We are celebrating one year of bringing you some of the most exciting stories about investigative theater artists from around the world! Here, we speak to some of the artists we’ve covered since Extended Play launched last year.
This episode of the Civilians’ podcast is the second of three that feature songs and monologues from “The Way They Live,” the final show of the company’s residency at the Met Museum.
Georgina Escobar interviews playwright José Rivera, who created the musical “Another Word for Beauty” from a Civilians’ investigation of the annual beauty pageant at Colombia’s national women’s prison, El Buen Pastor, in Bogota. “Beauty” premiered at Goodman Theatre in Chicago in January 2016.
Civilians R&D Group members Gordon Leary, Julia Meinwald and Benjamin Kamine are working on musical inspired by an online community of fans of the Columbine killers. Here, they share some of the visual research they have gathered in their investigation.
The Working Theater recently commissioned writer/performer Dan Hoyle to collaborate with director Tamilla Woodard on a research-based theater piece set in the Bronx. They’re in the process of creating “The Block,” which will tour all five New York City Boroughs in Summer 2016.
Director Suzanne Agins describes the process of collaborating with director Benjamin Kamine on curating “Let Me Ascertain You: War on Christmas,” the first cabaret performance of the Civilians’ 2015-16 season. The show explores non-Christian perspectives on the commercialization of Christmas.
In this episode of Let Me Ascertain You, the Civilians’ podcast, we hear songs and monologues from “The Way They Live,” the culminating performance of the company’s residency at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 2014-15.
With “Pike St.,” her first solo show since 2006’s “No Child…,” Nilaja Sun explores her native Lower East Side through the lens of a family weathering a brutal hurricane.
“I was noticing that, especially within the theater, a good bit of the material that discussed religion — specifically Christianity — did so satirically. Any time I notice a gap — something that’s not being talked about or said or noticed — then I want to rush in and make something for that barren space.”
Theater artist Talya Klein recounts her challenging experience with “Habitus,” an installation/stage show from multimedia dance company Vector that premiered in March 2015.
Jack Cummings III, Artistic Director of the Transport Group, reflects on the process of developing his company’s show “Three Days to See” from the writings of Helen Keller. It played at New York Theater Workshop during the summer of 2015.
“The thing I ask the artist is: What’s urgent to you? And then also: What can you do with groups that you might not be able to do by yourself? There is a politic there. Some people address it head on in a very overt way, and others are more nuanced.”
Micharne Cloughley reflects on the Civilians’ season as the first-ever theater company-in-residence at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, for which she wrote the play “The Way They Live.”
In May of 2015, Jennie Hahn of Maine’s Open Waters performance collaborative launched a multi-year investigation into the Penobscot River. She invited writer Cory Tamler to help launch the project, which will inform a performance event in 2017.
“The breaking of gentrification, the breaking of cultural ties — it’s a lot of what is happening in Harlem for us right now. That’s what so many people talked about — just losing the thread of the community, of a kind of cultural identity.”
Copyright © Extended Play 2014
