CURRENT PROJECTS IN DEVELOPMENT
Eelpout
By Paul Kruse, directed by Rachel Wolther. Coming to the premier queer theater festival in NYC, the Fresh Fruit Festival at the Wild Project, April 27th-30th 2023.
Eelpout is a fast-paced, surreal farce about the traps of midwestern masculinity. It's a funny fever dream where friends are lovers, fish can talk, and life's mysteries beckon from the bottom of a frozen lake. Sven Svenson and Ole Oleson have been best buds since kindergarten, and they put up with Lars Larsen because his daddy has a pretty nice ice fishing house. Eelpout takes place on the drunken morning of Ole's ice-fishing bachelor party. When Sven admits to Ole that he doesn't want to be his best man, they share a surprising kiss that makes Ole wonder if they should be more than friends. Meanwhile, Lars is sure the exotic dancer he hired might be his true love. Just then an eelpout fish leaps outta the frozen lake and throws a wrench in everything. Sven's gotta pick between a familiar life with Ole and something wild and strange from the lips of a talking fish.
Lemons
Co-created by Sarah Hughes and Sarah Todes, and is a finalist for the Drama League Next Stage Residency. It has also received support from the LPAC Rough Draft Festival, Roxbury Arts Group, and Bushel Collective. NEON CAVIAR is currently in pre-production for a 2023 workshop--- details coming soon.
Lemons explores how social media affects our individual and collective relationship to grief. The play centers on an obsession with a fitness guru's instagram account. The fitness influencer had lost her husband, to COVID in 2020; the protagonist had recently lost her Mom to cancer. Lemons weaves together personal narrative and cultural criticism as the protagonist absorbs the influencer's public grief in the context of her private one.
Lemons is an examination of female strength, both physical and emotional, as defined by the capitalist patriarchy. Exploring the intersection of wellness culture/self-care, which is overwhelmingly marketed to women, and capitalism, Lemons looks at how these contradictions have come to inform our relationship to grief, our identities, our bodies, and each other. Dance and movement at times draw out, at times provide counterpoint to the rhythm of the first person narrative.
Lemons Team Bios
Sarah Todes (playwright/ creator/ producer/ ensemble) recent work includes: GAMP, a dark comedy pilot about two dysfunctional sisters who run a puppet show company, proud recipient of a NYFA MOME Womens Fund grant; Silvia and Lucetta in Franklin Stage Company's production of Two Gentlemen of Verona; Lifetime Supply at IRT; My Unfinished Girl at The Cell Theater; and the NEON NIGHTS performance series at The Carriage House in Stamford, NY. Sarah is also the founder of Puppetsburg, a contemporary puppet show company based in Brooklyn which recently received a rave review in the NYTimes, and Puppetsburgs nonprofit, HeartFelt, which brings Puppetsburg shows to underserved communities, most recently via the City Artist Corps grant. @gamptheseries / @neoncaviar / @puppetsburg / @todeyouso
Sarah Hughes (director/ producer/ creator) is a director, producer and parent based in NYC. She makes live performances of all kinds: new plays, VR pieces, devised work, virtual concerts, hybrid new media projects, and more. Recent collaborators include Julia May Jonas, MJ Kaufman, Julia Izumi, Pablo Helguera, Sunita Prasad, Eliza Bent, Zarina Shea, and Carl Holder, and her work has been programmed at The Bushwick Starr, Abrons Arts Center, and New Ohio, among others. As a producer she's developed pieces with artists & institutions such as Sibyl Kempson, MoMA, Half Straddle, Tribeca Film Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, and The New York Times. Sarah was a longtime company member with Elevator Repair Service, is an Affiliated Artist of New Georges and Target Margin Theater, and is an alum of the WP Theater Directors Lab, the ONeill National Directors Fellowship, Clubbed Thumb's Directing Fellowship, and The Civilians R&D Lab. She's taught at Dartmouth College & NYU, and created the role of Director of Artistic Programming at Theatre Row, where she conceived & led the Kitchen Sink Residency, a new-work development program for emerging performance companies. www.sarahcameronhughes.com
Keren Lugo (creative producer/ ensemble) Off Broadway: At The Wedding (LCT3), Romeo y Julieta (Radio Play, The Public Theatre), Privacy (The Public Theatre), Actually, Were F*cked (Cherry Lane Theatre), Two Mile Hollow (Womens Project). Regional: Girls, Scenes From Court Life (Yale Repertory Theater), Water by The Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum), Men on Boats (Baltimore Center Stage), Women of Padilla (Two River Theater), Henry V, Our Town (Chautauqua Theater Festival). TV: New Amsterdam (NBC), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), The Americans (FX). Education: MFA NYU Graduate Acting
Matt Bittner (sound design, ensemble) select acting credits include the Tony nominated revival of Present Laughter, starring Kevin Kline; School of Rock: The Musical (National Tour, Broadway); Almost Famous: The Musical (Broadway); Up Here (La Jolla Playhouse); Much Ado About Nothing (The Public’s Shakespeare In The Park); As You Like It (Two River Theater), and various productions with Mile Square Theater and Thingamajig Theatre Co. TV: Madam Secretary, The Good Fight. MFA, Rutgers University.
Brian Bock (ensemble) is an actor, clown, singer, and writer from California. The youngest and most ignorable of 5 dysfunctional children, Brian blossomed from a shameful little cretin into a conduit for strange, jagged humor borne from his inescapably existential ennui. He is perhaps happiest when performing his two-person clown show, Soul Potato, in which he eats a rotisserie chicken with his feet—or, more generally, whenever he can disarm and delight someone with mild-to-medium grotesquerie. An avid satirist of himself and the world, Brian is a stalwart believer in humor as social medicine, and in plumbing one’s darkest depths for the truth. He is an alumnus of NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.
By Paul Kruse, directed by Rachel Wolther. Coming to the premier queer theater festival in NYC, the Fresh Fruit Festival at the Wild Project, April 27th-30th 2023.
Eelpout is a fast-paced, surreal farce about the traps of midwestern masculinity. It's a funny fever dream where friends are lovers, fish can talk, and life's mysteries beckon from the bottom of a frozen lake. Sven Svenson and Ole Oleson have been best buds since kindergarten, and they put up with Lars Larsen because his daddy has a pretty nice ice fishing house. Eelpout takes place on the drunken morning of Ole's ice-fishing bachelor party. When Sven admits to Ole that he doesn't want to be his best man, they share a surprising kiss that makes Ole wonder if they should be more than friends. Meanwhile, Lars is sure the exotic dancer he hired might be his true love. Just then an eelpout fish leaps outta the frozen lake and throws a wrench in everything. Sven's gotta pick between a familiar life with Ole and something wild and strange from the lips of a talking fish.
Lemons
Co-created by Sarah Hughes and Sarah Todes, and is a finalist for the Drama League Next Stage Residency. It has also received support from the LPAC Rough Draft Festival, Roxbury Arts Group, and Bushel Collective. NEON CAVIAR is currently in pre-production for a 2023 workshop--- details coming soon.
Lemons explores how social media affects our individual and collective relationship to grief. The play centers on an obsession with a fitness guru's instagram account. The fitness influencer had lost her husband, to COVID in 2020; the protagonist had recently lost her Mom to cancer. Lemons weaves together personal narrative and cultural criticism as the protagonist absorbs the influencer's public grief in the context of her private one.
Lemons is an examination of female strength, both physical and emotional, as defined by the capitalist patriarchy. Exploring the intersection of wellness culture/self-care, which is overwhelmingly marketed to women, and capitalism, Lemons looks at how these contradictions have come to inform our relationship to grief, our identities, our bodies, and each other. Dance and movement at times draw out, at times provide counterpoint to the rhythm of the first person narrative.
Lemons Team Bios
Sarah Todes (playwright/ creator/ producer/ ensemble) recent work includes: GAMP, a dark comedy pilot about two dysfunctional sisters who run a puppet show company, proud recipient of a NYFA MOME Womens Fund grant; Silvia and Lucetta in Franklin Stage Company's production of Two Gentlemen of Verona; Lifetime Supply at IRT; My Unfinished Girl at The Cell Theater; and the NEON NIGHTS performance series at The Carriage House in Stamford, NY. Sarah is also the founder of Puppetsburg, a contemporary puppet show company based in Brooklyn which recently received a rave review in the NYTimes, and Puppetsburgs nonprofit, HeartFelt, which brings Puppetsburg shows to underserved communities, most recently via the City Artist Corps grant. @gamptheseries / @neoncaviar / @puppetsburg / @todeyouso
Sarah Hughes (director/ producer/ creator) is a director, producer and parent based in NYC. She makes live performances of all kinds: new plays, VR pieces, devised work, virtual concerts, hybrid new media projects, and more. Recent collaborators include Julia May Jonas, MJ Kaufman, Julia Izumi, Pablo Helguera, Sunita Prasad, Eliza Bent, Zarina Shea, and Carl Holder, and her work has been programmed at The Bushwick Starr, Abrons Arts Center, and New Ohio, among others. As a producer she's developed pieces with artists & institutions such as Sibyl Kempson, MoMA, Half Straddle, Tribeca Film Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, and The New York Times. Sarah was a longtime company member with Elevator Repair Service, is an Affiliated Artist of New Georges and Target Margin Theater, and is an alum of the WP Theater Directors Lab, the ONeill National Directors Fellowship, Clubbed Thumb's Directing Fellowship, and The Civilians R&D Lab. She's taught at Dartmouth College & NYU, and created the role of Director of Artistic Programming at Theatre Row, where she conceived & led the Kitchen Sink Residency, a new-work development program for emerging performance companies. www.sarahcameronhughes.com
Keren Lugo (creative producer/ ensemble) Off Broadway: At The Wedding (LCT3), Romeo y Julieta (Radio Play, The Public Theatre), Privacy (The Public Theatre), Actually, Were F*cked (Cherry Lane Theatre), Two Mile Hollow (Womens Project). Regional: Girls, Scenes From Court Life (Yale Repertory Theater), Water by The Spoonful (Mark Taper Forum), Men on Boats (Baltimore Center Stage), Women of Padilla (Two River Theater), Henry V, Our Town (Chautauqua Theater Festival). TV: New Amsterdam (NBC), Orange is the New Black (Netflix), The Americans (FX). Education: MFA NYU Graduate Acting
Matt Bittner (sound design, ensemble) select acting credits include the Tony nominated revival of Present Laughter, starring Kevin Kline; School of Rock: The Musical (National Tour, Broadway); Almost Famous: The Musical (Broadway); Up Here (La Jolla Playhouse); Much Ado About Nothing (The Public’s Shakespeare In The Park); As You Like It (Two River Theater), and various productions with Mile Square Theater and Thingamajig Theatre Co. TV: Madam Secretary, The Good Fight. MFA, Rutgers University.
Brian Bock (ensemble) is an actor, clown, singer, and writer from California. The youngest and most ignorable of 5 dysfunctional children, Brian blossomed from a shameful little cretin into a conduit for strange, jagged humor borne from his inescapably existential ennui. He is perhaps happiest when performing his two-person clown show, Soul Potato, in which he eats a rotisserie chicken with his feet—or, more generally, whenever he can disarm and delight someone with mild-to-medium grotesquerie. An avid satirist of himself and the world, Brian is a stalwart believer in humor as social medicine, and in plumbing one’s darkest depths for the truth. He is an alumnus of NYU’s Graduate Acting Program.
PAST EVENTS
Lemons at LPAC Rough Draft Festival
Fri, Jan 27th- 7pm; Sat, Jan 28th- 2pm
Fri, Jan 27th- 7pm; Sat, Jan 28th- 2pm
NEON NIGHTS Summer Series 2021: Each month we collaborated with a different group of actors, artists, writers, musicians, directors, dancers, + more to bring a fresh evening of original performance to the Western Catskills after hosting the artists for a week long residency in preparation for the show. We had fabulous turnout every night, and two of the projects have received City Artist Corps Grants for future development!
September: We were thrilled to present a workshop performance of THE MOTHERHOOD PROJECT, created by Christy Escobar with collaborators Marinda Anderson, Rosa Gilmore, Keren Lugo, Kedren Spencer, and Sarah Todes, as well as visual art by Melike Baskoylu, a Turkish-born interdisciplinary sculptor and woodworker based in Brooklyn, NY. Their practice pursues a marriage between Eastern and Western influences in form-driven narratives and pattern-makings, bridging the divide between traditional and emerging technology. Inspired by Ottoman-Safavid Era miniature paintings and late 20-21st century sculptural movements of US/Europe, they reinterpret the visual and spacial relationships central to fine woodworking and painting.
August: Stephanie Jean Lane (Sleep No More), Kyra Sims (NY Neofuturists), and Sarah Todes (GAMP) presented My Unfinished Girl, an immersive multimedia performance featuring live French Horn, dance, and video, that raises questions about the things in our life that are unfinished, unresolved, or lost to the void.
July: "This Little Light" is an original performance devised by Sarah Hughes (Target Margin Theater), Leemore Malka (The Mysteries), Sarah Todes (GAMP), and Rachel Yong (Overstep Comedy). The upstairs Art Gallery featured a solo show by Lauren Ciarpella. Post-show Studio 54 Dance Party with SPECIAL DJ: Jezz Harkin!
September: We were thrilled to present a workshop performance of THE MOTHERHOOD PROJECT, created by Christy Escobar with collaborators Marinda Anderson, Rosa Gilmore, Keren Lugo, Kedren Spencer, and Sarah Todes, as well as visual art by Melike Baskoylu, a Turkish-born interdisciplinary sculptor and woodworker based in Brooklyn, NY. Their practice pursues a marriage between Eastern and Western influences in form-driven narratives and pattern-makings, bridging the divide between traditional and emerging technology. Inspired by Ottoman-Safavid Era miniature paintings and late 20-21st century sculptural movements of US/Europe, they reinterpret the visual and spacial relationships central to fine woodworking and painting.
August: Stephanie Jean Lane (Sleep No More), Kyra Sims (NY Neofuturists), and Sarah Todes (GAMP) presented My Unfinished Girl, an immersive multimedia performance featuring live French Horn, dance, and video, that raises questions about the things in our life that are unfinished, unresolved, or lost to the void.
July: "This Little Light" is an original performance devised by Sarah Hughes (Target Margin Theater), Leemore Malka (The Mysteries), Sarah Todes (GAMP), and Rachel Yong (Overstep Comedy). The upstairs Art Gallery featured a solo show by Lauren Ciarpella. Post-show Studio 54 Dance Party with SPECIAL DJ: Jezz Harkin!
PROJECTS
snak storeezBite-sized dramadies about snack foods. Once you pop the top, the existential crisis don't stop:
www.snakstoreez.com |
lifetime supplyNEON CAVIAR's debut production. In this live graphic novel, Hannah collects a Lifetime's Supply of Acai Berry Supplements to win back the heart of the man she loves. Presented at the acclaimed IRT Theater in Manhattan.
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GAMP
A dark comedy TV Pilot about two sisters who run a puppet show company, currently being shopped to networks. The series is narrated by puppets. Learn more:
www.gwenandmina.com |
