THE FLEA ANNOUNCES COMPLETE CAST & DESIGN TEAM FOR THE WORLD PREMIERE PRODUCTION OF “WE COME TO COLLECT: A FLIRTATION, WITH CAPITALISM”
Contact:
Rick Miramontez / Morgan Zysman
rick@omdkc.com / morgan@omdkc.com
212-695-7400
THE FLEA
ANNOUNCES
COMPLETE CAST & DESIGN TEAM FOR
THE WORLD PREMIERE PRODUCTION OF
“WE COME TO COLLECT:
A FLIRTATION, WITH CAPITALISM”
BY JENN KIDWELL & THE BLACKENING
DIRECTED BY JENN KIDWELL
FEATURING JENN KIDWELL & BRANDON KAZEN-MADDOX
STRICTLY LIMITED ENGAGEMENT AT THE FLEA
FROM AUGUST 26 – SEPTEMBER 27
TICKETS ON SALE NOW!
TO DOWNLOAD KEY ART, CLICK HERE
New York, NY (July 24, 2025) – Today, The Flea announced the complete cast and design team for the world premiere production of the play, we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism, written by Jenn Kidwell and the blackening. This world premiere follows Kidwell’s success co-writing and starring in the Obie Award Winning Underground Railroad Game. we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism, which will feature Kidwell as well as ASL artist Brandon Kazen-Maddox, will run as a strictly limited engagement at The Flea Theater (20 Thomas Street) from Tuesday, August 26 through Saturday, September 27. In line with The Flea’s radical operating model, we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism has been developed in partnership with Jenn Kidwell as co-producer on all elements of this production.
Tickets are on sale now at www.theflea.org.
Directed by Jenn Kidwell, we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism features scenic design by Jian Jung, lighting design by Evan Spigelman, sound design by Jordan McCree, video design by Matthew Deinhart, and props & objects design by Petra Floyd. The production is co-directed by Adam Lazarus, with Jecca Barry as creative producer, and Lisa McGinn as stage manager.
“It is a pleasure to collaborate and conspire with the master creator and performer, Jenn Kidwell, and her company, the blackening, to bring their latest work to the stage. we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism is a relentlessly intimate, disarmingly hilarious, fearless interrogation. It grabbed me immediately as the perfect play and the perfect artist to be sharing with audiences right now,” said Niegel Smith, The Flea’s Artistic Director.
“I’ve been dreaming of and into this piece for at least nine years, but more like almost 47. I wish everyone could know what it’s like for their dreams to be welcomed, nurtured, challenged, supported, and bettered like we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism has been at The Flea. And, just in time, too. What with this colonial project on the brink of collapse, it means so much to me to offer this alternative foundational story from which we could maybe rebuild,” said writer, co-director and performer, Jenn Kidwell.
OBIE Award winning artist Jenn Kidwell and Brandon Kazen-Maddox answer capitalism’s siren call in an evening of hysterical undertakings. Ooh, you feel that on your neck? That tantalizing whisper? That’s capitalism, and she wants you bad. The world premiere of we come to collect: a flirtation, with capitalism, instigated by the artistic collective the blackening, debunks the alluring tale of American economic might weaving stand-up comedy, performance art, and the carnivalesque. You know you can’t resist.
To view photos of all lead artists as well as The Flea logo, please click here.
BIOGRAPHIES
Jenn Kidwell (Instigator, Writer, Performer, Co-Director) is a performing artist with a penchant for getting people to do things they never thought they’d do. Recent original projects: Those With 2 Clocks (The Wilma Theater), Underground Railroad Game (2017 Obie Award for Best New American Theatre Work; 2018 Edinburgh Fringe First Award; Lucille Lortel, Helen Hayes nominations). Currently collaborating with Chef Laquanda Dobson on Givingthanks and with Ars Nova Workshop/Immanuel Wilkins on Recess. Recent performances: The Welkin (Atlantic Theater Co.), Ocean Filibuster (PearlDamour), Eternal Life Part 1, Fat Ham (2021 film) and Antigone (The Wilma Theater), Syllabus for Black Love (jaamil olawole kosoko), Home (Geoff Sobelle; 2018 Bessie Award), Adrienne Truscott’s Still Asking for It (Joe’s Pub), Superterranean, Fire Burns Hot: Little Reno!, I Promised Myself to Live Faster, and 99 Break-Ups (Pig Iron Theatre Company). Published in “Black Body Amnesia” and Movement Research Performance Journal #45 at hyperallergic.com. 2020 Visiting Artist Duke University, 2021 Visiting Artist UPenn. 2013 TCG/Fox Resident Actor Fellowship, 2015, 2021 Leeway Foundation Art & Change Grant, 2016 Pew Fellow, 2017 Independence
Brandon Kazen-Maddox (ASL Artist, Performer) Brandon Kazen-Maddox (they/them) is an ASL artist, choreographer, dancer, actor, filmmaker, and third-generation heritage signer raised in a culturally Deaf household. Their work centers Deaf, Disabled, BIPOC, and LGBTQAI+ communities through inclusive, interdisciplinary performance in American Sign Language, spoken English and Simultaneous Communication (SimCom). They have shared their story nationally, including TEDx, The Getty Museum’s Day of Unreasonable Conversation, NASPA, and PBS’s Stories from the Stage. Their work has been recognized with a Creative Capital Award, NEFA NDP Grant, Mertz-Gilmore Foundation Grant, Gucci’s Chime for Change, and the Times Square Midnight Moment (“Georgia”).
Television credits include The Good Fight, High Maintenance, and PBS’s Brief But Spectacular, As a 2024 WNET/ALL ARTS Artist in Residence, their 30-minute special SOUL(SIGNS): Making Music Visible premiered in April 2025. Theater and dance credits include Bill T. Jones’ Deep Blue Sea (Park Avenue Armory; FREEDOM; ArtYARD), and Fresh Tracks (New York Live Arts).
Brandon holds an MFA from NYU Tisch and is a co-founder of Up Until Now Collective. Learn more at www.upuntilnowcollective.com and www.brandonkazen-maddox.com
Adam Lazarus (Co-Director) is an award-winning theatre creator, known for bringing a dark and comic sensibility to all of his work. Some credits include the international thought disrupter Daughter; the radical race oration The Art of Building a Bunker; the vicious bouffon love play Wonderland; and his latest anxiety odyssey Versus. His work has been presented globally including runs Off-West End, the Sibiu International Festival, Latitude Festival, Sydney Festival, PuSh Festival, Canada’s National Arts Centre and the Edinburgh Fringe. Adam has acted as a creation director and coach for countless actors, musicians, speakers, comedians, dancers, and performance artists, helping them spark and form characters, narratives, worlds, and unforgettable images. Some collaborations include Canadian Stage, Soulpepper, SSENSE, TED Talks, United Way, and Habitat for Humanity. He’s a regular acting instructor at the National Theatre School of Canada, Canadian Film Centre, Pig Iron, University of Toronto, Columbia, and Penn. He’s a graduate and former apprentice of Phillipe Gaulier.
Jian Jung (Scenic Designer) is an Obie Award winning set designer from Korea, based in New York City. Recent theater credits include Staff Meal at Playwrights Horizons, The Following Evening at PAC-NYC, The Nosebleed at LCT3 and Woolly Mammoth Theater (DC), Kiss at Wilma Theater, Ocean Philabuster at A.R.T., Bodies They Ritual at Wild Project, The Day You Begin at Kennedy Center, and Suicide Forest at Bushwick Starr. Opera and musical credits include productions in Wolf Trap Opera (VA), Fisher Center in Bard, Huntington Theater (Boston), Juilliard, and Long Beach Opera (CA).
Jung received an Obie Award for Sustained Achievement in Set Design, a Barrymore Award, 2 Edith Lutyens & Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Awards, and 2 nominations for Henry Hewes Design Awards. Her design in Venezuela was presented in Prague Quadrennial. Jung received an MFA in Theater Design from NYU, and an MFA in Environmental Design from Ewha Women’s University in Korea, where she was born and raised. She teaches at NYU Tisch Design MFA program and Sarah Lawrence College.
Evan Spigelman (Lighting Designer) is an actor, cabaret artist, singer, DIY filmmaker, and lighting designer based in Brooklyn, New York. They are a co-founder of New Orleans performance collective Skin Horse Theater and of LOUD, the New Orleans Queer Youth Theater. When not designing, they are fulfilling their lifelong aspiration: to become an agitprop surrealist anti-fascist clown…this title is exactly as pretentious as it sounds. Recent performance credits: Leland and Silas (Chinkapin Craftstead), HILMA (Wilma Theater), Ocean Filibuster (A.R.T/Pearl D’Amour), Mouthbrain (Barnett Cohen), Taylor Mac’s A 24 Decade History of Popular Music (Pomegranate Arts), The Lily’s Revenge (Southern Rep), Creep Cuts (self-produced). TV/Film: Creep Cuts in Freeze Response (co-director). Recent lighting design credits include associate light design on Ocean Filibuster, and design on My Beatnik Youth (Justin Elizabeth Sayre/La Mama), No One Likes an Ugly Revolutionary (Mette LouLou Von Kohl/Abrons Arts Center), and the upcoming A Few Ways it Goes (Jack Fuller). Constantly stalking around in drag as Mx Asa Metric. Instagram: @evspig
Jordan McCree (Sound Designer) is an artist based in Philadelphia. Their most recent collaborations include: Half-God Of Rainfall (Wilma Theater), fallawayinto
(Ninth Planet), The Comeuppance (Woolly Mammoth/Wilma Theater), Good Person of Setzuan (Wilma Theater), Grief Hotel (Clubbed Thumb), Cost of Living (Philadelphia Theatre Company), The BFG (Arden Theater), The World Takes (short film, Eight Flow Studio), Eternal Life Part 1 (The Wilma Theater), The Karamazovs (film, Village Park Productions), Fat Ham (2021 World Premiere, The Wilma Theater). They were a 2022 grant recipient of the 1/52 Project. They are also a member of Philly-based, Barrymore Award winning, hip hop collective, ILL DOOTS. Their album, Divine Transmission, is available everywhere!
Matthew Deinhart (Video Designer) is a New York-based multidisciplinary designer who specializes in the use of nontraditional technologies to create unique storytelling devices. Recent design credits include the scenic design for Song of Joy (The Tank) and Sweat (Brooklyn College). Lighting design: Dark Star of Harlem (La MaMa); Blackbird (New Ohio Theatre); Tongue Depressor (The Public Theater). Projection design: El Amor Brujo (La MaMa); ANIMUS ANIMA//ANIMA ANIMUS (The Public Theater). Co-design (with Jon DeGaetano): I Know Exactly What You Mean (Danspace Project). Video installation design: Be Holding (The Girard College Armory). Matthew is a 2021 graduate of Brooklyn College with an MFA in Design and Technical Theater.
Petra Floyd (Props & Objects Design) is a Liberian-American post-disciplinary artist and designer based in Pittsburgh, who embraces an improvisational approach to art and design, often collaborating with others and using readily available materials. Their work is informed by their upbringing in a working-class immigrant family in Philadelphia, and they are committed to creating art that is both socially engaged and accessible. Petra teaches at Carnegie Mellon University, where they also earned their MFA in 2022. They have been recognized for their work with awards from The Heinz Endowment and The Pittsburgh Foundation, and are members of Monmade’s Green Leap and Pittsburgh Creative Corps.
Lisa McGinn (Production Stage Manager) Recent credits: Rheology (Bushwick Starr); A Knock on the Roof (NYTW); Geoff Sobelle’s FOOD, HOME and The Object Lesson; On Beckett: An Evening with Bill Irwin (tour); Underground Railroad Game (Jennifer Kidwell, Scott R. Sheppard); Those with 2 Clocks (Wilma Theatre), Ocean Filibuster and How to Build a Forest (PearlDamour/ART); Detroit Red (ArtsEmerson); Love (Alexander Zeldin, Park Ave Armory) Compass and Sleep (Ripe Time Theatre); Chimera and The Wholehearted (Stein | Holum Projects); This is Reading (Lynn Nottage, Kate Whoriskey); LA Dance Project (European tour); Jacuzzi and The Light Years (The Debate Society); Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again and Winners and Losers (Soho Rep).
jaamil olawale kosoko (Creative Consultant) is a multi-spirited Nigerian American author, performance artist, curator, and educator. Their interdisciplinary practice merges performance, poetry, video, and sculpture to explore queer Black theory, emergence, and critical rest-care strategies for BIPOC+ liberation and reparation. As an educator and facilitator, jaamil works across Black-centered creative, nonprofit, and corporate spaces. Their works—including The (chrysalis) Archives, Black Body Amnesia, Chameleon, Séancers, and the Bessie Award–nominated #negrophobia—have toured internationally to venues such as EMPAC, Fusebox Festival, the Guggenheim, Montréal Arts Interculturels, ICA at VCU, New York Live Arts, The Centre for the Less Good Idea (SA), HAU (Berlin), Beursschouwburg (Brussels) and the Wexner Center for the Arts. Their practice has received support from the Doris Duke Performing Arts Technology Lab, LMCC, Slamdance (Jury Prize, Best Experimental Short), La Becque Residency (Switzerland), two MacDowell Fellowships, and a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. jaamil.com
Jecca Barry (Creative Producer) is an independent theatre, opera, dance, and film producer. She is the founder and creative producer of Fin Productions, and a co-founder of Up Until Now Collective. Jecca’s practice focuses on developing work with artists that are challenging the conventions of the performing arts industry. From 2012-2022, she served as Executive Director of the acclaimed production company Beth Morrison Projects (BMP) and was a Co-Director of New York’s annual PROTOTYPE Festival from 2017-2022. Jecca has overseen the commissioning, development, production and touring of over 30 new theatre, music-theatre, and opera works, and has toured those works to over 40 national and 20 international venues. Jecca holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in avant-garde flute performance from the Royal Northern College of Music and New York University.
ABOUT THE FLEA
The Flea supports and invests in experimental art by Black, brown, and queer artists. The Flea provides space, financial support, producing partnership, and other resources so that they may develop and share their vision in community with audiences.
The Flea is an established institution, newly transformed. Refounded in 2021, The Flea’s productions and programming creates a hub for culture, creativity, and community with a mission to support and invest in experimental art by Black, brown, and queer artists. Using our innovative production model where lead artists are producing collaborators in their work, we provide the necessary partnership and resources so that artists at any stage in their career or project can develop and share their vision in community with audiences. The Flea owns and operates a state-of-the-art, LEED-certified performance center in Tribeca that houses three distinct, intimate theaters designed to encourage creativity while supporting production economies of scale. Recent world premieres include BATHHOUSE.PPTX by Jesús I. Valles and HANG TIME by Zora Howard.
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