EAST RIVER COMMEDIA IN ASSOCIATION WITH COLLECTIVE: UNCONSCIOUS PRESENT playgroundzero, a playreading series curated by Saviana Stanescu AS PART OF THE undergroundzero festival.
playgroundzero is a series of script-in hand readings of bold, provocative, and thought provoking news plays, curated by playwright Saviana Stanescu as part of the undergroundzero festival at Performance Space 122.
playgroundzero aims to offer exposure to plays that are highly original, risk-taking, innovative, bold and provocative. If you want to be predictably entertained with another well-done dramatic-recipe, playgroundzero is not for you. We like to play, we like theatre and theatricality, we like to challenge the audiences and we believe that theatre's role in society is to make people think and push their limits. playgroundzero is about that zero hour of your conscience when you are ready to understand/learn something new, play with a new idea, accept a new thought. You are allowed to be both childish and wise, as long as you are open and curious.
All readings are $5, suggested donation and will be held at Performance Space 122, located at 150 First Avenue at East 9th Street, New York, New York 10009.
Me You Us Them
Saturday, July 11 @ 3:30pm
Written by Andrea Lepcio
Directed & choreographed by Zach Morris
Two boys spot each other across a vacant lot anywhere in the world - Zamzama Street in Karachi, Haifa Street in Baghdad or Jerome Avenue in the Bronx. Hungry, lonely, bored and without hope, they form a bond through their poetic language and extreme street dance moves. A modern woman frightened by the world around her and her inadequate response searches on-line alone. At the moment she realizes she needs to search for questions, not answers, in a Second Life or Avatar way, she becomes Z, the boys' friend of a friend. Together, they make a plan to blow up the Center of Things.
Incomplete and Beautiful
Sunday, July 12 @ 2:30pm
Written & directed by Nathaniel Kressen
First produced as a student show at NYU's Tisch School of the Arts, Incomplete and Beautiful is a hilarious coming-of-age story set in the gentrified East Village of NYC. Illegal substances, proximity infatuations, and 3-square pasta meals a day collide as a group of young artists struggle to make their mark in a world without safety nets.
For A Barbarian Woman
Saturday, July 18 @ 3:30pm
Written by Saviana Stanescu
Directed by Paul Bargetto
The play interweaves a present-day love story between a Romanian woman and an American colonel from the NATO base in Constanta (a Romanian city at the Black Sea, built on the ruins of the ancient city TOMIS where the Roman poet Ovid was exiled sometime around year 8 AD) and a fictional relationship between Ovid and a Barbarian woman from Tomis.
Vattago
Saturday, July 25 @ 2:30pm
Written by Ian Cohen
Directed by Sarah Rasmussen
The demon, VATTAGO, infiltrates the home and workplace of Matt Ross, resulting in chaos and death. A comedy.
Torrents
Sunday, July 26 @ 3:30pm
Written by Robert Attenweiler
Directed by Margarett Perry
Three local townspeople have recently gone missing and police officer Claire Torrence believes these disappearances are connected. But are they also connected to her sister, Rose, a militia member, or to Bill Daniels, a local carpenter, who might just be the second coming of Jesus Christ?
The undergroundzero festival is an experimental theater festival curated by Paul Bargetto and produced by East River Commedia in association with Collective:Unconscious. Now in its third year, the undergroundzero festival has given producing artists a laboratory outside the usual curatorial system where risk is encouraged and innovation can flourish. This year the undergroundzero festival will present a fascinating collection of over twenty experimental theater companies and artists at the legendary downtown performance venue Performance Space 122, July 7-26.
www.eastriver.org
www.weird.org/ugz
www.PS122.org
