Home - Extended Play

Reed Birney (left) and Radha Blank (right) in Netflix’s The Forty-Year-Old Version,

Once upon a time in the mid-2000s, MTV development director Lisi Harrison wrote a book series titled The Clique, where she chronicled the privileged lives of preteens in Westchester. The series’s queen bee was known for many things: her obsession with Chanel No. 5, her pug Bean, and most importantly, her weekly PalmPilot lists of what was in and out, called the “State of the Union.” Now, unlike Ma…

For Whom the Bel Tolls

Community

The Civilians

A choreographer, an actor and a director walk into a room… Except the choreographer isn’t in the room. Because the room is in New York, and he does not live in New York. Also, he is ethically opposed to flying, so he’ll never be in New York. Oh--and he’s French. Make sense yet? This mind-bending series of constraints and considerations form the basis of a piece titled Jérôme Bel (2021). A combinat…

The Artistic Caucus: How Four Theatres Joined Forces to Disrupt Curatorial Practices

Lauren Halvorsen

Contents Introduction Theatres at a Glance History Building the Artistic Caucus The Caucus Begins Resource Sharing Systems First Year Learnings Going Forward: The Second Year I. Introduction *** This report describes the origins, development, and learnings of the Artistic Caucus, a collaborative initiative between Baltimore Center Stage, Long Wharf Th…

SEX VARIANTS: Fabulating Queer History

Creation

James La Bella

Rehearsals are fast approaching for The Civilians’ newest show, Sex Variants of 1941. To say that this day has been long-anticipated would be an understatement. Artistic Director Steve Cosson first came upon the book Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns in the 90s. Since then, there has been a 2014 Joe’s Pub concert, a Princeton class, a workshop at the Mercury Store, a PS21 Residency, a 2…

Loneliness in a Time of Mass Extinction

The Civilians

Faith: I always get really excited talking to people who do multi-disciplinary, multimedia work, especially involving movement and music. So, you could literally tell me whatever you wanted [and] I'd be like, “This is great.” But we won't do that because I am somewhat organized. First, I want to reiterate what I said in the email, which is—congratulations on this residency! Kate D.: So bon…

Notes from a Talkback

Faith Zamblé

Love. Loss. Community. Transience. Combine these themes with bluesy keyboard riffs and you’ll have an idea of the pieces Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby shared in the culmination of their Ancram Center residency. These songs are part of a larger piece—loosely titled “Conversations”—inspired by interviews with Indigenous elders in Redbone’s life. But how does a stack of transcribed interviews becom…

Imagined Futures, New Utopias

Uncategorized

The Civilians

Faith: I'm really excited to talk to you about your work and [your] Next Forever thoughts! My first question is… How you would describe yourself and your writing? Which is such a big question.. Kate: Well, I have, in just the last few years, started using this tagline of “countercultural plays for fun-loving audiences.” That captures something encompassing about what I do, which is that I'm int…

All Applications Go to Heaven

Uncategorized

Faith Zamblé

It’s 11:51 p.m. Sweat beads your forehead. You reach for the bottle of kombucha on your desk, forgetting that it’s empty. Your eyes glaze over as you stare at the webpage on your computer screen. You haven’t moved in five hours. Checking your artist statement one last time for punctuation errors, you exhale into the hot/humid/cool/freezing January/April/June/August evening and shakily click, “Subm…

The Timeline Haunts Me in All Directions

Research

Leonardo Gonzalez Dominguez

Click here to access Leo's corresponding playlist. Over the last three years, my artistic practice has wrapped itself around the past, or the past has wrapped itself around it—I’m not sure which. But I’ve come to realize that history, collective or personal, refuses to be left alone. Its limbs break through and reach beyond any notion of distance, space, and time to remind us that we’re the cul…

The Long and Wondrous Life of R&D

Faith Zamblé

On December 19, 2013, Jeanine Oleson published a piece on the Civilians Blogspot account. In her short essay, Oleson offered a selection of videos and ideas--the psychic source material for her forthcoming experimental opera. These materials were wide-ranging in nature, from the Svalbard Global Seed Bank to a video of vocal cords in motion, and among this virtual charcuterie, near the top, was a v…