About the Company: BREAD Arts Collective
To do good work
with people we love
and make some dough.
4 parts downtown theatre
3 parts live music
2 parts love story
1 part farce
3 dashes of opera
Shake vigorously and garnish with cocktails designed by award-winning mixologist
Marlo Gamora (head mixologist at Trix in Willamsburg) and you have
Potion: A Play in Three Cocktails.
Charley sells potions, handcrafted and custom made. From potions that can make the forgetful remember to potions that will stop a compulsive liar from fibbing, Charley’s concoctions satisfy a diverse clientele. But the one potion Charley hasn’t been able to master is that one she wants for herself: a love potion. Potion, a “spoken word opera” immerses its audience in the giddy world of Charley’s bar and her regular (and irregular) customers, with Gamora’s flight of 3 original “potions” served by the actors as the play unfolds.
Stolen Chair (three-time Drama Desk Award nominees for The Man Who Laughs) will kick off their 12th Season with a site-specific theatrical experience, Potion: A Play in Three Cocktails, performing every Sunday at 7pm at PEOPLE Lounge (163 Allen Street between Stanton and Rivington) for an open-ended run beginning Sunday, March 2nd. Tickets ($25, plus $20 cocktail prix fixe) may be purchased online at www.stolenchair.org or by calling 212-868-4444. The show runs approximately 90 minutes, with no intermission.
To create the uniquely rhythmic text for Potion, Stolen Chair's playwright Kiran Rikhye dug deeply into the Italian libretti of the operas by Mozart, Verdi, Donazetti, and more. For each scene of Potion, Rikhye mapped out the meter, rhymes, repetitions, and simultaneity of an aria, duet, trio, or quartet to create a template for her own original text. The result is an intoxicating and incantatory verse play unlike any other, set to a genre-bending original score performed live by multi-instrumentalist Sean Cronin. The ensemble performs this "opera" in spoken voice that is every bit as virtuosic, dizzying, and delightful as operatic song in a site-specific staging by Jon Stancato that explores every nook and cranny of PEOPLE's bar and makes the audience feel they are VIP guests at Charley's magical speakeasy.
The production will be directed by Jon Stancato (The Man Who Laughs; The Bachelors’ Tea Party) and will feature Raife Baker* (David Dirry-Moir in The Man Who Laughs), Liz Eckert* (Bessie in The Bachelors’ Tea Party), Jon Froehlich* (Ursus in The Man Who Laughs), Natalie Hegg* (Elise in Bachelors’ Tea Party), Molly O’Neill* (Dea in The Man Who Laughs), Noah Schultz (Young Gwynplaine in The Man Who Laughs), and David Skeist* (Richard Foreman’s Old Fashioned Prostitutes (A True Romance) at The Public Theater), and with live music by multi-instrumentalist Sean Cronin. The creative team will include Costume Design by Beth Goldenberg (Julie Taymor’s A Midsummer Nights Dream with Theatre for a New Audience), Props by Aviva Meyer (The Man Who Laughs), Makeup Design by Jaclyn Schaefer (The Man Who Laughs) and Lighting Installation by Daniel Winters (Drama Desk Award nomination for The Man Who Laughs). *Appearing courtesy of the Actors’ Equity Association.
About the Company: Stolen Chair Theatre Company
STOLEN CHAIR Named best “genre-bending theatre” by New York Press, Stolen Chair is a theatre laboratory dedicated to the creation of playfully intellectual, wickedly irreverent, and exuberantly athletic original works. Proudly plundering the pop culture of the past half millennium, Stolen Chair’s aesthetically promiscuous work recycles and reinvents old genres and stories to discover new ways to challenge and delight contemporary audiences. Pioneer of the Community Supported Theatre movement, Stolen Chair is supported, in part, by the Nancy Quinn Fund and by public funds from the New York State Council on the Arts.
New Opera"
Opera.New Opera
ACT ONE: INTO A RED BOX
Five True Stories FRom Women Running Out Of Time
Directed by Gordon Farrell
ACT TWO: EXIT ROUTES
Five True Stories From Women (And Men) Fed Up With Monogamy
Directed by Tatiana Gelfand
Dramaturg, Paul Jensen
FEATURING:
Katie Donovan
James Kloiber
Chelsea LeSage
Aria McKenna
Megan Murphy
Adam P. Murphy
Gayle Robbins
Joshua Scarlett
Catie Taaffe
These are true stories given to the playwright -- stories of women (and men) breaking society's rules and expectations in a struggle to define themselves and to grasp what it might mean, some day, to lead an emotionally fulfilling life.
Arts.Theatre
Merely Players is an ongoing performance salon presented by Mortal Folly Theatre. Classical pieces are presented up-close and personal in People Lounge, without sets, costumes or props, so that audiences can experience classical theatre in its purest form - just actors telling stories. The actors themselves are encouraged to explore new material and expand their skill with classical texts, including performing pieces that would not have historically been available to them because of age, gender or “type”.
This edition of Merely Players is an evening of Shakespeare sonnets, monologues, and short scenes, including pieces from Othello, As You Like It, Henry VI, Part I and more.
Admission is $10, with $5 drink specials all night.
About the Company: Mortal Folly Theatre
Mortal Folly Theatre exists to provide a training ground for actors looking to further their experience in Classical Theatre. As a cellist cannot improvise a concerto, so we believe that actors cannot fully realize themselves as storytellers through intuition alone; they must embrace the process - the work - as whole-heartedly as the performance. Honing their technique with the instrument - in an actor's case, themselves - is absolutely essential, and can only be achieved through both dedication and passion for the material. We aspire to create an educational experience where Classical texts are accessible, inspiring, and provocative, and the quality of performance is commensurate with the level of commitment. Mortal Folly is a sponsored artist of The Field (www.thefield.org).
Merely Players is an ongoing performance salon presented by Mortal Folly Theatre. Classical pieces are presented up-close and personal in People Lounge, without sets, costumes or props, so that audiences can experience classical theatre in its purest form - just actors telling stories. The actors themselves are encouraged to explore new material and expand their skill with classical texts, including performing pieces that would not have historically been available to them because of age, gender or “type”.
This edition of Merely Players is an evening of Shakespeare sonnets, monologues, and short scenes, including pieces from Othello, As You Like It, Henry VI, Part I and more.
Admission is $10, with $5 drink specials all night.