As part of the tenth edition of the COIL festival, Performance Space 122 and Parkside Lounge present the New York premiere of The Blind Date Project by Australia's Ride On Theatre. Unpredictable, dark and funny, The Blind Date Project is an event to which everyone can relate - a blind date between two people who have never met and who are desperately in need of connection.
Australian Film Institute award-winner and TV actress
Bojana Novakovic (TV: Rake, Shameless) plays Anna, a woman waiting at a karaoke bar for her date to arrive. With no idea of who she is about to meet or what is about to happen, each night a different performer joins her for an entirely improvised, intensely personal interaction-including karaoke numbers-in front of a crowd of willing participants. Guided only by text messages and phone calls and interspersed with random songs, each date promises to be as bizarre as it is dangerous. Things may turn out to be humiliating, tender or totally hot.
Participants include
Pablo Schreiber (TV: Orange Is the New Black, The Wire; Broadway: Awake and Sing! Tony Nomination),
Mamie Gummer (TV: Emily Owens, M.D.,
John Adams, The Good Wife),
Christopher Abbott (TV: Girls),
Charlie Carver (TV: Desperate Housewives, Teen Wolf, The Leftovers),
Anson Mount (TV: Hell on Wheels),
Frederick Weller (TV: Missing Persons, In Plain Site; Broadway: Mothers and Sons) and Reggie Watts (TV: Comedy Bang! Bang! and, in March 2015, The Late Late Show with
James Corden), Lachlan Patterson (TV: Last Comic Standing) and more. Additional participants will be announced at a later date.
Performances of The Blind Date Project will take place January 7-17 (see schedule above) at Parkside Lounge, which is located at 317 E Houston Street in Manhattan. Critics are welcome beginning January 8. Tickets are available online at
ps122.org and by phone at
212.352.3101.
The Blind Date Project was created by
Bojana Novakovic and Mark Winter and is directed by Scott Rodgers and produced by
Andrew Carlberg. Collaborators include Tanya Goldberg and Thomas Henning.
Ride On Theatre is a collective of theatre practitioners - performers, directors, musicians, designers and technicians. Ride On's vision is the creation of theatre that draws upon and expands the vitality of our medium. The premise of the work is to bring a potentially disastrous idea to manifestation and see what comes of it. If it works - it becomes a show. Ride On was founded in 2003 by National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA) graduates
Bojana Novakovic and Tanya Goldberg. Their theatrical collaboration has led to productions all over Australia and numerous Green Room and Sydney Theatre Award nominations.
Photo by Walter McBride
