2016-2017
“If it be now, 'tis not to come;
if it be not to come, it will be now;
if it be not now, yet it will come:
the readiness is all.”
— William Shakespeare,
Hamlet
photo by Kent Meister
In early 2017, my first full-length play premiered at Ars Nova, and I began work on my first full-length musical. By now, I’d completed a dozen short plays, and another dozen scenes and monologues for The Assembly’s critically acclaimed devised productions — HOME/SICK and That Poor Dream.
I’d finally come into my own as a writer.
As an actor, though, my career had stalled. I was appearing in Assembly productions and developing new projects with a coterie of glorious downtown weirdos, but it had been two full years since I’d booked a salaried role.
Then in spring 2017, after years of hustling for auditions, I got two offers out of the blue.
Ever since 2007, when I’d first auditioned for the company, I’d dreamed of performing in Clubbed Thumb’s Summerworks season. In March 2017, I was offered a role.
Weeks later, based on an audition two-and-a-half years before, I got a call offering me the first national tour of Small Mouth Sounds.
In the theater, progress can take decades — and then happens overnight.
Robert and Clara Schuman
GHOST VARIATIONS
Closed Reading
January 3, 2016
by Anna Elliott, dir. Jess Chayes
with Edward Bauer, Emily Caffery, and Emily Louise Perkins
Role: Robert Schuman
The Assembly
A high-octane, hilarious take on the strange lives of composers Robert and Clara Schuman.
odorizome
Dance Recital (Kabuki)
January 17, 2016
My first kabuki dance recital.
Inspired by Kabuki-influenced Western artists such as Stephen Sondheim, Bertolt Brecht and Ariane Mnouchkine, I began studying the traditional Japanese form of dance theater in the summer of 2015.
The Assembly drew on my training for I Will Look Forward To This Later.
Ben (left) with the performers of Odorizome, all students of Sachiyo Ito (center, with flowers)
playwright Peggy Stafford
Everything Is Here
Workshop Production
January 22-25, 2016
by Peggy Stafford, dir. Sanaz Ghajarrahimi
with Laura Esterman, Kathleen Tolan, and Lizann Mitchell
Role: Grant
Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship @ 440 Studios
In a suburban senior center, three older women reminisce about what might (or might not) have been, and — under the direction of Grant, a frustrated actor desperate to assert his mastery of Method Acting — act out scenes from A Streetcar Named Desire.
While it featured a pared-down design and was never opened to press, Everything Is Here was a fully staged production.
Certain Poor Shepherds
Closed Reading (Screenplay)
January 29, 2016
by Helen Schulman, dir. Teddy Bergman
with Havilah Brewster (Caitlin), Danny Deferrari (Jake), Jamie Effros (Charlie), Nicole Golden (Mare), Mikaela Feely-Lehman (Rosalie), Tommy Heleringer (Ted), and Rosalie Lowe (Amy)
Role: Kevin
Pearl Studios
Developed at the Sundance Screenwriters Lab, novelist Helen Schulman’s script combines the mystical and the banal when three friends encounter a mysterious pregnant woman in the midst of a violent blizzard.
director Teddy Bergman
above, Ben Beckley and Anne Gridley in Due To Events; below, a scene from Due To Events
Due To Events
Production
February 4-27, 2016
written and directed by Eric John Meyer and Jean Ann Douglass
with Laura Campbell, Anne Gridley, and David Skeist
Role: Lawyer
Human Head Performance Group @ The Brick
Loosely inspired by Voyage Around My Room, an 18th-century French travel journal of the author's forty-two days under house arrest, Due to Events follows the imaginary adventures of a modern woman confined to her apartment while awaiting a court date.
I played a world-traveling lawyer who writes her letter after letter he never actually sends. David Skeist was a mysterious stranger who may or may not be a conduit to alternative realities, Laura Campbell a house cat who writes incomprehensible plays, and Anne Gridley, famous for her fantastically idiosyncratic work with Nature Theater of Oklahoma, was the woman herself, a radical activist with whom my character falls desperately in love.
The play’s government-issue Squirrel-o-phone (visible in the photograph) was represented by an actual taxidermied squirrel.
Evanston Salt Costs Climbing
Workshop Production (Excerpt)
February 8, 2016
by Will Arbery, dir. Jess Chayes
with Jeb Kreager, Elena McGhee, and Rachel Sachnoff
Role: Basil
Little Theater
Jeb and I — who would both play the same brutal, insecure husband in different productions of Eric Meyer’s The Sister — appeared opposite each other here as a couple of snow plow drivers whose jobs would soon be obsolete. My laconic Greek character starts the play by reading from the end of a strange, evocative story he wrote, and I finished the story myself, so I could carry the whole thing with me.
Jeb and Will — who met through Jess — would later work together on the critically acclaimed Heroes of the Four Turning.
Jeb Kreager (center) in Will Arbery’s Heroes of the Fourth Turning.
ANOTHER KIND OF SILENCE
Workshop
February 9-13, 2016
by LM Feldman, dir. Will Davis
with Robbie Berry, Danielle Davenport, Julie Fitzpatrick, John McGinty, Eli Pauley, Mara Stephens, and Alexandria Wailes
Role: Peter
New Georges
With a cast of both deaf and hearing actors, Another Kind of Silence featured as much signing as speaking.
In one scene, I poured out my heart through halting gestures to an ASL-fluent John McGinty.
THE DAY BEFORE YESTERDAY
(L'AVANT HIER)
Closed Reading
February 10, 2016
by Israel Horovitz
with Caitlin FitzGerald, Kathryn Kalucki, Francisco Solorzano, Sawyer Spielberg, and Camile St. James
produced by Glory Kadigan
Barefoot Theatre Company
The night before witnessing a horrifying massacre at a Paris nightclub, a Frenchman (me) falls in love with an American tourist (Caitlin FitzGerald, from Showtime's Masters of Sex).
A year-and-a-half later, a New York Times expose alleged Horowitz was responsible for horrifying acts of his own: several incidents of harassment and assault spanning decades.
playwright Israel Horowitz
"Humans" from the show's fall 2017 premiere at the Philly Fringe Festival
A PERIOD OF ANIMATE EXISTENCE
Workshop
February 14-16, 2016
dir. Dan Rothenberg
with Will Eno (words), Troy Herion (video), and Mimi Lien (set)
Pig Iron
Over the past fifteen years, I'd auditioned for director Dan Rothenberg five or six times, but this marked our first collaboration.
Dan, Mimi, Will, and Troy wanted to explore a piece with very old and very young performers, as well as inanimate objects acting in animate ways.
MEN'S ROOM
Workshop
February 17-19, 2016
by Sarah DeLappe, dir. Morgan Green
Ugo Anyanwu, Milo Cramer, Jonathan Gordon, Doug Harris, Chris Henry, Ben Katz, Craig Mungavin, Jacob Perkins, Gio Naarendorp, Itamar Segev, and Imran W. Sheikh
New Georges (Audrey Residency)
Sarah DeLappe had seen me in Everything Is Here and called me with an unusual proposition.
She and Morgan Green had decided to boldly go where no female creative team had gone before: into the men's room.
Together we discussed and improvised everything that happens behind one of the few doors women are forbidden to open.
playwright Sarah DeLappe
director Morgan Green
Heartplay
Benefit Performance
February 20, 2016
by BEN BECKLEY, after the play by Heiner Muller
dir. Jess Chayes
The Assembly @ The New Ohio
Inspired by my brush with ASL in Another Kind of Silence the week before, I incorporated sign language into the Heartplay I wrote for The Assembly’s 2016 benefit.
A couple comes together one last time after a painful breakup. They can't help talking about the 2016 primaries (she's a Bernie supporter; he loves Hillary Clinton). From time to time, they break into sign language, and the silent text, adapted from Heiner Muller's Heartplay, offers an oblique subtext for the scene, reflecting the broken hearts of the two characters.
The play culminates with a terrifying Kabuki-inspired Trump dance.
The Iceman Cometh
Closed Reading
March 10, 2016
by Eugene O'Neill, dir. Katie Rose McLaughlin
In preparation for her upcoming all-female choreographic response to Iceman Cometh with Target Margin, KatieRose asked a few male friends to read through the play with her.
choreographer/director Katie Rose McLaughlin
a scene from I Will Look Forward, with Ben and Edward Bauer
I Will look forward to this later
Production
April 4-23, 2016
by Kate Benson and Emily Perkins, dir. Jess Chayes
with Edward Bauer, Vinie Burrows, Linda Larson, and Emily Perkins
Role: Samuel
The Assembly @ The New Ohio
The Assembly's latest featured the ghost of a Great American Writer who haunts his hapless son Samuel, a failed novelist so self-critical and distraught he can barely finish a sentence.
Working on I Will Look Forward in 2015 and 2016 made me adept at playing inarticulate characters, and I drew on this peculiar skill for my work in Everything Is Here, Crush, Small Mouth Sounds, and Pose.
Meanwhile, I'd become more articulate physically. I'd been studying Kabuki dance for a year, and we incorporated a hanamichi (long central path from the audience) and multiple mie (heightened physical poses).
COMPLEX: A comedy
Closed Reading
April 24, 2016
by Dominic Finocchiaro, dir. Sanaz Ghajarrahimi
with Andrew Butler, Lena Hudson, Vanessa Koppel, Anastasia Olowin, and Vincent Santvoord
Role: Jeffrey
In an apartment complex, residents start turning up dead in ever more gruesome ways. Tenant Todd is left stop the bleeding and sort out the mess.
“A dark comedy about modern living and other forms of mass murder."
playwright Dominic Finocchiaro
spring fling - crush
Production
April 28-May 8, 2016
Behind the Wall
by Krista Knight, dir. Matt Dickson
Role: Cockroach
Crush
by Greg Moss, dir. Anne Cecelia Haney
Role: Geoff
Ben in "Behind the Wall" (above) and "Crush" (below)
You Were Crushed
by Ariel Stess, dir. Ben Kamine
Role: Man
F*IT Club at IRT
Krista Knight's "Behind the Wall" featured five short vignettes in the life (and afterlife) of an obsessive cockroach who falls fatally in love with a human woman.
Greg Moss' "Crush" cast me as an anxious ex-smoker — well, current smoker — who reluctantly takes part in "The Not-Creepy Dating Event For Singles Who Want to Fall in Love". In spite of — or maybe because of — his total honesty about his deeply neurotic existence, he ends up with a pretty incredible woman (The TEAM's Jill Frutkin).
I stepped into Ariel Stess' play midway through the run, when an actor had to drop out. An elliptical story of heartbreak, "You Were Crushed" has echoes of Gertrude Stein, though the weird balance of deep emotional pain and light, airy wordplay is vintage Stess.
HOME/SICK
Production (Tour)
June 9-July 3, 2016
created by the ensemble, dir. Jess Chayes
with Edward Bauer, Kate Benson, Anna Abhau Elliott, Luke Harlan, and Emily Perkins
Role: Tommy
The Assembly @ The Odyssey Theater (Los Angeles)
Steven Berkoff’s adaptation of The Hairy Ape was playing in the Odyssey’s next-door theater, and we’d occasionally hear each other shouting through the thin walls.
We spent our afternoons conducting film experiments, trying to decide how we could adapt the show into a feature.
THE SISTER
Production (Tour)
August 8-28, 2016
by Eric John Meyer, dir. Jess Chayes
with Erin Mallon, Alley Scott (Leanne), and Justin Yorio (Terry)
Dutch Kills @ The Studio/Paradise at St. Augustines
Edinburgh Fringe Festival (Edinburgh, Scotland)
I’d wanted to play this role for eight years: a husband barely keeping his overwhelming insecurity at bay by treating the women in his life with astonishing cruelty.
When he pulls out a dog collar for his wife Leanne, Bob’s own dehumanization isn’t far behind.
Days after we closed, my wife and I — our marriage thankfully much happier than Bob and Leanne’s — hiked the 500-mile Camino de Santiago pilgrimage in northern Spain.
Looking Back, It May Not Have Been Ridgefield High's Best Production of Our Town
Closed Reading
November 2, 2016
by Augie Praley, dir. Isaac Klein
with Chance Carroll, Whitney Conkling, Maggie D'Ambrose, James Fouhey, Jenn Lyon, Linda Lee McBride, Will Manning, Preston Martin, Thomas Constantine Moore, Emily Louise Perkins, Kim Ramirez, Kelly Rogers, Peter Sansbury, and Trevor Vaughn
Role: Thornton Wilder
Chez Praley
A comic meditation on Thornton Wilder's masterpiece, Augie Praley's play explores six generations of Our Town productions at one public high school.
When they mounted the full production at The PIT a month later, with a large cast and a limited budget, Augie and Isaac continued that exploration without any union actors.
MIND THE GAP
Workshop
December 7, 2016
by Lorraine Andoh, Mary Daniel, Alice Gordon, Taylor Grant, Barbara Hazen, Leila Henry, Gerald Kaufman, Pam Perlman, and Elizabeth Rosen
with Michael Bradley, Susan Burns, Cassie Gilling, Erica Lance, James J. Lorenzo, Shannon Molly Flynn, E. Okobi, Andres Robledo, David Siciliano, and Matthew Van Oss
New York Theatre Workshop
Mind the Gap brings together teens and elders to write plays inspired by each other's lives, then brings in professional actors to perform them.
In "The Shepherds," written by senior Gerald Kaufman based on an idea by teenager Mary Daniel, I played a powerful politician, celebrated as a hero after a devastating world war it turns out he orchestrated to seize power. (He imparts this unsettling revelation to his reluctant son.)
In "The Final Play," by Mary based on Gerald's idea, I played a suburban parent disappointed by his son's decision to pursue a career in the theater.
In "The Age Shifters," written by senior Elizabeth Rosen based on an idea by teenager Bassira Souare, I played a happily married old man. When his wife decides to shift to a younger age through the magic of modern science, something goes wrong, and she ends up an infant. Initially distraught, he muses, "I've always enjoyed being a father."
Other roles included an abusive alcoholic father and a skeptical in-law.
In other words, I played five different types of crummy dads.
Heiner Müller's Discovery of America
Performance
December 12, 2016
The Mission: Memory of a Revolution
by Heiner Müller, dir. Jess Chayes
Segal Center, City University of New York
Since we were working on Müller’s Hamletmachine, a group of Müller scholars invited us to take place in readings and roundtable discussions about the great German playwright.
playwright John Russo
setting free the bears (that's not the title)
Closed Reading
December 12, 2016
by John Russo
with Havilah Brewster, Christian Jacobs, Michael Micalizzi, and Ronald Washington
I played a Confederate Civil War re-enactor who awkwardly attempts to justify his period-perfect gray uniform to an African-American neighbor.
(It's awkward.)
odorizome
Dance Recital (Kabuki)
choreographed by Sachiyo Ito
January 22, 2017
My second kabuki dance recital.
This traditional Japanese drama has left a major mark on Western theater. The flying in Peter Pan, the turntables in Les Mis and Mother Courage, and the hydraulic lifts now ubiquitous in Broadway plays and musicals all originated on the Kabuki stage.
To me, what’s even more exciting is the heightened and highly stylized performance style. Departing from any expectation of naturalism, Kabuki movement is choreographed to be beautiful and evocative. A star actor will build to a mie — a moment of suspended intensity, in which the legs shift, the arms roll, and the eyes cross — calling attention to the artificiality of his performance as the audience shouts out his name in appreciation.
Always “his” name, never “hers” — because for hundreds of years Kabuki has been performed by men only. The 17th-century origins of the art form are in all-female performances, however, and my brilliant teacher Sachiyo Ito has mostly female students in her classes and recitals.
(Video available on request.)
Tony Torn and Will Dagger in Latter Days
Latter days
Production
February 13-March 11, 2017
by Ben Beckley, dir. Jess Chayes
with Will Dagger and Tony Torn
Dutch Kills @ Ars Nova
I'd written Latter Days on the Starcatcher tour, and as you might expect from a drama written by an understudy, it's very much about waiting.
THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF ARTURO UI
Benefit Performance
February 20, 2017
by Bertolt Brecht, dir. Teddy Bergman
with Arnie Burton, Peter Bartlett, Christian Borle, Bill Buell, Kevin del Aguila, Ethan Dubin, Greg Hildreth, Justin Perez, David Rossmer, James Saito, Joe Tippett, and Elvy Yost
Woodshed Collective @ Judson Memorial Church
A riff on Hitler's rise to power, Brecht's play chronicles the ascent of a vulgar sociopath, a fascistic gangster who lies and cheats his way to the top.
Any similarities to current political figures were... not coincidental.
Christian Borle
The Assembly on the set of HOME/SICK (photo by Kent Meister)
HOME/SICK
Production
March 9-25, 2017
created by the ensemble, dir. Jess Chayes
with Edward Bauer, Kate Benson, Anna Abhau Elliott, Luke Harlan, and Emily Perkins
Role: Tommy
The Assembly @ JACK
In the aftermath of the disastrous 2016 election, The Assembly decided we needed to remount HOME/SICK again in New York.
performeteria -
”Seagullmachine”
Workshop Production (Excerpt)
March 20, 2017
by Anton Chekhov and Heiner Muller, dir. Jess Chayes
with Edward Bauer and Emily Perkins
Role: Trigorin
The Assembly
We set the end of The Seagull’s second act in a kitchen, with Trigorin microwaving a peking duck.
YOU'RE NOT ALONE (Anymore)
Workshop
April 18-19, 2017
by Beto O'Byrne
with Riti Sachdeva, Lipica Shah, and Ashley Ortiz
Role: Artem
New York Theatre Workshop
Beto’s work thoughtfully engages with his progressive ideals.
Commissioned by the Stella Adler Studio, this play centers on a group of archaeologists trying to discover the past of an undeveloped property, an ambitious real-estate mogul (my role) determined to develop it, and the surrounding community, who fears what will happen if either group succeeds.
Philibert Commerson
THRIVE, or WHAT YOU WILL
Reading
April 29, 2017
by LM Feldman, dir. Larissa Lury
with Lily Balsen, Danielle Davenport, Annie Henk, Susan Heyward, Jax Jackson, and Rachel Lin
Role: Philibert Commerson
New Georges
In 1769, Jeanne Baret became the first woman on earth to circumnavigate the globe — after spending most of the voyage disguised as a man. An epic journey written with tremendous intelligence and heart, this unconventional 18th-century love story begins in pre-Revolutionary France and spans half the world.
Whose sister are you anyway?
Reading
May 13, 2017
by Leopold Zappler
with Vera Beren, Paul Feldman, Kolbe Handal, Priscilla Hollbrook, Juliana Francis Kelly, Will Dagger, and Tony Torn
Torn Page Productions
This "bizarre farce about an inbred, incestuous Austrian family,” was read by original cast members Paul Feldman and Priscilla Hollbrook, as well as a host of newcomers, including me.
Tony, who as much as any other performer is the New York avant-garde, had known Leopold personally, and insists his “legendary, bizarre, and beautiful plays are the best kept secret of the New York experimental theater scene of the 90's.”
promo image for Whose Sister Are You Anyway? at Torn Page
THE WORLD MY MAMA RAISED
Production
May 20-30, 2017
by Ariel Stess, dir. Kip Fagan
with Jordan Baum, Reyna de Courcy, Ethan Dubin, Zoë Geltman, Mike Iveson, Annie McNamara, Ronald Peet, Madeline Wise, and Danny Wolohan
Roles: Chad the Cop, Friend's Dan the Dean
Clubbed Thumb
In 2008, I'd auditioned for my first show at Clubbed Thumb's Summerworks, purveyor of "funny, strange, and provocative new plays" and one of the great downtown theater companies in New York.
Ten years later, The World My Mama Raised marked my Summerworks debut, in a new play about the systemic brutality of the prison-industrial complex and the structural inequalities that restrict the lives of marginalized people in America.
Funny, moving, and weird, it featured a character named Poopface (Mike Iveson) and a demented cop (me) determined to spread the word that the local white suburbs are a "war zone".
Ecclesiazusae
Podcast
May 28, 2017
by Jonathan Goldberg, dir. Portia Krieger
Maria Dizzia (Victoria), Amanda Duarte, Jan Leslie Harding, Robert Emmet Lunney, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Paco Tolson
Role: Schuyler Colfax
The inaugural installment of a proposed NPR podcast on women who have run for President.
This episode chronicles the story of America's very first female candidate, Victoria Woodhull (Maria Dizzia). As with most of Jonathan Goldberg's work, the script was irreverent, ridiculous, and meticulously researched.
My character, Ulysses S. Grant's Vice President Schuyler Colfax, wasn't a fan of female presidential candidates. "If women are meant for such things then Providence and Time shall give them!"
Schuyler Colfax
untitled watergate play
Reading
June 5, 2017
by Mia Rovegno, dir. Matthew Paul Olmos
with Michael Billingsley, Veracity Butcher, Alfredo Narcisso, and J.J. Perez
Role: G. Gordon Liddy, Barrett, Haldeman
The Lark
The first reading of what would become the broken’hearts of a corrupted white house.
Matt’s play is about a different kind of patriot: one willing to sacrifice everything for the country he loves — even his own integrity.
HOLIDAYS IN/coyote
Workshop
June 19-25, 2017
by Adam Burnett, dir. Jess Chayes
with Kate Schrader
Roles: Pool, Official Fellow
Tofte Lake
Jess and I spent a week on an idyllic lake retreat in upstate Minnesota with playwright Adam Burnett, choreographer Lisa Nevada, video designer David Pym, and actor Kate Schrader.
The remarkable dramaturg Liz Engelman, who shepherded Tony Kushner's "Reverse Transcription," runs the place.
Adam's theatrical extravaganza incorporates home videos from his childhood in Topeka, Kansas; actors portraying trees and buffalo; a Republican anti-environmentalist seduced by a trickster coyote; and a dollhouse — complete with Barbies and action figures — made to look like a Holiday Inn.
bartleby in the castle
Workshop
July 7-10, 2017
by BEN BECKLEY and Nate Weida, dir. Jess Chayes
with Kelechi Ezie, Sam Gonzalez, and Ronald Peet
The Assembly
Our first workshop of what would become In Corpo.
Nate wanted to write a musical based on Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” and I was obsessed with adapting Kafka’s unfinished novel The Castle, so we chose to combine the projects.
THRIVE, or WHAT YOU WILL
Workshop
June 29-July 17, 2017
by LM Feldman, dir. Larissa Lury
with Lily Balsen, Annie Henk, Susan Heyward, Jax Jackson, and Rachel Lin
Role: Philibert Commerson
New Georges (Audrey Residency)
By dissecting patriarchal culture in 18th-century France, Thrive sheds an uncompromising light on 21st-century American gender relations as well.
For women — as we'd seen in November 2016 — authority, respect, and legacy are still hard-won.
The only cis male in the cast, I had a lot to draw on — and a lot to learn.
director Larissa Lury
SMALL MOUTH SOUNDS
First National Tour
August 28, 2017-March 4, 2018
by Bess Wohl, dir. Rachel Chavkin
with Connor Barrett, Edward Chin-Lyn, Orville Mendoza, Brenna Palughi, Socorro Santiago and Cherene Snow
Role: Ned
August 30-September 24:
Long Wharf Theater (New Haven, CT)
October 11-December 10:
American Conservatory Theater (San Francisco, CA)
January 11-January 28:
The Broad Stage (Los Angeles, CA)
February 16-March 4:
Arscht Center (Miami, FL)
A huge break: offered the show out of nowhere — after a strong audition for the premiere nearly three years before — I was suddenly performing at major regional theaters across the country with a hit play written and directed by two of the most remarkable women in the American theater.
Director Rachel Chavkin, recently Tony-nominated and soon a Tony winner, had come up like me from NYC’s devised indie theater scene. She’s artistic director of The TEAM, and I’m a co-artistic director of The Assembly.
Beth’s beautiful play is largely wordless, except a six-minute monologue I delivered which runs the gamut from hilarious to agonized. That speech, and the play in general, exists in a delicate balance between the ridiculous and the sublime.
Finding that tone, night after night, was a serious challenge —
and an incredible gift.
untitled watergate play
Reading
September 18, 2017
by Mia Rovegno, dir. Matthew Paul Olmos
with Michael Billingsley, Vivia Font, Eric Miller, and Juan Villa
Role: G. Gordon Liddy
The Lark
Matt believes not all true patriots serve their country well, and not all personal sacrifice is for the greater good.
After pouring over interviews with G. Gordon Liddy, architect of the Watergate break in, I realized how right he is.
playwright Matthew Paul Olmos
SEAGULLMACHINE
Workshop
September 25-October 9, 2017
By Anton Chekhov and Heiner Muller
Dir. Jess Chayes and Nick Benacerraf
with Edward Bauer, Chris Hurt, Jax Jackson and Layla Khoshnoudi
Role: Trigorin
The Assembly
On a break from tour, I took part in two weeks of this month-long (September 11-October 11) workshop.
We explored how Muller’s hamletmachine could interrupt scenes of Chekhov’s Seagull, as if startling the Russian inhabitants of this idyllic estate out of a dreamlike stupor.
POSE
Reading
December 15, 2017
by Rae Binstock, dir. Whitney White
with Cynthia Adler, John Bambery, Julia Greer, Olivia Khoshatefeh, Jessica Ko, and Zdenko Martin
Role: Silas
The Hearth
For years, Rae Binstock posed as a nude model for student artists working in New York studios.
Inspired by her experiences, Pose chronicles the empowerment and insecurity of being stripped bare.
A portrait of playwright Rae Binstock, courtesy of The New York Studio School.
An artist's rendering of Jeanne Baret, the 18th-century cross-dressing botanist lover of Philibert Commerson.
THRIVE, or WHAT YOU WILL
Workshop
December 19, 2017
by LM Feldman, dir. Larissa Lury
with C. Bain, Lily Balsen, Danielle Davenport, Rachel Lin, and Christina Pumariega
Role: Philibert Commerson
New Georges
For our third workshop of Thrive, we explored how actors might drop character to interrogate Jeanne about her true identity — and her troubled relationship with Philibert Commmerson.