The Tank Unveils Exciting Lineup for Summer 2023 Festivals
Get ready for an unforgettable summer with The Tank's festival programming.
By: Chloe Rabinowitz Jul. 19, 2023
The Tank (Meghan Finn, Artistic Director; Johnny G. Lloyd, Director of Artistic Development; Molly FitzMaurice, Managing Producer) announced today programming for their eco-forward festivals, TrashFest and DarkFest, as well as additional programming for LimeFest. All festivals will take place in-person at The Tank NYC (312 West 36th St New York, NY 10018), with select livestream options.
For 10 years, The Tank has hosted DarkFest - a week of shows that do not use conventional theatrical lighting in an effort to reexamine how we can make theater more sustainable. With the pandemic forcing their physical theater to close, they challenged that idea further with the first annual TrashFest in 2020. It is often difficult to wrestle with the environmental impact our daily lives and our work can have - especially in theater, where so many resources are needed to develop sets, props, and costumes that are only used for a short amount of time. Curated by Christian Ávila, TrashFest centers work that not only produces no waste, but reuses materials discarded as garbage, while DarkFest celebrates innovative performance that utilizes self-sufficient and alternative energy sources. Trashfest & DarkFest run July 31-August 6, 2023.
The Tank’s LimeFest invites new works by emerging artists and creative teams who identify as women, nonbinary, or gender non-conforming to make way for more gender parity in the performing arts. Produced by Emma Richmond (Simon and His Shoes, Modern Swimwear), LimeFest is a great way to show your work at The Tank, get to know us, and build community with a bunch of cool people. The festival, featuring two previously announced Core Productions – The Sitayana and Tia Talk – alongside Presented Works, is good, old-fashioned summer art fun. LimeFest runs August 4-27, 2023.
More information about the programming is below. Tickets begin at $10 with free offerings and are available by visiting https://thetanknyc.org/trashfestdarkfest-2023 and https://thetanknyc.org/limefest-2023.
TRASHFEST & DARKFEST PROGRAMMING
L'HISTOIRE DU SOLDAT
By Caroline Couch
July 31 at 7pm
The story of L'Histoire follows the tale of a soldier, his temptation and deceit by the devil, and the subsequent conflicts which arise from choosing the promise of riches over a lifetime of love. The piece will include seven musicians: clarinet, bassoon, cornet, trombone, percussion, violin, and double bass. Additionally, three actors simultaneously act and dance the works’ plot.
ON TRASH MONSTERS: AN ECO-TRAGICOMEDY
By Gillian Beth Durkee
August 2 at 7pm
Horrified by a film on global warming she sees in school, Jessica Bilson decides to take control of her family's trash situation, only to discover there is a trash monster named O'Leary living in their basement garage. The Bilson family quickly find themselves caught up in a tornado of garbage, mononucleosis, Vivaldi busts, 3 a.m. secrets, doll houses, and — most importantly — the crushing guilt of feeling poisonous.
THE SCOUTS
Written and performed by Emmy Kuperschmid and Alice Nora
Directed by Christian Cieri
August 3 at 7pm
Let’s go, Scouts! Skippy, Rascal, Tiny, and Pup are off on their scout hiking weekend. Led by Scoutmaster Waldo, these 36-48 hours will contain tests of courage, trust, and brotherhood that will change them forever. But there's something watching them in the woods. Are any of them prepared? The Scouts is a new horror comedy that asks the question: what does it mean to be home?
THE CONSPIRACY PLAYS
By Sarah Hough, Lydia Brinkmann, Nathan Rtishchev
August 3 at 9:30pm
We are all conspiracy theorists. In Faustine, we follow a star graduate student at wit's end who makes a deal with the devil to finish her dissertation. Will her paranoia catch up with her? In Let Me Hang Among The Stars, we travel back to 1969 to a soundstage in Astoria, where a team of filmmakers is trying to fake the moon landing. Both plays are about the stories we tell ourselves to make sense of the world and how we rationalize the most irrational things in our lives. We are all conspiracy theorists.
HERE'S TO ALL THE BROKEN GIRLS
Directed by Katie Michelle Stahl
August 4 at 7pm
here’s to all the broken girls tells the story of five girls, nearly half of the entire grade, who are about to graduate from their very small Catholic high school. When they are forced to do a reflective assignment and read time capsule letters from elementary school, a secret is revealed: one of the girls has been continually assaulted by the school/church’s priest. Three other girls come forward, and they connect and share their experiences, while plotting revenge on the perpetrator Father Stephens. And what better place for their revenge than their graduation in two weeks? here’s to all the broken girls works to encapsulate the viciousness and strength of female adolescence in face of life transitions and trauma. here’s to all the broken girls tells a story of resilience. A story about trauma at the hands of the Catholic church. A story about young girls sticking together even when everything in their gut tells them to run. It's about speaking up when something is wrong. About voices being used and amplified.
SELF HELP ME
By Catherine Weingarten
Directed by Talia Natoli
August 4 at 9:30pm
Cathy is a hot mess so she decides to hire an Instagram life coach. But when her life coach Jessa's advice starts feeling weird and vaguely flirtatious, who really is more qualified to coach who? This satirical play about #mentalhealthculture explores the shifting power dynamics between two women struggling hard to feel heard, seen and comfortable in their own skin.
THE (FINAL) HOLE
By Jackie Bramhall-Heck
August 5 at 3pm
A massive and mysterious hole brings Natalie and Dez together and chaos ensues as they speculate and learn about what brought the other to a hole that may or may not be the final hole. Eventually their conversations devolve into arguments about quantum physics and the second coming of Jesus Christ.
NAMASLAY
By Play-Doh Kolo, Leo Tschopp, and Jeremy Pryzby
Directed By Playdoh Kolo
Music by Leo Tschopp, Nick Yetter, Zach Serlet, and Maya Goldblum
Music Composed and Arranged by Nick Yetter
August 5 at 7pm
A peaceful village is crushed under boulders to make way for a giant rock-gym-turned-eco-resort. Two startup bros, Frankfooter Frank and Ked the Dog, enjoy the new age experience until their company goes under. They’re forced to stay on as indentured work-traders to pay off the hotel fees. Will they be converted to this shady wellness culture or join a resistance to Toxic Positivity?? Namaslay is a comedy puppet musical. It premiered in the 2023 New Orleans Giant Puppet Festival at Happyland Theater. This touring version is a solo-show adaptation of the original ensemble production. The show features a soundtrack of original musical numbers that are fun and thought-provoking for people of all ages. It deals with themes of gentrification, greenwashing, labor exploitation, toxic positivity, and wellness culture in the age of social media.
TRIPLE BILL #1
August 5 at 9:30pm
DonkeyShowMe
DonkeyShowMe is a cautionary tale/riff on the Midsummer Night's Dream story. It centers on a man who is obsessed with becoming a donkey. He seeks out the place rumored to be able to grant his wish, the fabled House of Dreams in Ciudad Juarez. He goes there and is admitted and meets with the Mother of the House, Queen Tatiana. She warns him of the consequences of his wish but he is adamant. And so the ritual commences. The power of wish fulfillment and transformation fills this secret establishment of Queer Magick.
The Horrors
By Samuel Szabo
The Horrors is a ghost story about Someone coming to terms with their past and learning to love themself as they return to the house they built for one final goodbye. There they learn about what they can let go of, and what refuses to let go. Inspired by the work of Shirley Jackson and Henry James and contemporary ghost films like The Night House, this work is also an exploration of the ghost story as live performance while seeing how that world manifests in the surrealist space of dance/theater.
MEOW!
By Matthew Antoci
MEOW! is an experimental drag collage about the materials we worship, pastiching Americana with trends in contemporary spiritualism. Two brain-fried oracles, Crisis and Kristina, take to the beaches and ruins of the Grey Gardens estate, seeking meaning in the trash-heap of modern life.
TRIPLE BILL #2
August 6 at 3pm
The Frightening Door
By Victoria Provost
The Frightening Door is the record of a resonance and a friendship between two lives, one of which ends. This play shares all the words between the playwright Victoria Provost and her friend Malcolm Little in the last year of his life, as they candidly discuss mental illness and the struggle to stay connected in the drifting currents of adult life. The play flows between their texts, the writer's present thoughts, music, and dialogue.
Clearly or Darkly
By Leslie Bush
Clearly or Darkly is an process-performance-project that integrates video projection, and (occasionally) interactive technology with improvisational dance practices. The flexibly structured piece examines contemporary notions of identity by extending embodied presence through physical and digital space. Ever changing and distinct in each presentation, certain elements of Clearly or Darkly have remained central to the work since its inception in 2019. A solo dancer enters into a duet with herself, in and in-between physical and virtual space. Blurring the boundaries of her body, she moves through a feedback loop of witnessing, reacting to, and responding to different versions of herself. Clearly or Darkly first premiered in February 2020 at the Whole Shebang in Philadelphia, PA.
Imagined Mishap
By Aparna Shankar
Choreography by Sri Thina Subramaniam
An ex turns up at your door, years after your relationship ended in disaster. You have to wonder, how?! And more importantly, why?! Rational explanations elude you, so you resort to imaginary tall tales. Were they blinded by the moonlight and stumbled and fell precisely on your doorstep? Yes, definitely that's what happened. Do you entertain their company? Or do you turn them away? The movement vocabulary of bharatanatyam will be used to explore this story.
DUO BILL
August 6 at 7pm
What Have We Done
By Gwendolyn Appenfeller
Plastic consumes all aspects of our world and microplastics are making their way into our bodies. Questions about what constitutes life and what can survive in this new iteration of the world are explored. Every element of this piece (costumes, sound, lighting, tarps) works together to create a new world that has been consumed by plastic.
Encounters of a Washed Up World
by Emma Chart
OFF WE GO
By Rachel Ackerman and Reuven Glazer
August 6 at 9:30pm
Off We Go (Поехали!) takes us to a Soviet psychiatric institution for the politically radical, where a cosmonaut and a homeless youth find themselves waiting for some chance at the outside world again while having to deal with the institution's relentlessly insistent head doctor and an apparatchik who just wants some alone time while determined to break their faith. Inspired by Soviet and Eastern European cinema of the 60s and 70s, this story asks two major questions to both our company and our audience, can a sick country heal its people? Is it possible to be well inside of a system that is sick/broken? As four operators within the system meet in the worst of circumstances, they find themselves on the brink of ineffable change.
LIMEFEST PROGRAMMING
THE SITAYANA (OR “HOW TO MAKE AN EXIT”)
Directed by Sarah Shin
Performed by Kendra Jain
Performances begin August 4, 2023
Limited run through August 26, 2023
The Tank’s 56 Seat Theater
The Sitayana is part Hindu epic, part coming of age story, and, ultimately, a break-up play. Adapted from the Sanskrit epic poem, The Ramayana, from Ram's wife, Sita's perspective, all twelve characters are performed by one actor.
The Sitayana is by Lavina Jadhwani, directed by Sarah Shin, performed by Kendra Jain and presented in association with Waves of Love. Bea Perez-Arche serves as stage manager, Hanna Yurfest is the assistant producer. Graphic design is by Kyra Tantao and advertising and marketing is by Cause Lab.
TIA TALK
Co-created and performed by Amelia Bethel and Karen Loewy Movilla.
Performances begin August 5, 2023
Limited run through August 27, 2023
The Tank’s 56 Seat Theater
In Tia Talk, two Latinas, Karen and Amelia, try to prove their Latinidad to themselves and the audience by embodying every stereotype they have been fed by the media, their peers, and even their families. By using the structure of a talk show, they invite the audience to participate in their exploration of identity by building interactive segments, offering advice, and posing unanswerable questions. Karen and Amelia explore issues of identity, including body image, fetishization, and assimilation, and attempt to make sense of their place in the world.
ALL WE KNOW OF LOVE & FIRE
Book and lyrics by Abs Wilson
Music by Wren Mied
Directed by Hayley Goldenberg
August 8 at 7pm, August 10 and August 12 at 9:30pm
In this immersive, concert style indie-pop musical, historic poets Sara Teasdale, Emily Dickinson, and Sappho come together to answer (with the help of the audience) a single question: how do you hold and carry loneliness— without giving in? Presenting their own personal solutions, the three women debate, weave poetry, and say a silly joke or two as they grow together and search for the answer to this eternal question. In the end, they’re going to need each other if they’re going to face the great well of loneliness— without losing their flames.
60 DAYS
By Deniz Çam
August 9-10 at 7pm, August 17th at 9:30pm
The Proposal meets the actual U.S. immigration system in this romcom pilot written by Deniz Çam. In less than an hour, you'll be a guaranteed expert in what letter stands for which visa AND dating in New York City. Two birds with one stone! Welcome to the origin story of a Turkish immigrant who has to get married in 60 days to keep her visa status upon rage-quitting her journalism job.
ACT 39 (A comedy about suicide)
By Kait Hickey
Directed by Stephen Sposito
August 11 at 9:30pm, August 12 at 3pm, August 13-14 at 7pm, August 18-19 at 9:30pm, August 20 at 7pm
Livestreaming August 20 at 7pm
ACT 39 (A comedy about suicide) is a provocative new play that raises questions about autonomy, death, morality, faith, dignity, generational trauma and mental health. Oh and it's a comedy.
CALICO
By Kai Xing Mun
Directed by Summer Dawn
August 11 at 7pm
After coming out as queer, Peach (she/they) doesn’t speak to their mother Chyou (she/her) for several years. Still, the future looks bright as Peach has built up a reputation as a burlesque artist and is surrounded by a glamorous community that loves Peach for who they are. When suddenly Chyou gets into a car accident and develops retrograde amnesia, Chyou seems free of her trauma and prejudices which allows the two to bond closer than ever before. As Peach cares for her now amnesiac mother, Peach and her closest friends, Naveena and Sunshine, begin to wonder if finding closure with their families is possible. Peach is a Cantonese American nonbinary femme, Sunshine is a Filipina American transgender woman, and Naveena is an Indian American lesbian. Sunshine begins to renew hope about reconciling with her own estranged family, while Naveena struggles to find romantic love to spite and replace the parental love she never seemed to receive. They all begin to wonder if dance could be the path to healing not only themselves, but salvaging their given familial relationships too?
Emily Dickinson: STAR-CROSSED EMPLOYEE
By Melissa Maney
Dramaturgy and direction by Allyson Broyles
August 12 at 7pm, August 13 at 3pm, August 15 at 7pm
Taxidermied ravens. Bloody dance sequences. Gothic stanzas. Emily Dickinson might not be a star employee at Build-A-Bear Workshop, but she sure as hell makes things interesting. Join us on this whirlwind tale of lovers struggling to express themselves in corporate America. Death’s carriage awaits your arrival.
PITCHFORK PATTY'S LABOR DAY SPECIAL
Written by and starring Samantha Manas, Rachel Kenaston, Heather Denae, & Moira Hammel
August 14th at 7pm
Trade in your burgers and Old Navy sales for a hot & zesty roast of THE MAN. Featuring four women who have all made it to final callbacks for SNL but were too good and would have overpowered John Mulaney, this sketch group is a must-see for one night only.
LITTLE MARBLE KISSES
Conceived by Sabrina Gail Lobner
August 17-19 at 7pm
Livestreaming August 18 at 7:00pm
Little Marble Kisses is a dance work paying homage to the idea there is no real solo in life. Featuring a cast of inimitable dance artists: Ariana Ammons, Nicholas Lovalvo, Moss Lovejoy, Josh McWhortor, Brian Craig Nelson and Chloe Singer, the work embarks on an odyssey of self-discovery through loss. Musical scores courtesy of David Ott and original text and poetry by Anna |UnwinMarie Ray accentuate moments of vulnerability, which are eventually pervaded by silence. Scenes filled with intimate partnering allow expressive capacities of virtuosity to emerge, fueled by a fierce physicality that demands an enormous amount of trust by each dancer.
BONEFRUIT
Written and directed by Leah Plante-Wiener
August 17-19 at 9:30pm
In a chapel in the middle of the desert, two girls meet for the first time in years. Together, they must grapple with their beliefs, an act of forgiveness, and the thought of an existence beyond the violence that has forged them. A short play by Leah Plante-Wiener directed by Eulàlia Comas, featuring Sarah-Michele Guei and India Shea.
LA PETITE MORT
A solo performance by Giovanna Dalla Vecchia
August 21 at 7pm, August 25-26 at 9:30pm
A young woman wittingly summons Desire and must deal with the consequences when it works in this solo piece by Giovanna Dalla Vecchia. La Petite Mort is a poetical coming-of-age journey about navigating one’s first encounter with pleasure— inviting the audience for a call to awaken their own self out of hibernation.
YOU ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO ELIKA STRAUSS' BIRTHDAY CELEBRATION
Written and directed by Hannah Weisz
August 22-23 at 7pm, August 24 at 9:30pm
You Are Cordially Invited To Elika Strauss’ Birthday Celebration is a horror-comedy play. A pair of creepy twins sing the same birthday song to their sister every year, despite her resistance; but as we pass through each year, we realize Elika may have been an unreliable narrator.
NYAD’S DREAM
By Juliann Lavallee
Directed by amani meliyah
August 25 at 7pm, August 26 at 9:30pm, August 27 at 3pm
Nyad’s Dream is a queer magical realism play that takes place in modern day San Francisco Bay. Phoenix, a twenty-seven-year-old nonbinary mixed media artist and animal advocate, nearly drowns in a surfing accident. Though the ocean kindly washes them ashore, when their best friends (and chosen family) Owen and Devon discover them, Phoenix does not recognize them or even remember their own name. Later, at the hospital, Doctor Ryder discovers irregularity in Phoenix’s brain scans. Strangely, during their appointment, Phoenix’s memory mostly returns with the exception of the time after their accident. Their friends celebrate as it seems Phoenix has recovered, but ordinary things set them off like the sound of the tides or the touch of a shell. Even more startling, when Phoenix touches a wounded turtle, it heals. They keep this revelation to themself, yet this new power has a darker side.
There will be additional LimeFest programming from Elena Jenson, Abbey Joan Burgess, Alaina Pacheco, and Needy Lover X Trove.
ABOUT THE TANK
Founded in 2003, The Tank is an Obie Award-winning, multi-disciplinary non-profit arts presenter and producer, which provides a home to emerging artists working across all disciplines, including theater, comedy, dance, film, music, puppetry, and storytelling. Led by Artistic Director Meghan Finn, Managing Producer Molly FitzMaurice, and Director of Artistic Development Johnny G. Lloyd, The Tank champions emerging artists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas and forms of expression. In doing so the company removes the economic barriers from the creation of new work for artists launching their careers and experimenting within their art form. From the company’s home with two theaters on 36th Street, The Tank serves over 2,500 artists every year, presents over 1,000 performances, and welcomes 36,000 audience members annually. The company fully produces a curated season of 8-12 theatrical World or New York premieres each season.
Recent Tank-produced work includes The New York Times Critics' Picks Taxilandia by Flako Jimenez (2021), OPEN by Crystal Skillman, directed by Jessi D. Hill (2019); Red Emma & The Mad Monk by Alexis Roblan, directed by Katie Lindsay (2018); and The Offending Gesture by Mac Wellman, directed by Meghan Finn (2016), as well as Drama Desk Award-nominated productions The Hunger Artist (2018), The Paper Hat Game (2017), the ephemera trilogy (2017), Ada/Ava (2016) and youarenowhere (2016).
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