The TEAM Publishes New Works

The award-winning Brooklyn-based ensemble the TEAM has announced the release of two new published works, as part of their 10th anniversary: an anthology titled Five Plays By The TEAM, and the script for RoosevElvis, both published by Oberon Books. They'll be celebrating the release of both with a book launch event that includes performances and a book signing on Saturday, January 31 at BookCourt (163 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11201).

Founded in 2004, the TEAM is a Brooklyn-based collaborative ensemble whose mission is to make new work about the experience of living in America today. As part of a quest to explore the American psyche, the TEAM has enlisted everyone from Elvis Presley to Scarlett O'Hara to Bobby Kennedy to perform in kaleidoscopic stage work that the New York Times has called "intellectually playful." This collection brings together four of the company's previously unpublished plays, along with their acclaimed musical Mission Drift, most recently seen in London at the National Theatre's Shed space.

The anthology also includes a timeline of the TEAM's history, exclusive production and rehearsal images, and personal introductions to the plays by members of the company, which provide a look at the formation, evolution, and maturation of a contemporary New York devising ensemble. The collection also includes a foreword by John Tiffany (Once, Blackwatch), who got to know the TEAM's work intimately while serving as the Associate Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Scotland, and who refers to the company in the foreword as "the frisky child of the Wooster Group and Robert Lepage."

The anthology features the following plays:

• Give Up! Start Over! (in the darkest of times I look to Richard Nixon for hope), a relentless solo performance about reality television, Richard Nixon, and the search for authenticity, whichwon a Fringe First in 2005.
• A Thousand Natural Shocks, a time-bending quartet inspired by Hamlet and other visions of the end of the world, which was shortlisted for the Best New Writing Award, Edinburgh Fringe 2005.
• Particularly in the Heartland, a fantastical journey set in a Kansas where aliens grow in cornfields, a business woman named Dorothy falls from the sky, and dead Kennedys stop by for Christmas dinner, which won a 2006 Fringe First award and Best Production at the 2007 Dublin Fringe Festival.
• Architecting, the TEAM's first co-production with the National Theatre of Scotland, a saga which travels from post-Katrina New Orleans to a lonely gas station in Arkansas to the mythic south of Gone With the Wind to explore the lingering ghosts of American prejudice. Architecting won a 2008 Fringe First and was performed at the Under the Radar Festival at The Public Theater and Performance Space 122 in New York City, the Barbican Centre in London, Culturgest in Lisbon and the Arches in Glasgow.
• Mission Drift, the TEAM's musical created with Obie Award winning composer Heather Christian about capitalism and the rise and fall of Las Vegas, co-produced by Lisbon's Culturgest and PS122, which won a Fringe First, a Herald Angel, and the Edinburgh International Festival Award in 2011 and has toured to Australia, Hong Kong, and London's National Theatre.

Released alongside the anthology is the published script for RoosevElvis, the TEAM's most recent work, which played 11 performances at the Vineyard Theatre, New York as part of PS122's COIL festival earlier this month. RoosevElvis will be published separately, joining Mission Drift as a standalone title. Both are published by Oberon Books.

The TEAM's current works-in-progress include:

· Primer For A Failed Superpower, for which the TEAM is forming a multi-generational cover band including 10 teenagers and 10 senior citizens, to play songs written from a place of social or political outrage amidst a conversation about changing notions of American power.

· Tiny Emperors in the Land of Bicycles, developed with performance artist Taylor Mac, and exploring the values of drive and discipline in the USA and China.

The TEAM also recently o-produced The Holler Sessions, a love-letter to jazz, with writer/performer and company member Frank Boyd, at On The Boards in Seattle earlier this month.

TheTEAM is Jessica Almasy, Frank Boyd, Rachel Chavkin, Stephanie Douglass, Jill Frutkin, Brian Hastert, Jake Heinrichs, Matt Hubbs, Libby King, Jake Margolin, Dave Polato, Kristen Sieh, and Nick Vaughan. Rachel Chavkin, Artistic Director; Manda Martin, Producing Director; Lucy Jackson, General Manager.