NECK DOWN Cast Announced At The Exponential Festival 2025

Casting is complete for New York City-based educator, cultural organizer, and theatre-maker Nic Adams' (Corona Cam Show, Icarus in the L.E.S.) latest play, NECK DOWN.

This world-premiere production will be directed by Princess Grace Award-winner Marissa Joyce Stamps (Being Up in Here...) and will open on January 9, 2025 at We Are Here Brooklyn Studios. Performances will conclude on January 12, 2025.

NECK DOWN will feature Cristina Pitter* (BONDiNG on Netflix, Behind the Sheet) as C's Inner Voice, Essence Lotus as Ciel, Angela Chew as H's Inner Voice, Alton Alburo as Howie, Jack Dahill as E's Inner Voice, and Riley Wood* as Ebenezer.

It's the morning before an ancient coin auction in NYC and early-career artist Ciel is stuck working yet another menial temp assignment. An old money collector arrives early to inspect the legal tender upon which he plans to bid. So begins a daydream about lottery winnings, caskets, sex fantasies, delulus of grandeur, and Big Oil Banks. The physical characters onstage duet with the voices in their heads, mounting a tragicomic class stand-off and a toast to the relentless spirit of artists living on the brink of precarity.

The creative team for NECK DOWN will include producer Melissa Mickens, lighting designer Andre Segar, sound designer Eden Segbefia, scenic designer Ettie Pin, Costume Designer Karen Boyer, and stage manager Deniz Demirkurt.

Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-exponential-festival-presents-rainbows-end-tickets-1052701607847?aff=oddtdtcreator.

As part of the play's commitment to economic justice, five radically low-cost tickets will be released for every performance of NECK DOWN weekly in a series the producers call Ticket Tuesdays. Follow the play @neckdown_play on Instagram for the latest.

For more information on NECK DOWN, including a list of collaborators and background information, click here: https://www.theexponentialfestival.org/rainbowsend

* Equity Member appearing with permission of Actors' Equity Association without benefit of an Equity contract in this Off-Off Broadway production.

Nic Adams is a 2025 NYSCA grant recipient for his play, NECK DOWN. He is an NYC-based educator, cultural organizer, and theatre-maker. MFA in playwriting, Brooklyn College ('23). Adams' work has been presented at Judson Memorial Church, Joe's Pub, The Bushwick Starr (presented by Target Margin), JACK, and The Brick, among other venues, and by The BEAT Festival, The Performing Garage Presents (presented by Oye Group), and The Exponential Festival, for which he's served as the Producing Director since 2017. His poetry has been published online at B O D Y Literature, and his short play, Grief Leash, is represented by Tiny Scripted. Photo credit Lee Rayment.

Marissa Joyce Stamps is a Black, Haitian-American NYC-born and based writer, director, choreographer, performer, and educator who creates vortexes that center, celebrate and amplify Black folks through an Afrosurrealist lens, often in dialogue with kinetics and landscape dramaturgy. She was the recipient of the 2023 Princess Grace Playwriting Award/New Dramatists Residency. She is a member of EST/Youngblood, The Lucille Lortel's 2024-2025 Alcove, Roundabout's Directors Group (Cohort 6) The New George's Jam, and TAG at The Tank; she was a member of Clubbed Thumb's 2023-2024 Early-Career Writers Group, a Finalist for The National Black Theatre's 2023 I AM SOUL Playwrights Residency, and a Mercury Store Fall 2023 Lead Artist. 

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