Sarah Hughes Helms New Cara Scarmack Play With Buran Theatre

Buran Theatre's inaugural CartHorse Fellow Cara Scarmack will see her play some higher glimmer in the landscape of flat premiere as a culmination of the fellowship. Under the direction of Sarah Hughes, the immersive and genre-defying work-straddling theatre, dance and music-will see a three-week run at The Collapsable Hole in the West Village from October 20-November 3.

 

some higher glimmer in our landscape of flat presents a singular force in the world: a Mother who has just given birth to a child and now wears her raw heart on the outside. Harnessing her severe vulnerability and the love she's newly discovered, she provokes a slew of philosophical revelations. From her newly acquired vantage point, a series of conversations, songs and dances are invoked and uncover everything we once knew but have forgotten, including the ills we are unaware of and how these unknowns hurt us all.

 

The poetically zany and musical play will feature a slew of collaborators making impressions upon the work, including choreography by lisa nevada and original music by Johnny Gasper. Designers will include Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew (lighting, video), Peiyi Wong (costume), and Carolyn Mraz & Cori Williams (set), along with music direction by Alaina Ferris, sound by Gavin Price, and technical direction by Nicholas Kostner. The cast will feature Laurena Allan*, Kate Benson*, Lanxing Fu, LaToya Lewis, Manny Rivera, Kate Schroeder, and Merlin Whitehawk.

 

Tickets are on sale now at burantheatre.com

Through the CartHorse Fellowship, Buran provides equitable opportunities to artists whose work would otherwise not be developed and presented; simultaneously, we seek to challenge organizational paradigms in the non-profit performing arts field that favor marginalization, nepotism, commercialization, and hierarchy. In line with Buran's mission of generosity and inclusion, we actively seek - through our presentations, explorations and administration - to demote and dismantle capitalism's influence on theatre-making by promoting and bestowing our horizontal practices through the Fellowship toward radical, queer and impossible performance ventures.

 

In a world ever-increasingly saturated with commercial ventures in theatre-making, Buran Theatre remains a space for risk-taking, adventurous, radical and ridiculous projects that do not align with capital-enhancing values. In the years to come we intend to continue widening our circle so that this fellowship becomes even more inclusive, representative and supportive of the wildest ideas that are not aimed toward commercial runs and, most definitely, do not have their sights set toward Broadway.

 

The CartHorse Fellowship is adjudicated and administrated in the spirit of Absolute Transparency. Applicants apply without a resume, letters of recommendations, professional affiliations, or names attached. In return, they are given complete access to the adjudicator's history and are able to watch, in real time, all applications adjudicated on a Google doc. Throughout the entire process, from semi-finals to finals, the applicant is kept anonymous. Only days within announcing do we finally gain access to the artist's full identity. Our current CartHorse Fellows are Cara Scarmack (2017/18) and Raja Feather Kelly (2018/19). The next round for the Fellowship will go live in February with applications due in May 2019.

 

Buran Theatre is an ensemble of disparate multidisciplinary and intergenerational artists who joyfully and anarchically reconfigure narrative, form, production, gender and genre to develop and present new theatre works. The work embraces the absurd, the queer the unknown, the impossible and the surreal with prism-like narrative complexity and clean, savvy design aesthetic. Our committed ensemble of artists includes writers, directors, performers, designers, puppeteers, taxidermists, musicians, choreographers, educators, and auto mechanics, among other professional obsessions. Previous evening length works have been presented in NYC at Ars Nova, A.R.T./NY's Gural Theater (w/ The Tank), The Brick, The Bushwick Starr (w/ Target Margin), chashama, Dixon Place, Exit Art, Incubator Arts Project/Ontological-Hysteric Theater, and The Silent Barn; nationally at Studio/Stage and Highways Performance Space in Los Angeles, Tricklock Company in Albuquerque, Unicorn Theatre and MET Theater in Kansas City; The Marigny Opera House in New Orleans, and Las Vegas Little Theatre in Las Vegas; and internationally at The Vilnius Chamber Theatre in Vilnius, Lithuania. We have presented new plays by a bevy of pioneering playwrights including, Theresa Buchheister + Sarah Graalman, Adam R. Burnett, Damon Chua, Georgina Escobar, Josepha Gutelius, Carlo Matos, and Casey Mraz, among others.

 

Cara Scarmack is a theater-maker based in NYC. Her plays include: Better Not Touch That; What Happened in Ohio/Ohio, Revisited; In The Shadow of a Truck; Before you Get to Far Afield; Nimbusclud; The Turtle Pond was a Fail; some higher glimmer in our landscape of flat; and Smoke the Cat is Lost. Scarmack is Buran Theatre's 2017/18 CartHorse Fellow, a New Georges affiliated artist, a founding member of Wook Taut Majesty, an alum of the 2016/17 Bushwick Starr Reading Series, a former Dixon Place Artist-in-Residence, a Leslie Scalapino Prize Finalist, an alum of Target Margin's Institute for Collaborative Theater-Making, and an alum of the Brooklyn College MFA playwriting program.

 

Sarah Hughes is a director and producer of theater and new media. She's developed new plays, devised works, and immersive installations with artists and companies including Eliza Bent, Julia May Jonas / Nellie Tinder, MJ Kaufman, Sibyl Kempson, McFeely Sam Goodman, Chana Porter, Deepali Gupta, Cara Scarmack, Alaina Ferris, Half Straddle, Superhero Clubhouse, and Pablo Helguera. With Graham Sack and Geoff Sobelle she's created VR & AR pieces for Tribeca Film Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, and The New York Times. She's presented work at Abrons Arts Center, BAM Next Wave, The Bushwick Starr, Japan Society, Columbia University, and Prelude, among others. Sarah worked with Elevator Repair Service from 2007-14, assistant directing Gatz, The Select, Arguendo, Shuffle, and Fondly, Collette Richland, and she was Co-Artistic Producer of Target Margin Theater from 2015-17. She co-teaches a Contemporary Theater class at Dartmouth College, is a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a Target Margin Associated Artist, a 2016-17 Civilians R&D Lab Member, a Clubbed Thumb 2017-18 Directing Fellow, a 2018 New Georges Audrey Resident, and a 2018-2020 WP Theater Directors Lab member. www.sarahcameronhughes.com

 

Lisa nevada is a travelling choreographer, performer, educator, and naturalist. Her compositions and vocabulary of work highlight our innate relationship to place and an urgent commitment to the health and restoration of plants & trees, soil, water and animals. Her work has been commissioned by galleries, theatre & dance makers, as well as music symposiums throughout the US. lisa facilitates movement workshops and class offerings open to ALL in an effort to ignite embodied change. She is co-director and resident choreographer of SHIFT | DANCE (ABQ) and actively creates and performs under lisanevadadance. lisa received her MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2015. lisanevada.com

 

*Appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association.

 

To post a comment, you must register and login.