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.

-------------------------------------------------------

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.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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

For Annie

Written by Beth Hyland
Directed by Emma Miller
Produced by The Hearth 

Nominations: Outstanding Director, Emma Miller; Outstanding Choreography/Movement, Lucia Knell

About the Company: The Hearth's mission to tell the stories of women by developing and producing plays that represent the complex and vast spectrum of womanhood. We nurture and celebrate female and non-binary artists.

About the Production: Annie Lambert was murdered in the middle of her senior year. So her sisters of the Beta Tau Alpha sorority at SUNY Onondaga are memorializing her in the best way they know how: They're putting on a play. For Annie uses Greek chorus, pop music, dance, and a lot of glitter to explore grief, guilt, sisterhood, and what it means to remember.

Director Emma Miller and Producer Julia Greer share their thoughts on mounting The Hearth's inaugural production.

-----------------------------------------------------------

What first attracted you to For Annie?

Emma: The first time I read For Annie, I was struck by the way it explores grief and by its depiction of what loss does to a community, to memory, and to friendships. It tackles such an important topic deftly and with so much dignity. It's about girlhood, family, and how we move on when the unthinkable happens.

Julia: We felt that Beth Hyland so beautifully captured the complexity of sisterhood and wrote exciting and dynamic female characters. It felt like an important story that was wonderfully told, and we couldn't wait to bring it to life.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Emma: The cast and crew! Making For Annie was collaborative, messy, and fun, and the people who acted in and worked on it are some of my all-time favorites.

Julia: The ensemble of people working on this piece was truly remarkable. They worked tirelessly to make it happen and do justice to the story. Working with them was the best part.

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

Emma: It's a cast of 11 people and the show has a lot of moving parts, so finding ways to bring it all together was challenging. Ultimately, I think that's a large part of what made the process so rewarding.

Julia: It's hard to do big plays on small budgets!

What did you want the audience to walk away with after watching For Annie?

Julia: We hoped people would come away from our production thinking about how complicated young womanhood is and questioning what they believed about blame, loss, and the way we grieve.

What will you take away from your experience working on For Annie?

Emma: For Annie was the inaugural production of The Hearth, the company I co-founded with Julia Greer, so getting to direct something through my own company was very meaningful.

What was it like working with Emma and Lucia?

Julia: Emma Miller has a unique ability to lead confidently and take the best idea in the room. She has an unbelievable vision and cares for each and every person in the room. Lucia Knell was an awesome collaborator, had such fun ideas, and made all the non-dancers in the room excited about and comfortable with dancing.

Be sure to follow The Hearth on Twitter & Instagram @thehearthco


 

The Dudleys!

Written by Leegrid Stevens
Directed by Jacob Titus & Leegrid Stevens
Produced by Loading Dock Theatre Company

Nominations: Outstanding Innovative Design for Video Design & Animation: David Bengali, John Erickson, Reid Farrington, Jorge Garcia-Spitz, David Mauro, Dan Monceaux, Leegrid Stevens

About the Company: The primary focus of Loading Dock is to create original plays that explore extremes in human behavior. We produce emotional, character driven plays with an experimental edge.

About the Production: Family memories are brought to life as a malfunctioning 8-bit video game. By dodging ghosts, zombies and evil Aunts, Vic tries to win a game he lost a long time ago.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What first attracted you to this project?

Leegrid: I became interested in the chiptune scene when I was at grad school for playwriting. I was working on a series of writing exercises in class when I started combining the two forms (chiptune & theatre). It was a fun way to explore some darker themes in my writing.

Dan: My common interests in vintage computers, computer games, pixel art, animation and independent theatre. At the time I was doing some work as a video technician on a children's theatre production that was touring in South Australia, and developing my own multimedia performances, with an audio-visual focus, rather than a theatrical one. I met Steven Gridley in an online forum and went on to produce character art and animation (including the title screen of the game/play). I worked on my contributions from my home in Adelaide, South Australia, without ever meeting the crew face-to-face. I'm yet to see the show in its entirity myself!

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Leegrid: Seeing the video design come together with the actors.

Dan: Steven's direction was very clear, yet he also allowed me plenty of freedom to work creatively to meet the production's needs. I was familiar with the Nintendo games of his childhood that he wanted to suggest in his work, and he was very encouraging throughout the process of making and revising it. He took a gamble on me, as I hadn't made much pixel art at that time. I've since gone on to draw and animate an entire retro computer game called Cuttle Scuttle. Working on The Dudleys! helped me build the confidence I needed to take on this recent project.

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

Leegrid: Learning photoshop and drawing everything pixel by pixel.

Dan: There were some technical hurdles encountered along the way, as the production grew from its original showing. The screen format changed, which led to my contributions being revised and updated several years after the original work was undertaken.

What did you want the audience to walk away with after seeing The Dudleys!?

Leegrid: A sense of regret and a renewed appreciation for the present.

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

Leegrid: One animation of a living room shifting color during a sunset had two hundred and forty frames, each being hand drawn. I'm not a pro in photoshop and there was probably a quicker way to complete that animation but it took me two weeks of evenings and weekends to finish that one.

Dan: It was a pleasure working in the rarely-explored middleground between the worlds of theatre and retro gaming. It was really neat to see the actors onstage, interacting with the scenery and animated characters I had drawn.

What did you learn from your time working on The Dudleys!?

Leegrid: I learned that a bad power cable on a single projector can inexplicably short circuit the video stream of a completely separate and unrelated projector (presumably conducted somehow through the grid??). I also learned that not having the video design work consistently until THE DAY WE OPEN will cause me to lose 15 pounds, give me PTSD, and lodge a knot in my stomach that took about 5 months to finally subside. I still don't like thinking about it.

Dan: I learned that I was capable of bringing a world of pixels to life, and that directors with imagination could marry that with the world of live theatre. What a kick! 

What was it like working with these artists?

Leegrid: The nominees have incredible visual skill and creativity. They took flat animations and made them live on a three dimensional stage.

Dan: Their raw creativity and enthusiasm are palpable.

Dandy Darkly’s Myth Mouth!

Written, Performed, & Produced by Dandy Darkly

Nominations: Outstanding Performance Art Production; Outstanding Solo Performance, Dandy Darkly; Outstanding Original Music: Rachel Blumberg, Dandy Darkly, Bryce Edwards, Adam Tendler
 
About the Company: Dandy Darkly is a critically acclaimed, alt-cabaret satirist and storyteller. His work skewers traditional Southern gothic storytelling with a decidedly non-traditional style. His exquisite corpse of eccentric recitations examine the timeless themes of sex and death, how the two mingle together -- origin and ending, creation and destruction -- and, in particular, how these themes informed Dandy, and a generation of queer people, who came of sexual age during the AIDS epidemic. Dandy further focuses each solo show he crafts on a selection of secondary themes that allow the storyteller to compare and contrast additional elements through his gloriously ghoulish, surprisingly poignant, allegorical tales. 

About the Production: Dandy Darkly's Myth Mouth! is a spoken word show that begins and ends with the tale of Cha-Cha the Caveman, humanity's premier popinjay and a drug addled con artist ultimately corrupted by his own fame. Along the way there's tales of Persephone, the goddess of Spring cast as a woke party princess, Laika the Russian Cosmopup who is Mankind's only defense against a fleet of Martian space cats and the harrowing tale of Professor Gif Jeffries, a virtual reality addict who travels the darkest corners of the web in search of virtual love. 


------------------------------------------------------------------------

What first attracted you to this project?

Dandy: Whereas past shows have focused on more specific subject matter (for example, 2015's Dandy Darkly's Trigger Happy! examined gun violence and emotional triggering) with Dandy Darkly's Myth Mouth! I wanted to broaden my scope and examine storytelling itself -- mythology, tall tales and the very nature of belief. I've long been obsessed with myth, in particular Greek myth and the academic writings of Joseph Campbell on the subject. This show represents my most personal work to date as I also explored many of my own personal vices (sex, drugs and rock and roll) by considering the similarities of chemical highs and religious ecstasy. Faith can be as addictive as any intoxicant. Finally, I was most excited to explore the very nature of creativity itself and to consider our cherished pantheon of queer artists as pop culture gods and goddesses who resonate and inspire long after they've left the mortal world.

Bryce: I love making soundtrack music and I love working with Dandy Darkly because I think he's brilliant.

What was your favorite part of working on this production?

Dandy: My most favorite part of the process is undoubtedly the writing of the stories. At the heart of any Dandy Darkly show are the words -- the rapid fire alliteration, breathless run on sentences and poetic profanity are the hallmark of every show I produce and easily the aspect I'm most proud of.

Bryce: The collaboration aspect. I love hearing the words and being challenged to come up with sounds and leitmotifs that work within the context of the show.

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

Bryce: The main challenge was working within the confines of structure of the pieces. The time restraints inherent in scoring a 55 minute show.

What did you want the audience to take away from their experience with Dandy Darkly's Myth Mouth!?

Dandy: The highest compliment ever paid following a Dandy Darkly show is when an audience member approaches me and offers, "I had no idea that's what you do!" Too often the image of a leering drag clown understandably sets an expectation of what's to be seen, but the poetry and power of the storytelling really amazes those who see my work. I want audience members to leave Dandy Darkly's Myth Mouth! with a desire to set expectations aside and simply see art to experience the absolutely unexpected.

What is one of the most noteworthy aspects of this production?

Dandy: Past shows have often been written in response to current events, but funny enough, one of the tales in Dandy Darkly's Myth Mouth! has become more and more relevant as revelations of our President's possible collusion with Russia are revealed. "True Story" focuses on Laika, the first dog in space, and her actual mission as a combat space puppy sent to stave off a hoard of marauding Martian cats. The story examines faith and the power of indoctrination, but also skews Cold War era Russian/American relations, fake news and believing in something despite factual evidence to the contrary. It has proved resoundingly popular the more we learn about the 2016 election.

What is it like working with the nominees of Dandy Darkly's Myth Mouth!?

Dandy: It's been my honor to collaborate with three astounding musicians, Adam Tendler, Rachel Blumberg and Bryce Edwards, for Dandy Darkly's past four shows. While the words I write initially inform the sound we improvise together, its the music that eventually becomes the backbone of the piece, allowing me freedom to pace the tales and uncover unexpected moments in which to play with the text. They are world class, professional musicians in their own right and the generosity of their talent and eagerness to collaborate with whatever project Dandy's working on, year after year, really blows me away.

Bryce: Dandy Darkly is brilliant!

Rachel: I am always delighted to work along side these wonderfully talented folks!

Make sure to follow Dandy Darkly on Twitter & Instagram @dandydarkly