Dark Night Bright Stars

Created & Performed by Yara Arts Group
Directed by Virlana Tkacz
Produced by Yara Arts Gorup in association with La MaMa ETC

Nominations:  Outstanding Original Music, Julian Kytasty; Outstanding Actor in a Lead Role, Jeremy Tardy

About the Company: Yara Arts Group is a resident company at La MaMa, the acclaimed experimental theater in New York. Yara has created thirty four theatre pieces based on extensive research in Eastern Europe, Siberia and Asia featuring Yara’s signature style of multilingual dialogue and songs supported by evocative visuals and documentation.

About the Production: Dark Night Bright Stars recreates the meeting between Taras Shevchenko, the great Ukrainian poet and painter, and Ira Aldridge, the African-American actor who was much honored in Europe. The two great artists, who rose up from serfdom and slavery, could not speak to each other directly but in one historical moment, found a common language in art and song. Their meetings were documented in the diary of Count Tolstoy’s 15 year old daughter, Katya.

Actor Jeremy Tardy and Director Virlana Tkacz share their experience in creating this paradoxical work that explores communication without translation and the importance of words and their multiplicity of meanings.

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What first attracted you to this project?

Jeremy: The encounter of Ira Aldridge and Taras Shevchenko was very intriguing.

Virlana: When I first heard that Taras Shevchenko, a great Ukrainian poet who had been born a serf, had met and befriended the great African American actor Ira Aldridge in 1858 - I was fascinated. When I started researching the topic and learned the third person who had been at those meetings was the 14 year old daughter of count Tolstoy and that she had kept a diary - I knew this was a piece for our company.

What was your favorite part of working on this production? 

Jeremy: Working with two different languages.

Virlana: Creating the piece with the other artists in our company: Jeremy Tardy, Sean Eden, Shona Tucker and Julian Kytasty. We also took the piece to Ukraine in 2014 and learned so much more about the people and our piece by performing it in Odessa, Lviv and Kyiv.

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

Virlana: We were creating the piece in rehearsals - that is always hard, but when it works it is fabulous.

What did you want the audience to walk away with after seeing Dark Night Bright Stars?

Virlana: That art can transcends language, that passion speaks and can help us overcome our pasts and differences.

What was the most noteworthy part of this production for you?

Virlana: We were in Ukraine shortly after the events at the Maydan - the Revolution in 2014. We performed in Odesa just before the horrible fire and heard about as we got off the train in the next city. Kyiv was on a terror alert the day we performed but the theatre was full. In New York our audiences were very moved - even highschool kids from the the local school cried.

What did you learn from your work on this production?

Jeremy: The power and depth of the spoken word can transform lives.

What was it like working with Jeremy and Julian?

Virlana: Jeremy Tardy is a wonderful actor, very creative as a collaborator. An original musical score, created by Julian Kytasty, employs traditional Ukrainian songs which Shevchenko knew, as well as songs from AME Zion Church hymnal, a church which Ira Aldridge’s father attended. Julian performed the music on the bandura, a Ukrainian stringed instrument of the lute family. A third generation bandurist born in the US, his music combines a mastery of traditional styles with a distinctly contemporary sensibility. His collaborators have included artists as diverse as Chinese pipa virtuoso Wu Man, pioneering klezmer revivalist Michael Alpert and composer/saxophonist John Zorn. He has worked with Yara since 1998. Taras Shevchenko’s most famous book is "The Kobzar," referring to the bards who played the bandura.

Photos by Pavlo Terekhov & Lee Wexler

Now is the Time

Written by Michael Levinton, Laura von Holt, & Little Lord
Directed by Michael Levinton
Produced by Little Lord in association with Abrons Arts Center 

Nominations: Outstanding Costume Design & Outstanding Innovative Design, Karen Boyer; Outstanding Lighting Design, Marika Kent; Outstanding Performance Art Production

Photos by Kelly Stuart

About the Company: Little Lord is a Brooklyn-based company that develops and produces smart, lively, and unexpected performances. Ransacking the traditions of camp and pillaging faulty nostalgias in order to create a false sense of comfort and security for audiences, Little Lord’s work ultimately seeks to uproot the familiar – simultaneously celebrating the ridiculous, while exhuming troubling truths underneath the glee. In exploring this darker underbelly of the human condition – rough edges, visible seams, et al – Little Lord holds a funhouse mirror up to our shared cultural memories in order to subvert, challenge, and delight audiences with the possibilities of the theatrical form.

About the Production: New York City, 1809: an older gentleman of questionable mental health goes missing. Now, over 200 years later, Diedrich Knickerbocker has reemerged in the Catskills, hiding out in the decayed ruins of a once legendary Borscht Belt resort. When his anxieties finally manifest themselves as terrifying garden gnomes, and his vengeful liver-eating bird-woman of a wife crashes through the ceiling, our modern/ancient hero is thrust from the mundane into the mythic. Inspired by Prometheus Bound, The Book of Ecclesiastes, Dirty Dancing, Borscht Belt memoirs, and the writings of Washington Irving, Now is the Time was an epic treatise on trying to leave one’s mark on a world that never stands still.

Producer Morgan Linsey Tachco and Nominees Karen Boyer and Marika Kent talk about creating this abstract work about sanity and legacy.

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What first attracted you to this Now is the Time?

Karen: I had worked with Michael and Little Lord previously and was interested in their collaging of different texts and imagery, as well as the combination of personal and fairly local (Catskills) history.

Marika: I feel very at home in devised work. Different companies do it differently, but they're typically game to bring designers into the earliest phase of the workshop and rehearsal process, which is special. The intersection of that kind of process, and these specific artists is pretty irresistible.

Morgan: Little Lord is kind of like a dream come true. It's an art project in and of itself.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Karen: I loved the over-the-top characters and costumes, especially the same/harpy! And of course working with such a fabulous group of performers, designers, people.

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

Karen: This was the first piece I've worked on where masks are worn for more than a bit-the entire show. It took lots of tweaking to land on something the actors could move in and work comfortably with.

Marika: The Underground is limited in it's inventory and availability of power, so the biggest challenge was the beg/borrow/steal hustle. Going into tech I felt like I had assembled a bunch of lovable misfit toys, which was really exciting and also a little terrifying. The staff at Abrons and my Master Electrician were really game to help me MacGyver together what became more of an installation than a plot, so once everything was in hand the process was painless.

Morgan: Fundraising and making art during election season 2016.

What was one of the weirdest things about working on this production?

Karen: The underground at Abrons is a strange, wonderful, and mysterious place...

What did you want the audience to walk away with after watching Now is the Time?

Morgan: As artists, we succeeded at putting ourselves in the position of maker: "here is what it is - develop your own perceptions." That was also my favorite part of making it. The penultimate moment of the piece was a list of questions asked by Rip Van Winkle, played by Lisa Clair. No matter what feeling folks walked out with, they had no choice but to confront their place in the space and the universe. It was polarizing, and we love that. No one walked out neutral. Success.

What made this experience special for you?

Karen: All the people! Hands down an amazing, positive, talented and creative group.

Marika: The company really used tech rehearsals to continue to devise the show. Our cast had great instincts for interacting with the myriad light sources installed in the set, which made for some cool discoveries during that week.

What was it like working with the nominees?

Morgan: Karen and Marika are just two of an all-woman design team that just killed it. I have never been part of such a smooth and productive tech process. Straight pros all the way.

Make sure to follow Little Lord on Twitter and Instagram @littlelordnyc