Waterwell Announces Second Annual New Works Lab @ PPAS
Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Elizabeth Wagner
rick@oandmco.com / elizabeth@oandmco.com
(212) 695-7400
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE
WATERWELL
ANNOUNCES SECOND ANNUAL
NEW WORKS LAB @ PPAS:
“N O T H I N G I S T H E E N D O F T H E W O R L D
( E X C E P T F O R T H E E N D O F T H E W O R L D )”
A WORKSHOP PRODUCTION OF A NEW PLAY BY
BEKAH BRUNSTETTER
DIRECTED BY
STEPHEN BRACKETT
PERFORMANCES
WEDNESDAY, MAY 2ND – SATURDAY, MAY 5th
AT THE PROFESSIONAL PERFORMING ARTS SCHOOL
(328 W 48th ST, NYC)
New York, NY (April 20, 2012) – Waterwell, one of the Village Voice’s Best Arguments for Devised Theater and creators of Goodbar and #9, continues its annual series of new play workshops at the Professional Performing Arts School in Manhattan with the Nothing Is The End Of The World (except for the end of the world), a new play by Bekah Brunstetter (Oohrah!) and directed by Stephen Brackett (After). Performances will be Wednesday, May 2nd through Saturday, May 5th at 7p, with an additional Saturday matinee at 2p.
In the near-distant future, an NYC charter school becomes the first to welcome artificially intelligent students. The social experiment becomes a reality show and suddenly priorities and moralities turn inside-out as the AI's try to integrate and everyone tries to survive junior year. High school dramedy meets invasion sci-fi in this new dark new play by one of theater’s boldest new voices.
Designed to stimulate the creation of high-quality new plays for young actors, Waterwell’s New Works Lab @ PPAS offers emerging and established playwrights the chance to develop their work with the support of professional directors and designers and a cast of exceptionally talented high school artists. This annual workshop series presents stripped down, actor-centric productions that add to the canon of thematically rich, complex and original scripts and roles for student actors.
The creative team for Nothing Is The End Of The World (except for the end of the world) also includes Daniel Zimmerman (Scenic Designer), Tilly Grimes (Costume Designer), Greg Goff (Lighting Designer), M.L. Dogg (Sound Designer) and Danielle Thomson (Stage Manager). The cast of eight is comprised entirely of high school students at the Professional Performing Arts School (PPAS).
Performances at the PPAS Black Box are Wednesday May 2nd through Saturday, May 5th at 7p, with an additional Saturday matinee at 2p. Tickets are $10 for PPAS students, $15 dollars for adults and can be purchased at www.brownpapertickets.com. PPAS is located at 328 W 48th St in New York, NY. For more information, visit http://www.waterwell.org.
Bios____________________________________________________________
Bekah Brunstetter (Playwright) plays include A Long And Happy Life (Upcoming, Naked Angels) Be A Good Little Widow (Ars Nova, Spring 2011) House Of Home (Williamstown Theater Festival), Oohrah! (Atlantic Theater, 2009), and Miss Lilly Gets Boned (Finborough Theater 2010, Lark Playwrights Week 2009, Finborough Theater, June 2010). She is a New York New Voices Fellow through the Lark Play Development Center, member of The Primary Stages Writer’s Group, the Naked Radio writing team, an alumni of the Women's Project writer's Lab, the Ars Nova Play Group, and the Playwright's Realm. She was the 2011 Playwright in Residence at the Finborough Theater, London, and is currently working on an EST Sloan commission. BA: UNC Chapel Hill; MFA: New School. www.bekahbrunstetter.com.
Stephen Brackett (Director) NYC: Chad Beckim’s After (Partial Comfort Productions), Bekah Brunstetter’s Be A Good Little Widow (Ars Nova), The Tenant (Woodshed Collective), Too Much Too Soon (Lesser America), political strategist and humanitarian David Mixner’s From the Front Porch (Dixon Place), Nick Jones and Rachel Shukert’s The Sporting Life (Studio 42), Dylan Dawson’s Cinemediocracy (Ars Nova), Dan Fishback’s You Will Experience Silence and thirtynothing (Dixon Place), Sam Forman and Eric Davis’ F#@king Up Everything (NYMF), Bixby Elliot’s PN1923.45LS01 Volume 2 (FringeNY), Whore and The Ones That Flutter (Summer Play Festival), and Kilroy Was Here: A Styx Rock Opera (Williamstown). Assistant Director: Passing Strange (The Public and Belasco Theaters). Upcoming: The Material World (Dixon Place) and American River (Lesser America).
Daniel Zimmerman (Scenic Designer) Off-Broadway: Andrew Hinderaker's Suicide, Inc. (dir. Jonathan Berry) for Roundabout Theater Company, Bekah Brunsetter’s Be A Good Little Widow (dir. Stephen Brackett) for Ars Nova, The Confidence Man for Woodshed Collective, and Steven Levenson’s Seven Minutes In Heaven (dir. Adrienne Campbell-Holt) for Colt Coeur. Regional: God of Carnage (Portland Stage), Boom (Kitchen Theater), The Who’s Tommy (ReVision at Asbury Park), and frequent collaborator for the O’Neill Playwrights Conference.
Tilly Grimes (Costume Designer) Other NYC: A Beautiful Laugh (La MaMa), The Urban Dictionary Plays and The Wii Plays (Ars Nova), Summer and Smoke (Theatre Row). Regional: Parade and Tango (Brown/Trinity Repertory), Twelfth Night (Westport County Playhouse, Best Costume Design nomination BroadwayWorld.com). Much Ado about Nothing and Othello (Shakespeare on the Sound), Anthony and Cleopatra (Stonington Opera House). Other Educational: The World in the Moon, Meantime, Trust and Les Mamelles Des Tiresias (Juilliard). MFA: Tisch.
Greg Goff (Lighting Designer) Regional: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, Kennedy Center, New Jersey Performing Arts Center, New York Stage and Film, TheaterWorks Hartford, Curtain Call Theatre. Tours: Girl Talk, Patricia Norowol Dance (Germany). NYC: Playwrights Horizon Theater School, Pace University, CAP 21, HERE Arts Center, New York City 24-Hour Play Festival, New York Musical Theatre Festival, New York City International Fringe Festival. Education: MFA, NYU-Tisch Design for Stage and Film Dept. www.greggoff.com
M.L. Dogg (Sound Designer) has designed for Fordham, Huntington, Roundabout, The Pearl, Ars Nova, Second Stage, Waterwell, Out Of Balanz, TFANA, Shelby Company, Scott Sanders Productions, Why Not Theatre, Boise Contemporary Theater, Amphibian Stage Productions, Stillpoint Productions, 13P, Two River, Epic Theatre Ensemble, Women’s Project, Theatre B, The Depot Theatre, Classic Stage, Wash And Fold Productions, Shakespeare & Company, Monster(less) Actors Inc., and Actors Theatre of Louisville. IRNE, IT, FringeNYC and Drama Desk nominee.
Danielle Thomsen (Stage Manager) is a first year MFA candidate at Columbia University. This is her sixth production since moving to New York last August. Previously she worked in the Bay Area of California with such companies as American Conservatory Theatre, Marin Theatre Company, and Shotgun Players. She is an Associate Artist with AlterTheatre Ensemble and a Company Artist with Brava For Women in the Arts, as well as a proud member of AEA.
Waterwell (Arian Moayed & Tom Ridgely, Artistic Directors) is a New York based company of artists dedicated collaborative creation of new works for the theatre. It was founded in 2002 and has since created eleven original plays, four cabarets and two staged readings. Its continually evolving body of work encompasses original plays, adaptations of classic texts, solo shows and performance pieces. For each venture the actors, writers, directors, composers, musicians and designers work collectively to build the piece from the ground up. The Village Voice has called them, “Dynamic, resourceful and relentlessly entertaining.” And TheaterScene says, “There's no way a written description can do justice to their blazing energy and inventiveness.” Using a combination of research, improvisation and source texts, the ensemble devises each drop over the course of an extended rehearsal period. The resulting mixture of drama and vaudeville uses music and comedy as access points to address larger issues of power, class and race. The New York Times hails the work as, “Brilliant, original and inspired. Alive enough to surprise even the performers themselves,” and Theatermania writes, “Waterwell has staked a claim on our collective conscience.”
Since 2003, Waterwell has offered structured classes in collaborative playmaking, or “devising”, the process by which the ensemble develops its material. This training addresses the student-artist holistically and demands they develop both as an interpreter and as a creator. Voice and movement work connects with scene study and theatre history; interpretation is exercised alongside original creation; and everything is designed to be in dialog with what's going on outside the classroom – in their homes, communities and the world at large. Waterwell has provided the Theatrical Arts and Drama programs at PPAS since 2010.
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