The Makers' Ensemble to Present Four New Works

The Makers' Ensemble will presents their first-ever SHORT PLAY FEST. Produced by Founding Artistic Director Dante Green and Associate Artistic Director Camille Pileggi, four Curated Directors lead a work in progress showing of four new plays by four dynamic Emerging Playwrights. The Short Play Festival was created to support and prioritize the early work of emerging playwrights, and to facilitate Director/Playwright collaboration. Our Curated Directors, Sarah Elizabeth Yorke, Neeta Thadani, Talia Paulette Oliveras, and Gabe Moses were each given full creative agency to choose the play they'd like to direct. Rehearsals were tailored to match the goals (and locations) of each playwright. We wanted our first Short Play Festival to be easy, open, and accessible to apply, so we kept the guidelines simple. Each play is 10-30 minutes long, and features 2-4 Actors. The festival will take place for one night only at Brooklyn Music School's 250-seat Theater, 7:30 PM. 126 Felix St. Brooklyn, NY 11217.

The Makers' Ensemble is a resident ensemble made up predominantly of queer artists of color. Our artists are multifaceted theatre actors, musicians, playwrights, designers, directors, and devisers. We make live performances; a powerful agent for cultural engagement, accessible artistry, and progress towards inclusion, dignity, and radical creativity. We are dedicated to collective artistic empowerment. We are dedicated to dynamic, diverse, and balanced collaboration. We are dedicated to a symbiotic engagement with a wide range of audiences. We are dedicated to using entertainment, education, action, and radical energy and empathy to challenge, inspire, excite, build, rebuild, repair, restore, recreate, and reimagine.

Marina Abramovic Said This in A Podcast

Written by Claire Tumey

Directed by Sarah Elizabeth Yorke

SYNOPSIS

In an alternate New York-- or perhaps in New York's Near Future-- you can engage in app-based sexual economic exchange as easily as you can find a hook-up on Tinder. A newly-unemployed and creatively-starved Jessica-- stage name "Jupiter"-- drunkenly and impulsively orders the services of user xxJohnnyCashxx for purposes unbeknownst to him, which leads to a night of messy artistic exploration and uncomfortable truths. This short play is working metaphor on the way the white gaze in art and in life can corrupt, despite whatever performative strives society has made in the name of equality.

BIOS

Claire Tumey (She/Her/Hers) is a performer and playwright born in the South and raised in the Midwest. She graduated from the University of Evansville in 2019 with a BFA in Theatre Performance. She has a passion for the development of new work and has exercised that passion with numerous emerging and professional theater companies including The New Harmony Project, Williamstown Theatre Festival, and The Barrow Group. She is a proud member of the Makers' Ensemble and an Equity Membership Candidate. You can find her on any given Sunday actively seeking representation, working on about 4 different play/novel ideas at once, and/or making banana pancakes and doing Yoga with Adrienne. Clairefrancistumey.com

Sarah Elizabeth Yorke (she/her) is a director, producer, actor, and theatre educator from Mahanoy City, Pennsylvania. In 2012 she graduated from Virginia Tech with her BA in Theatre Arts and went on to pursue directing for the next 10 years. Since then, she has directed over 30 productions ranging from high school, community, collegiate, non-profit, self-produced and professional theatre. She is currently in her third year at Ohio University, where she is pursuing a Master of Fine Arts in Directing and a Master of Arts Administration in Theatre Production and Management. Sarah is also an Associate Member of SDC and is currently training to become a certified intimacy director and coordinator. Sarah is thrilled to be a part of this festival and honored to share in the creation of new works with such incredibly talented, vibrant and earth-shaking artists. Cheers to collaboration and innovation!

4SZNS

Written by Mayah Lourdes Burke

Directed by Talia Paulette Oliveras

SYNOPSIS

4SZNS follows NATURE, a force to be reckoned with, and PARTNER, who does their best to keep up. The two lovers navigate what it means to be in a relationship with someone who just doesn't understand the other.

BIOS

Mayah "My" Lourdes Burke (she/her) is a director, playwright, actor, singer, poet, and photographer from NYC. She graduated with her BS in Drama in 2021 from the CUNY College of Staten Island. Her directing credits include Good Grief: A Best Friend Play (2022, Ghostlight Players Productions) by Ngozi Anyanwu, We are Proud to Present... (2021, Staten Island Shakespeare Co) by Jackie Sibblies Drury, and Funnyhouse of a Negro (2021, College of Staten Island) by Adrienne Kennedy, as well as performed and directed some scenes in the 2021 Women's Playwrights Collective's Not Forgotten Play Festival. She was also the Assistant Director for Trouble at Home (2021, College of Staten Island), adapted and directed by Anadina Saladino, and is an Assistant Director for multiple films at McGhee Productions. She is also a Touring Company Member with IlluminArt Productions and a Teaching Artist with LEAP NYC. She is very excited be working with the Maker's Ensemble, and is very grateful for the opportunity!

Talia Paulette Oliveras (she/they) is a Blk Latinx artist who builds interdisciplinary, experiential, and ritualistic community spaces within the medium of theatre. They're interested in challenging theatre's limits by unpacking its institutional and systemic history/present while (re)discovering its roots in imagination, dreaming, magic, and more. They also make work alongside their artistic soulmate, Nia Farrell, as Ta-Nia: a theatre-making duo dedicated to making blk spaces in an anti-blk society. Most recently, Talia was a Sundance Institute Interdisciplinary Program 2021 grantee, participated in Soho Rep's Writer/Director Lab 2019-21, and directed work for The Shed's Open Call, and Mabou Mines' SUITE/Space. Currently, Talia is focused on developing new Ta-Nia work for HLTM's Das Stück Der Zeit 2022 and Schauspiel Dortmund's upcoming 2022-23 season.

Twang.

Written by Cris Eli Blak

Directed by Gabe Moses

SYNOPSIS

A store clerk in a small Texas town makes acquaintances with a young Black man passing through town who has a love for Johnny Cash and country music, which she finds strange and out of character. Their conversation becomes one about passions, dreams, differences, bias, prejudice, and why putting a label on yourself only limits your potential.

BIOS

Cris Eli Blak (he/him) is an award winning and internationally produced writer for the page, stage and screen. His work has garnered him a Bronze Remi from the Worldfest Houston International Film and Video Festival, the Christopher Hewitt Award in Fiction, a Pushcart Prize nomination and honors and recognition from The Negro Ensemble Company, Kairos Italy Theater, Austin Film Festival, Barrington Stage Company, TEDxBroadway, Ignition Arts, Louisville Arts Network, Kentucky Playwrights Workshop, Vectis Radio and A is For. His work has been produced, performed and/or published around the world, from Off-Broadway, London, Canada and Ireland. He is developing new work with the Napa Valley Shakespeare Festival, Company One, Derby City Playwrights, Et Alia Theater Company and Yonder Window Theatre Company and is currently under commission by Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, American Stage and La Lengua Teatro en Español/AlterTheater Ensemble. He was the resident playwright at Fosters Theatrical Artists Residency and is currently the playwright-in-residence at Paterson Performing Arts Development Council; and was shortlisted for the Alpine Fellowship Theatre Prize. He continues to strive to create work that reflects the world that we live in, with all of its different and diverse colors, creeds and cultures.

Gabe Moses (he/him) is a multi-faceted theatre and art maker. As a theatre artist, he thrives on being able to use his platforms to amplify black and brown voices. He recently directed a play reading of TJ Young's Dark Skinned Pavement for the Palm Beach Dramaworks New Play Festival. He has previously directed and choreographed his original piece, run 4 ur lyfe, centered around police brutality and being a black man in America. His podcast, "Black-tor" is dedicated to highlighting and celebrating black artists. He has interviewed various artists including Tony-nominated choreographer Camille A. Brown, playwright of Chicken & Biscuits Douglas Lyons, playwright of Pass Over Anotionette Nwandu, actor Tony Todd, and many others. As an actor, Gabe has worked at the Pennsylvania Shakespeare Festival in their productions of Ragtime, Crazy For You, A Midsummer Night's Dream, and Much Ado About Nothing. Gabe also serves as a committee member of PSF's Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, Anti-Racism Working Group. IG: @gabejmoses; Website: www.gabemoses.com

Sugar

Written by Emmy Weissman

Directed by Neeta Thadani

SYNOPSIS

Sugar is a documentary theatre piece that explores three women's experiences working as sugar babies to pay their way through college in NYC. Interwoven interview transcripts interrogate the subjects' feelings on their work, other people's perception of it, and the complications of empowerment.

BIOS

Emmy Weissman (she/her) is a writer, costume designer, and teaching artist in NYC. As an artist, her goal is to sincerely and hilariously honor the absurdity of women and girls' lived experiences and the intimate bonds we form with one another. As an arts educator, she has worked with organizations like Girl Be Heard, Arts Connection, New York City Children's Theater, 92nd Street Y, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, and S.O.U.L. Sisters Leadership Collective. Her play Motherf**king Girl Scouts will be premiering in May at All Out Arts' Fresh Fruit Festival. BFA in Drama- NYU Tisch School of the Arts. For more about Emmy, visit emmyweissman.com.

Neeta Thadani (she/they) is a queer Desi-American actor, activist, writer, director, comedian, podcaster, and producer for theatre and film. They have produced and directed multiple plays and musicals and have also worked as a lighting and sound designer on other productions. Recently, they directed a short film in association with the Nine Muses Production Company. Their interests in artmaking and audio storytelling revolve around the crafting of the South Asian identity in America, stories that center around diaspora, caste privilege, and decolonizing educational work.

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