from Queer Butoh 2022, photo by Jose Miranda
|
|
Greetings Brick Friends,
We are deep into the summer swing after an incredibly dynamic Pride month that presented and celebrated a small portion of the remarkable queer artists that helps make up The Brick community. We hope you were as moved, amazed, and startstruck as we were.
Last night we celebrated the opening of Flow My Tears (Everybody Dance), presented by The Exponential Festival. You may remember Flow My Tears from the virtual presentation earlier this year when the omicron surge caused many Exponential presentations to pivot or postpone. We are so thrilled to have Braulio Cruz, John-Philip Faienza and Teri Madonna LIVE in the space so you can FEEL the performance they've created. Flow My Tears runs through July 15, with special musical guests. Don't miss it!
This week we are thrilled to announce a new virtual playwriting intensive from OBIE Lifetime Achievement honoree Caridad Svich, a one night preview of a new touring production from The Million Underscores, a four day collaborative performance from the CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department practice+research ensemble, a shadow puppet symphony from Tristan Allen, and the latest solo performance from fabulous Brick regular Garlan Jude!
We also have a fresh set of pics to share from Queer Butoh 2022, a jaw-dropping visual and sonic program from Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute from photographer Jose Miranda.
And stay tuned next week for announcements from William Sydney, the next SALON, Joanie Drago, Ryan William Downey + Jeff Tobias, and more!
WOWIE ZOWIE, let's dig in.
|
|
ON STAGE NOW
FLOW MY TEARS
The Brick and The Exponential Festival present the live, staged version of
Flow My Tears (Everybody Dance)
July 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, and 15 at 8pm
A performance featuring live electronic music, singing, and surprise guests. Now we’re together in the room, and what happens?
Created and Performed by Braulio Cruz, John-Philip Faienza and Teri Madonna
Featuring Special Musical Guests!
JUST ANNOUNCED
WHERE DO PLAYS COME FROM
We are proud to present a new, virtual workshop with playwright Caridad Svich, recipient of the OBIE for Lifetime Achievement.
Where Do Plays Come From? will take place virtually on
July 27 630-830pm EDT via Zoom with a sliding scale $10-25.
A playwriting intensive looking at the cartography of dreams. Where do plays come from? Why do they occur? And how to make plays at a time of climate emergency? A process-driven session that will involve guided prompts, in-class writing, and dialogue about theatre’s presence in the world.
This is a great opportunity for writers of all skill levels to engage with a top notch playwright for a very affordable price, AND you can attend from anywhere with an internet connection.
THE OBSERVATORY
For one night only, August 9th at 8pm, we are thrilled to welcome back
The Million Underscores to The Brick stage with The Observatory.
Created and performed by Hannah Gross, Nicolás Noreña,
Erin Mullin and Timothy Scott
The Observatory is an eclectic collection of dance-theater performances that tumble through the history of humanity’s relationship to the sky and the myriads of projections cast upon it. Developed and presented in short, discrete chapters, the piece continuously shifts genres and performative logics, playing with the limits of the audience’s perception and imagination. From lunar landings to interplanetary sex, alien ballets to Babylonian texts, from the dramas of 16th century Renaissance scientists to the astronomy hot line of Walter Mercado, the show journeys where no man has gone before!
Catch this preview before the production heads out to
San Franciscoto be performed at the ODC Theater.
THE IVORY TOWER
Join us August 11-14 as The Brick and CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance
department practice+research ensemble presents
The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds
Across four days, overlapping and interrelated individuals and assemblies share ways of knowing and critique bases for “knowledge” through a hybrid devised work/conference Audiences are invited to come and go throughout the weekend, encountering actions, social processes, score-based structures, papers, and other forms of performance.
Featuring Jess Applebaum, Stephen Cedars, Jasmeene Francois, Alyssa Hanley, Ash Marinaccio, Esther Neff, and Philip Wiles.
TIN ISO AND THE DAWN
Tristan Allen joins us on August 23 and 24 to present the spellbinding
Tin Iso and the Dawn, a shadow puppet symphony
performed alongside an original, full length album.
The project shares the origins of an imaginary world created
to give age-old magic life through puppetry and music.
Featuring an opening set of music from Alyse Lamb
3.0 - MAGAZINE CUT OUT
Resident Brick emcee and beloved community member Garlan Jude is BACK!
This time, they bring us 3.0 - Magazine Cut Out, an unfurling of identifying identity in an unperceivably unidentifiable haze of sex, substance and some more sex. But it’s not at all serious or intellectual; it’s silly and fun with tears and laughter (not to impose upon you how you should react or anything…) Not for the kids, y’all!
Created & Performed by Garlan Jude with sound design by Nathan Leigh, costume design by Oscar Chavez, and tarot readings from Carly Johnson.
UP NEXT
ASHKENAZI SEANCE
In less than two weeks The Brick is transformed into an intimate gathering space for Ashkenazi Seance, running July 21-23.
Sarah Sanders can’t decide what to do with a treasured family heirloom, and she’s getting desperate — so desperate, she’s turning to her dead Latvian Jewish ancestors for advice. Ashkenazi Seance is a solo show and community ritual about American Jewish identity, family, music, and what it means to carry on a legacy. Also, it’s funny!
Written and Performed by Sarah Sanders, directed by Daniel Krane, with music by Sofia Geck.
The rituals created and questions explored in Ashkenazi Seance search for direction in the face of loss and uncertainty. We look to the past, we rummage through family stories, and we hold tight to tradition, even as we let those traditions bend into shapes that feel relevant today. And, we laugh, as Jews have been doing for millennia—everything is ridiculous, and why not?
FROM OUR FRIENDS
ON WOMEN FESTIVAL
Irondale presents the fifth annual On Women Festival July 11-31
celebrating the lives and experiences of female identifying artists.
Always committed in producing works of emerging and progressive playwrights, this year's festival will be headlined by three mainstage productions: Mt. Rushmore (July 14-17), The Great Lesbian Love of Eve Adams (July 21-24), and the world premiere of Letters That You Will Not Get: Women’s Voices from the Great War
(July 29-31).
Throughout the festival, audiences will also enjoy an online library of new digital works submitted from artists around the world, and free online Artist Exchange conversations, led and moderated by this year's festival curators – T Mitsock, Shannon Corenthin, and Melissa Moschitto.
That's all for now, we hope to see you in the space real soon.
|
|
+ We Love You +
The Brick
|
|
The Brick presents
Where Do Plays Come From?
with Caridad Svich
July 27 630-830pm EDT via Zoom
sliding scale $10-25
A playwriting intensive looking at the cartography of dreams. Where do plays come from? Why do they occur? And how to make plays at a time of climate emergency? A process-driven session that will involve guided prompts, in-class writing, and dialogue about theatre’s presence in the world.
|
|
Caridad Svich received a 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement. Her work has been seen in print, live and virtual stages at diverse venues across the US and abroad. Key plays in her repertoire include 12 Ophelias, Iphigenia Crash Land Falls…, Red Bike and The House of the Spirits (based on Isabel Allende’s novel). Theatrical; transmedia world premieres in 2021-22: The Book of Magdalene at Main Street Theater, Houston, Theatre: a love story at Know Theatre, Cincinnati, The House on the Lagoon, based on Rosario Ferre’s novel, at GALA Hispanic Theatre in Washington D.C. Eva Luna, based on Isabel Allende’s novel, at Repertorio Espanol in NYC, Ushuaia Blue at the Contemporary American Theatre Festival, and Bernarda Alba, the opera, at Cleveland Opera Theater. Among her recognitions are an American Theatre Critics Association Primus Prize, the Edgerton Foundation New Play Award, and National Latino Playwriting Award (which she has received twice). She has edited and/or authored several books on theatre, most recently Toward a Future Theatre published by Methuen Drama. Her second feature film Abilene (as screenwriter) is currently in post-production. caridadsvich.com
|
|
The Brick Presents
The Observatory
by The Million Underscores
August 9th at 8pm
The Observatory is an eclectic collection of dance-theater performances that tumble through the history of humanity’s relationship to the sky and the myriads of projections cast upon it. Developed and presented in short, discrete chapters, the piece continuously shifts genres and performative logics, playing with the limits of the audience’s perception and imagination. From lunar landings to interplanetary sex, alien ballets to Babylonian texts, from the dramas of 16th century Renaissance scientists to the astronomy hot line of Walter Mercado, the show journeys where no man has gone before!
The performers manipulate all the lights and sound from onstage as well as mix improvisation and tightly choreographed material with a constant interest in change and the process of perceptual and conceptual reorganization.
The Million Underscores are taking their first show out of town! The Observatory will be performed in San Francisco at ODC Theater. Come to The Brick for a one night only preview! Let’s launch this project to the west coast and beyond! 3,2,1…BLAST OFF!
Created & Performed by
Hannah Gross, Nicolás Noreña, Erin Mullin and Timothy Scott
|
|
The Brick and CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance
department practice+research ensemble Presents
The Ivory Tower and the Open Worlds
August 11, 12, & 13 at 8pm
August 14 at 3pm
Across four days, overlapping and interrelated individuals and assemblies share ways of knowing and critique bases for “knowledge” through a hybrid devised work/conference Audiences are invited to come and go throughout the weekend, encountering actions, social processes, score-based structures, papers, and other forms of performance.
CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department practice+research ensemble
(in alphabetical order): Jess Applebaum, Stephen Cedars, Jasmeene Francois, Alyssa Hanley, Ash Marinaccio, Esther Neff, Philip Wiles
The Ivory Tower and the Open World is a hybrid devised work and conference created/curated by PhD students in the Theatre and Performance program at CUNY Graduate Center. Through this project, we seek praxis, that is, thinking-actions and practice-theories that contest, challenge, dismantle, and move across divisions between institutional hegemonies and “othered” and “backgrounded” ways of knowing and seeing. Open to the public across four days, towers are torn down in pursuit of “epistemic justice” and worlds are opened through the sharing and trusting of multiplicit (un)knowings as they are expressed through individual and social bodies.
CUNY PhD Theatre and Performance department practice+research ensemble (in alphabetical order): Jess Applebaum, Stephen Cedars, Jasmeene Francois, Alyssa Hanley, Ash Marinaccio, Esther Neff, Philip Wiles.
|
|
The Brick Presents
Tin Iso and the Dawn
by Tristan Allen
August 23 & 24 at 8pm
Tin Iso and the Dawn is shadow puppet symphony performed alongside an original, full length album. The project shares the origins of an imaginary world created to give age-old magic life through puppetry and music.
Tin Iso and the Dawn is operated by a solo puppeteer, composed and performed to explore the hidden turnings of a world at its genesis. Lights dim to black as a delicate melody slips into abstraction. Iso awakens to a bang as Tin crashes through the sky forming a hole above, light pours through and they meet. Their journey through shadow brings forth a rising sun and the beginning of life. Innovative puppetry, moving light, and symphonic structure collide in examining the universal longing to make sense of loss and what’s beyond.
Tristan Allen : Creator, Composer, Puppeteer
Jim Freeman : Technical Director
Featuring an opening set of music from Alyse Lamb
|
|
The Brick Presents
3.0 — Magazine Cut Out
by Garlan Jude
An unfurling of identifying identity in an unperceivably unidentifiable haze of sex, substance and some more sex. But it’s not at all serious or intellectual; it’s silly and fun with tears and laughter (not to impose upon you how you should react or anything…) Not for the kids, y’all!
Created & Performed by Garlan Jude
Nathan Leigh – Sound Design
Oscar Chavez – Costume Design
Carly Johnson – Tarot Readings
3.0 — Magazine Cut Out is a revamp-spread eagle-evolution of Envy On Fire, first staged by Garlan 3 years ago, later boosted with other stories and voices, and now back to the future as Garlan ruminates with the ghosts. Garlan is stretching their legs, doing their lip trills and warming up their mic as they return to the stage as they’ve never before: to have a commercial SMASH HIT. Come and arrive and have your tarot read by Carly Johnson. Continue coming and arriving and enjoy the terrifically dazical (not a word) ambient sounds of Nathan Leigh. Stay coming and arriving for a performance arty-ish, cabaret adjacent, barely avoiding step-on-a-crack-break-your-mother’s-back leaning memoir solo show wrapped in screaming designs by Oscar Chavez. Becoming, Being and Staying Garlan Jude. There will be costume changes!
|
|
Queer Butoh in The Observer
|
|
Fresh Pics from Queer Butoh 2022
|
|
photos by Jose Miranda
featuring dustin maxwell, Kayva Yang, Mei Maeda,
XUE, Mervin Wong, Hélène Barrier
|
|
DAVID J. TENNENT: LOVE/MACHINE
GENERATIVE WORKS: 2014-2022
At Brick Aux Gallery Until August 2
|
|
Brick Aux Presents
David J Tennent: Love/Machine
A selection of generative works on paper and video made in, developed for, and inspired by the artist’s theatrical practice from 2014 – 2022
Opening party/gallery reception for Brick Aux and Love/Machine is
June 5, 2-7pm and closes August 6
Brick Aux is located at 628 Metropolitan Avenue
Gallery Hours are Saturday & Sunday 12-8
|
|
pics by Jose Miranda IG: @pelenguino
|
|
The Brick and The Exponential Festival Presents
Flow My Tears (Everybody Dance)
by Braulio Cruz, John-Philip Faienza, & Teri Madonna
July 7-15
A performance featuring live electronic music, singing, and surprise guests. Now we’re together in the room, and what happens? We look forward to hosting you in our community space.
This project comes from deep wondering about loss that occurred the past few years in which only a cursory, observed, virtual processing served as a simulacrum of mourning.
Phillip K. Dick wrote the novel Flow My Tears, The Policeman Said, in which a famous pop singer in a dystopian future wakes up and discovers he has never existed. He took the phrase from a 16th century song about fully-inhabited despair. Madonna released the album Everybody Dance in October, 1982.
This is a live reimagining of a digital work also created for The Exponential Festival.
See the digital version here.
Created and Performed by
Braulio Cruz
John-Philip Faienza
and Teri Madonna
Featuring Surprise Musical Guests
Written by Braulio Cruz and John-Philip Faienza
Associate Director Teri Madonna
Directed by John-Philip Faienza
Special Musical Guests:
|
|
The Brick Presents
Ashkenazi Seance
by Sarah Sanders
July 20, 21, 22 at 8pm
July 23 at 3pm & 8pm
Sarah Sanders can’t decide what to do with a treasured family heirloom, and she’s getting desperate — so desperate, she’s turning to her dead Latvian Jewish ancestors for advice. Ashkenazi Seance is a solo show and community ritual about American Jewish identity, family, music, and what it means to carry on a legacy. Also, it’s funny!
Written and Performed by Sarah Sanders
Directed by Daniel Krane
Music by Sofia Geck
The rituals created and questions explored in Ashkenazi Seance search for direction in the face of loss and uncertainty. We look to the past, we rummage through family stories, and we hold tight to tradition, even as we let those traditions bend into shapes that feel relevant today. And, we laugh, as Jews have been doing for millennia—everything is ridiculous, and why not?
|
|
The Brick Presents
Card Tricks
Created and Performed by Alex Offenkrantz
August 20
8pm
A magician tells you the truth by showing you his diary of card tricks, illustrating several impossible things that have happened in his life. He wants you to know how he feels, and card tricks are the only way he knows how to tell you.
A magician’s girlfriend tricks him into believing she is happy. When the illusion crumbles, he becomes obsessed with why she didn’t tell him the truth. As he searches for an answer, it becomes apparent that nothing is as it seems. He makes it his life’s mission to tell the truth about his experience so he will never hurt anyone the way his girlfriend hurt him. His experience is one of feeling deceived, so he figures that the only way he can share how he really feels is through a deceitful medium: card tricks.
He creates a diary of card tricks, documenting the moments in his life where things weren’t the way he thought. And in creating this diary, he finds an answer as to why she didn’t tell him the truth in the first place.
|
|
The Brick Presents
Alexander Technique with Garlan Jude
June 11, 14, 18, 21, 28, July 2, Tuesdays at 4pm and Saturdays at 11am
Sliding scale $10-$20
Walkups are welcome, cash only.
The Alexander Technique is an experience in mindful consciousness of how we react to and engage with the world around us. AT shows us how the mind and body can connect together in order to easefully handle the ever influx of stimulus we are presented with on a daily basis. AT can offer options and choices in how to find freedom in thought and movement; to release unwanted tension and explore an attitude toward expansive length, width and dimensionality throughout our whole selves.
Group classes offer an opportunity to explore within yourself while also being conscious of and engaged with individuals and space around you. Classes will begin with a guided lie down to open ourselves to this very possibility. Visuals, body mapping, basic anatomy and explorative activities will be offered to show how our thinking can lead to palpable changes throughout our whole selves–mind and body, up and down, front and back and all the space in between.
Classes are open to all and no prior AT experience is needed.
|
|
Garlan Jude Brosnahan (they/them) completed their AmSAT certified training of 1600 hours at Riverside Initiative for the Alexander Technique (RIAT) directed by Nanette Walsh with associate directors Ariel Carson and Lori Schiff. Garlan is a performance artist, theater director, writer, cabaret artist, emcee and performance curator. They’re attuned in Level I & II Usui Reiki by masters Aki Hirata Baker and Manu DelPrete from MINKA Brooklyn. They are currently hired to teach group Alexander Technique classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts (AADA).
|
|
The Brick presents
Get Your Act(s) Together
a Workshop/Intensive for Playwrights of All Levels with Carl Holder
This workshop will take place over 8 Zoom sessions,
Mondays from October 10-November 20, 6-9pm ET.
Do you have an idea for a play stuck in your head, or an old draft to revise that’s sitting stuck in your drawer? Come write with us! Shake things up with new techniques and fun, inspiring approaches to add to your toolbox.
Classes will be divided between Lecture/Exercise Sessions where we chat, write, and grow together, then Focused Workshop Meetings where your pages are read aloud for feedback and guidance. Dive in to get new perspectives on your longstanding working practices and the breath of fresh air you need to push your work ahead.
Students can write a new play or revise an existing one over the term and will be given the tools, space, and encouragement to do so. Each writer receives a one-one feedback session during the course and full notes on their final draft, delivered after the class ends.
CarlHolder.com
|
|
Born in Gainesville Florida, Carl Holder received his BFA in Acting from SUNY Purchase (2008), and an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU/Tisch (2020). His play Until You Come Back to Me won the 2020 Goldberg Play Prize and was a Finalist for the 2019 Neukom Literary Arts Playwriting Award. Carl was also a Semi-Finalist for The Jerome Fellowship at the Playwrights Center. His play Waiter and Two Octopuses was a Semi-Finalist for the 2019 O’Neill Playwrights Conference and a 2018/19 Finalist for the DVRF Playwrights Program. Charleses received an Honorable Mention for The Relentless Award from The American Playwriting Foundation. Holder has twice been awarded an E-Grant from The Foundation for Contemporary Art for his plays An Intimate Evening with Typhoid Mary, and re:opening. Carl has developed and/or performed work with Incubator Arts Project, EST, Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation, The Tank, FringeNYC, The Brick, Standard Toykraft, The Gym at Judson, House of Yes, Hearth Gods, Allegra LaViola Gallery, The Gene Frankel, Ice Factory and The New Ohio. Carl has written, acted, and directed as Artistic Director of Glass Bandits Theatre Company since 2008. He’s currently in The Bricks Inaugural Writer’s Group ‘SoundLab’ a residency developing podcasts with playwrights. Carl lives and works in Brooklyn where he writes and cooks delicious treats with his loves, Amelia the beagle and Lucia Hierro, the artist.
|
|
Support The Brick and look good while doing it
Get yourself a hoodie, a mug, a fanny pack, whatever floats your boat.
You can even get your dog a stylish Brick bandana so the other dogs know
where to see boundary pushing experimental theater.
There are a ton of items to choose from, or do what our
technical director Jack Woods did, and customize your own!
A portion of every sale goes to The Brick, and helps us keep the lights on.
If you get a piece of Brick merch, take a pic and tag us on
|
|
From Our Friends
On Women Festival
|
|
Irondale presents the fifth annual
On Women Festival
July 11-31
celebrating the lives and experiences of female identifying artists.
Always committed in producing works of emerging and progressive playwrights, this year's festival will be headlined by three mainstage productions: Mt. Rushmore (July 14-17), The Great Lesbian Love of Eve Adams (July 21-24), and the world premiere of Letters That You Will Not Get: Women’s Voices from the Great War
(July 29-31).
Throughout the festival, audiences will also enjoy an online library of new digital works submitted from artists around the world, and free online Artist Exchange conversations, led and moderated by this year's festival curators – T Mitsock, Shannon Corenthin, and Melissa Moschitto.
|
|
Support The Brick with a Small Monthly Donation
|
|
A great way to help support The Brick right now is to become a Patreon Supporter. Join our recently revamped Patreon and and help keep The Brick alive.
Head over to our Patreon page and take a look right HERE
|
|
Make a Tax-Deductible Donations to The Brick Theater, Inc
Without the support and dedication of our diverse, enthusiastic community, we would never have come this far. With your help, we can hope to go even further, and make Williamsburg one of the indisputable hubs of American theater. Not only do you get a great tax-deductible donation, but doing so will enshrine you in our patron list, and, more importantly, will allow us to continue to fulfill our mission of making The Brick Williamsburg’s primary incubator of innovative theater arts
|
|
It is no secret that a non-profit the size of The Brick relies on our audience to continue operating. There are many worthy places deserving of your attention and generosity but if you have the means and would consider making a tax deductible donation to The Brick to help us keep the lights on, we would be very grateful. This decision comes with a profound impact on our budget, our staff, and our artists. Every little bit helps. You can make a donation at paypal.me/BrickTheater
We Love You
The Brick
The Brick's programming is supported, in part, by public funds from the
New York City Department of Cultural Affairs and by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature .
Subsidized studio space provided by A.R.T./New York Creative Space Grant, supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Additional support from Destination: Brooklyn Program, funded by the Office of the Brooklyn Borough President Eric L. Adams and NYC & Company Foundation, administered by Brooklyn Arts Council.
Additional support from
Dramatists Guild Fund
|
|
|
|
|
|
|