THE FLEA THEATER ANNOUNCES THE RETURN OF THE LATE-NIGHT SERIES “SERIALS” WITH SERIALS @ THE FLEA: ONLINE!
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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE, PLEASE
THE FLEA THEATER
ANNOUNCES THE
RETURN OF THE LATE-NIGHT SERIES “SERIALS”
WITH
SERIALS @ THE FLEA: ONLINE!
New York, NY (April 20, 2020) The Flea Theater announced today SERIALS @ The Flea: ONLINE!, a spinoff of the organization’s popular late-night episodic show will feature five all-new plays specifically created for digital viewing. SERIALS will be available on Saturday, April 25 at 9:00 PM on the Flea’s Instagram and YouTube channels.
The Flea’s Producing Director, Carol Ostrow, says, “SERIALS is the most fun part of The Flea and right now we could all use some serious fun. Leave it to The Bats and our Resident Directors and SERIALS Writers to come up with an online version perfect for these times.”
Artistic Director, Niegel Smith, says, “The skill set of our community of artists continues to amaze me. I hope our Flea audience will grab the best seats on their couches, pop open a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon and cast their ballots for their favorite SERIALS.”
Since its inception in 2011, SERIALS has become a hallmark of The Flea, featuring The Bats and New York’s top emerging playwrights and directors. SERIALS puts the power in the hands of the audience who votes for the top three plays to come back the following cycle with the next installments. The teams with the two least popular stories must likewise come back the following week, but with entirely different serialized plays. At SERIALS: ONLINE! fans will vote for their favorite three shows by ‘liking’ each video on Instagram or voting via an online form. The top three plays return next month with their next installments. Voting lasts until midnight on Tuesday, April 28.
SERIALS: ONLINE! is available to stream, free of charge, on Instagram and YouTube through May 1 at 9:00 PM. In light of COVID-19 closings, The Flea is asking our audiences to consider donating $15, the cost of a SERIALS ticket. Then sit back and enjoy the show, as many times as you like.
SERIALS: ONLINE! is performed by The Bats including Laurel Andersen, Nathaniel Ansbach, Dolores Avery, Ryan Chittaphong, Georgia Kate Cohen, Jessica Darrow, Ure Egbuho, Brendan George, Dorothea Gloria, Andrew Goebel, Simone Grossman, Vanessa Guadiana, Marcus Jones, Hannah Karpenko, Tasha Milkman, Ashley Morton, Erin Noll, Michael Ortiz, Dana Placentra, Brian Pollock, Ana Semedo, Alexandra Slater, Elizabeth Spindler, Nick Turturro, Keith Weiss, Katryna Williams, and Susannah Wilson.
SERIALS: ONLINE! is written by the SERIALS Writers Room including Niccolo Aeed, Oscar Cabrera, Brian Kettler, Marina Tempelsman, and Joshua Young, and is directed by The Flea’s Resident Directors including Daniella Caggiano, Lauren DeLeon, Raz Golden, Kimille Howard and William Steinberger. SERIALS is artistically produced by Michael Raine, produced by Joseph Dalfonso and Annie Perales, and associate produced by Michael Ortiz and Elizabeth Spindler.
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The SERIALS Writers Room is The Flea Theater’s newest cohort of Resident Artists, launched in the beginning of 2018 to get the work of emerging playwrights regularly seen. Writers collaborate with SERIALS teams, featuring a director and group of Bats, to create episodic installments for the popular late-night series. The inaugural SERIALS Writers Room playwrights were chosen from over 100 candidates and include Niccolo Aeed, Oscar A. L. Cabrera, Brian Kettler, Liz Morgan, and Marina Tempelsman.
The Resident Director program, modeled after The Bats, is an intensive residency program offering a small team of early-career directors the opportunity to work, train and direct in support of The Flea’s season under the supervision of Artistic Director Smith, Producing Director Ostrow and The Flea Theater’s staff. Flea Resident Directors engage in the full spectrum of directing. They assistant direct and stage manage each other’s shows as well as those of guest artists, review scripts for the theater, direct readings and workshops of plays under consideration by the Artistic and Producing Directors and ultimately direct their own full-length productions as part of The Flea’s season.
The Bats are the resident acting company members of The Flea Theater. Each season, over a thousand actors audition for a place in this unique company. The Bats perform in extended runs of challenging classics, as well world premieres of new plays. They are the lifeblood of The Flea.
The Flea Theater, under Artistic Director Niegel Smith and Producing Director Carol Ostrow, is one of New York’s leading Off-Off-Broadway companies. Winner of several Obie Awards, a Special Drama Desk Award for outstanding achievement and an Otto Award for political theater, The Flea has presented over 100 theatrical, musical and dance performances since its inception in 1996. Past productions include premieres by Steven Banks, Thomas Bradshaw, Erin Courtney, Bathsheba Doran, Will Eno, Karen Finley, Amy Freed, Sarah Gancher, Sean Graney, A.R. Gurney, Jennifer Haley, Hamish Linklater, Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio, Itamar Moses, Anne Nelson, Qui Nguyen, Adam Rapp, Jonathan Reynolds, Kate Robbins, Roger Rosenblatt, Elizabeth Swados, and Mac Wellman. Successes include Drama Desk nominated She Kills Monsters, These Seven Sicknesses, Restoration Comedy, The Mysteries and ten World Premiere productions by A.R. Gurney, including the WSJ Best New Play of 2013, Family Furniture.
Niccolo Aeed (Playwright) is a black/Palestinian writer and director based in New York. He is half the comedy duo Marina & Nicco, whose sketches and short films have been featured on The New Yorker, Comedy Central, Funny or Die and many more. Marina & Nicco’s plays have been produced at HERE Arts Center, The People’s Improv Theater, New Ohio Theater and Ars Nova. Individually Nicco has written and directed plays for The New York Fringe Festival, the Philly Fringe Festival, NY Summerfest and 7×7. He has written and directed sketch comedy at The Upright Citizens Brigade Theater and The People’s Improv Theater and teaches storytelling with The Moth. For more of Marina & Nicco’s work check out www.MarinaAndNicco.com.
Oscar A. L. Cabrera (Playwright) is a New York-based actor/playwright born and bred in the panhandle of Texas. Both a son to parents who worked two jobs each and the brother of a sibling with autism, his upbringing has crafted a lens for finding the extraordinary out of the common place. His plays have been developed and produced by The Public Theater, INTAR Theater, Rising Circle, Creede Rep, BRIC, NY Madness, Black and Latino Playwrights Conference, and OMPF. He is a current member of EWG at the Public, company member of INTAR’s Unit52, and co-creator of the NYC Latinx Playwrighting Circle.
Brian Kettler (Playwright) is originally from Portland, Oregon. Like everyone from Portland, Brian enjoys coffee, beer and nature, is obsessed with the Blazers and plays bass in a rock band. He earned his MFA in Playwriting from the University of Texas-Austin, where he studied under Steven Dietz. He is a former recipient of the Oregon Literary Fellowship in Drama. Last summer, Brian’s full-length play, Poor Boys’ Chorus, premiered in New York City as part of the Broadway Bound Theatre Festival. His short play, Clown Room, was selected for the Theater Masters National MFA Playwrights Festival, with productions in Aspen and New York City. He was recently commissioned by Orphic Theater Company to adapt Euripides’ Iphigenia Among the Taurians and his adaptation, Iphigenia 3.0, was featured in the 2017 Fertile Ground Festival. Brian has worked as a tutor, teaching artist and for the past three years, has coached high school Mock Trial.
Marina Tempelsman (Playwright) is a writer who was born and raised in New York (where she is still based). She is half of the comedy duo Marina & Nicco, whose work has been featured by The New Yorker, Comedy Central, and Funny or Die. Their play Room 4 was a New York Times Critic’s Pick, and their work has also been featured at HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, The New Ohio Theater, The Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre, and The Peoples Improv Theater. They recently co-wrote a sketch comedy pilot for Fusion, and wrote and produced a web pilot (Smüchr) for BRIC TV. In the summer of 2010, Marina was a Guest Artist at the Kennedy Center Summer Playwriting Intensive, where she studied with Theresa Rebeck, Marsha Norman, David Ives, Jason Robert Brown, Gary Garrison, and Heather McDonald, among others. She co-wrote the Comedy Central series At the Office Microwave, and currently teaches and directs for The UCB. www.marinaandnicco.com
Joshua Young (Playwright) is a proud member of The Public Theater’s 2018-2019 Emerging Writers Group. His play Lime-A-Rita Racist was read as part of their Spotlight Reading Series in 2019. His play Red Room on a Dark Web (2018 O’Neill Center Conference semifinalist, 2018 SPACE Working Farm semifinalist) was presented as part of the Primary Stages ESPA Drills 2018 Reading Series in 2019. Other plays include My Guggenheim Play (SPACE Working Farm 2019 semifinalist, Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep 2019 consideration), The Execution and The Rapture (Mabou Mines 2019 Resident Artist semifinalist, PlayPenn 2017 semifinalist), and Who Mourns for Bob the Goon? (HERE Arts Center Sublet Series 2016, Mabou Mines 2016 Resident Artist semifinalist.)
Daniella Caggiano (Director) is a freelance director and native New Yorker. She was named one of The Interval’s 2016 “Women to Watch” and is a former MTC Directing Fellow, 2018 Drama League Resident, and an alum of Lincoln Center Directors Lab. She has directed at Joe’s Pub, Dixon Place, MTF, Le Poisson Rouge, HERE, FringeNYC, and 54 Below among others. Favorite projects include Next To Normal (benefit presentation starring Tony nom. Christiane Noll), Vinegar Tom, Macbeth, All The Ways To Say I Love You (Assistant, dir. Leigh Silverman) and School Girls; Or, The African Mean Girls Play (Associate, dir. Rebecca Taichman). MFA The New School, BA Sarah Lawrence College www.daniellacaggiano.com
Lauren DeLeon (Director) holds a BA in Theatre & Performance Directing and minor in Playwriting. Lauren has directed productions in support of organizations including Planned Parenthood, My Sister’s Place, Standing Rock, and a non-profit she co-founded, Mission Flint, who just partnered with The Public Theater for their production of cullud wattah. Credits include: City Theatre Next Generation (Adrienne Arsht Center), Men On Boats (SUNY Purchase), FM (SUNY Purchase), Let Me Explain… (SUNY Purchase), Austentation (SUNY Purchase), Ladies of the Land (Drama League, AD), The One Minute Play Festival (INTAR), SERIALS (The Flea), and Surely Goodness and Mercy (Theatre Row, AD).
Raz Golden (Director) is an East Coast-based stage director of new and classic plays. Recent directing credits: East of the Sun, In The Same Space, If You Want My Heart (Come and Take It) (Williamstown Theatre Festival). Assistant directing credits include: Long Lost (dir. Daniel Sullivan), Dangerous House (dir. Saheem Ali), Emma and Max (The Flea, dir. Todd Solondz), and Crowns (dir. Regina Taylor). He is a Drama League Directing Fellow, a member of the 2018 Williamstown Directing Corps, a Jonathan Alper Directing Fellow, and an alumnus of the McCarter Theatre Directing apprenticeship and the City Theatre Directing Observership.
Kimille Howard (Director) is a New York based director, producer, writer, filmmaker, and occasional sound designer from Carmel, Indiana. She is currently a Jonathan Alper Directing Fellow at Manhattan Theatre Club and a NYTW 2050 Directing Fellow for the 2019-2020 season. Kimille recently directed LOW POWER by Jon Kern in EST’s Marathon ‘19, BLACK GIRLS ARE FROM OUTER SPACE by Emana Rachelle at the National Black Theatre, Skeleton Crew by Dominique Morisseau at TheatreSquared and TRIGGERED by Gabriel Jason Dean at the Cherry Lane Theatre. Kimille was awarded Best Director at the 2016 Thespis Festival for It’s All About Lorrie by Joseph Krawczyk at the Hudson Theater and remounted the production for a commercial run at The American Theater of Actors in 2017. Her work has also been seen at The Flea, The Lark, MTC, Manhattan Repertory Theater, The National Black Theatre, JAGFest, NYU, Atlantic Acting School, and the Producers’ Club among others. Kimille is the assistant director to Des McAnuff on Ain’t Too Proud: The Life and Times of the Temptations, which opened on Broadway in spring 2019. She has worked with Ruben Santiago Hudson, Emily Mann, Stephen Wadsworth, Jessica Stone, Jade King Carroll, Niegel Smith, Lorca Peress, and Melissa Maxwell. She is the co-program director for the Amoralists’ Wright Club and has produced shows at the HERE Arts Center, FIAF, and more.
William Steinberger (Director) has developed new plays at Hartford Stage, the Drama League, Berkshire Theatre Group, the Wilma, 59E59, Judson Church, The Tank, Jewish Plays Project, Passage Theatre, Theatre Horizon, InterAct, FGP, Uglyrhino and several universities. Favorite productions include Sarah Pappalardo’s Cold (Quince), Hannah Van Sciver’s Marbles (FringeArts) and Fifty Days at Iliam (Greenfield Collective) and David Auburn’s Proof (Neumann University). He has assistant directed for Doug Hughes, Darko Tresnjak, David Auburn, Michael Wilson, Vivienne Benesch, Kip Fagan, Lee Sunday Evans and Robert O’Hara. His dramaturgy was recently featured in The Wall Street Journal. He is Co Founder of InVersion Theatre. Wsteinberger.com
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