Target Margin Theatre Announces 2014 Fellows, Launches New Training Program

Target Margin Theater begins the new year with the launching of the new training program the Institute for Collaborative Theater Making, that will be a place where selected Fellows challenge themselves and the form of theater, ask what theater can be, and fearlessly embrace surprising and unexpected answers. The ultimate goal of the TMT Institute is to feed the growth of vibrant emerging artists, and enrich and challenge the culture of making theater.

TMT has announced the 2014 Fellows for the launching of the inaugural program: Claire Moodey, Kyoung H. Park, Cara Scarmack, Sarah Cameron Sunde and aricoco (Ari Tabei).

The first phase of the program will be held at the Abrons Art Center, in lower Manhattan, with later sessions to be scheduled at venues throughout the city committed to the goals of the Institute.

Institute Fellows, hungry to reinvent what they want to make happen in a theater, will read, see, discuss, and make, all through the lens of TMT's core company principles:

DIFFERENCE: Strive to discover, to do something not known, to make it new: really do it and really mean it. To play with the notions of mystery, entertainment and extremity, by encouraging cross-disciplinary work and artistic originality.

QUESTIONING: What is a play/production ? There are no assumptions in the Institute and in the work created. The goal is to locate the assumptions and set them aside. Consider everything.

FAILURE: Linking principle. Get an A or an F by taking risks to fail big and surprise yourself in the process.

The Institute will involve study, practical work and reflection by exploring technique and experiences of the core group of Associated Artists, as well as outside artists/teachers/collaborators. The Institute is not an incubator for existing work, or a showcase, but rather an opportunity to meet, discuss, play, fail and try to figure out what the creative process is all about.

"The TMT Institute aims to give a healthy jolt to the American theater," said Target Margin Artistic Director, David Herskovits. "Target Margin has been sending out waves of exciting irreverent theater makers for 20 years; now the Institute adds focus and weight to that aspect of our work." He went on to add, "We want to make a place where a select group of emerging theater artists in all disciplines can retreat to nourish themselves, experiment, reflect and rebuild their craft. Our Institute Fellows will in turn rejoin the stream of theatrical art with new energy and boldness. With our Institute, as with our productions, our goal is no less than to change the culture."

Claire Moodey is a Brooklyn based theater artist. Original works include , Spectral Findings, and The Hungry Ghosts. She is currently developing a digital identity piece as TRAGEDY (Maxwell Cramer, Milo Cramer, Claire Moodey, and Ariel Stess). Other credits include: Take Me Home, Associate Director (Meghan Finn, dir.); a (micro) history of world economics danced (Pascal Rambert, dir.); Erin Courtney's The Service Road, puppeteer and live foley (Finn, dir.); Penny Arcade's Lower East Side Biography Project: Richard Foreman, video editor; POZHAR with TMT's Russian Futurist Lab.

Kyoung H. Park is Artistic Director of Pacific Beat Collective and the first Korean playwright from Latin America to be produced and published in the United States. He is author of Sex and Hunger, disOriented, Walkabout Yeolha, TALA, and many short plays including Mina, which is published in Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas. He is a 2010 UNESCO-Aschberg Laureate, recipient of an Edward Albee, Global Arts Village, and Theater of the Oppressed fellowships and grants from the Arvon and GK foundations. Kyoung is a member of the Ma-Yi Writer's Lab, Soho Theater's Hub and Youngblood alum. BFA: Dramatic Writing (NYU); MA: International Politics (KHU); MFA: Playwriting (Columbia).

Cara Scarmack is a theater-maker and musician. As a theater-maker, she has worked with the ensemble The Roadsters and is currently making theater with longtime collaborator Priscilla Holbrook. She has directed her texts WHAT HAPPENED IN OHIO; OHIO, REVISITED and BETTER NOT TOUCH THAT. Her to-be-made plays include IN THE SHADOW OF A TRUCK; BEFORE YOU GET TOO FAR AFIELD and NIMBUSCLUD. An avid admirer of Odin Teatret, Scarmack has witnessed and participated in their march. She is currently a student of bluegrass aficionado Michael Daves and is pursuing her MFA in Playwriting in Mac Wellman's program at Brooklyn College.

Sarah Cameron Sunde directs theater and makes interdisciplinary live art. She leads Lydian Junction, a cohort of five artist practitioners from different disciplines, develops new work, and is known for her work as Jon Fosse's American-English director/translator (five U.S. debuts, texts published by PAJ). Other world premieres at 3LD, Guthrie Studio, 59E59, Rattlestick, EFA Project Space and New Georges, where she is Deputy Artistic Director. Sunde is currently developing large-scale versions of her durational performance, 36.5 / PHASES OF THE MOON, and BORN FOR NOTHING with Lydian Junction, which will be developed at the Watermill Center in 2014. SarahCameronSunde.com + LydianJunction.com.

aricoco (Ari Tabei) was born and raised in Tokyo, receiving her undergraduate education at Sophia University ( BA '97.) Traveling back and forth between Tokyo and the US, aricoco attended the Post-baccalaureate Program in Studio Art at Brandeis University in 2001 and received her MFA from the University of Connecticut in sculpture and video performance art in May 2007. She was awarded A.I.R. Gallery Fellowship for 2008/09. She has participated in several artists in residency programs including: chashama, LMCC Swing Space, Smack Mellon Studio Program, Sculpture Space, Blue Sky Project, AAI Studio Program, and Museum of Art and Design Open Studios.

Target Margin Theater for twenty-three years has been at the forefront of New York's alternative theater scene and has been praised for its bold and sometimes wild interpretations of classic dramas and lesser-known works. TMT has presented ambitious re-thinkings of plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and Beaumarchais, among others. TMT has also created original works and new music/opera over the years and has served nearly 1,000 artists (mostly emerging) through its annual Lab. The company's production of Mamba's Daughters received the Obie Award and was a sensation of the 1999 Spoleto Festival, and its recent epic production of Goethe's Faust received critical acclaim. Recent productions include The (*) Inn at Abrons Arts Center and Uncle Vanya and The Tempest at HERE.

For additional information, visit www.targetmargin.org.