Ars Nova and PlayCo Present World Premiere of Melis Aker's HOUND DOG in October

Ars Nova and PlayCo will present the world premiere of HOUND DOG by 2019 Ars Nova resident artist Melis Aker. Directed by Machel Ross with music by Aker and the Lazours, this cross-cultural jam-session-meets-play explores the winding path towards forgiveness and belonging. HOUND DOG, which kicks off Ars Nova's 20th anniversary season, runs October 6-November 5, 2022, at Ars Nova @ Greenwich House (27 Barrow Street, Manhattan) with a press opening on October 24. Tickets are now on sale at www.arsnovanyc.com/hound-dog/.

In HOUND DOG, a young musician returns from abroad to her hometown of Ankara, Turkey to look after her widowed father. Forced to reckon with the family and community she left behind, an investigation into her grieving parent's strange pilgrimage to Graceland unravels into a sonic mirage of memory packed with humor, nostalgia, and the love we cultivate across generations.

The HOUND DOG company includes Olivia AbiAssi, Ashley Baier, Ellena Eshraghi, Mel Hsu, Matt Magnusson, Sahar Milani, Laith Nakli, Jonathan Raviv, and Maya Sharpe.

The creative team for HOUND DOG includes Avi Amon (music director & sound designer), Frank J. Oliva (set designer), Qween Jean (costume designer), Tuçe Yasak (lighting designer), Federica Borlengi (associate director), Michael Ruiz-del-Vizo (assistant set designer), Amelia Camilo (assistant costume designer), Roya Abab (associate lighting designer), Jamie Tippett (associate sound and systems designer), Brandon Fillette (music assistant), The Telsey Office/ Destiny Lilly, CSA (casting), Bryan Bauer (production stage manager), Caren Celine Morris (assistant stage manager).

Performances of HOUND DOG will take place October 6 - November 5, 2022, at Ars Nova @ Greenwich House, located at 27 Barrow Street in Manhattan. Critics are welcome as of Wednesday, October 19, for a press opening on Monday, October 24. Performances take place Monday-Saturday at 7pm with additional performances on Saturday at 2pm starting October 22.

As part of its 20th Anniversary Season, Ars Nova has introduced the What's Ars Is Yours: Name Your Price ticket initiative. Audiences are able to name their price for tickets to HOUND DOG. Tickets, which start at $5, are currently on sale at www.arsnovanyc.com/hound-dog.

On all Wednesday evening and Saturday matinee performances, proof of vaccination with ID will be required to attend and masks must be worn at all times. All other performances will be mask-optional with masking encouraged. For more information on Ars Nova's Health & Safety guidelines, visit www.arsnovanyc.com/FAQ.

Please visit www.arsnovanyc.com/hound-dog/ for more information.

About the HOUND DOG Creative Team

Melis Aker (writer/composer) is a writer, actor, and musician from Turkey, based between London and New York, and recently named a "Women to Watch" by the Broadway Women's Fund. She currently has a series in development with Skybound Entertainment, and the upcoming London premiere of the musical play Hundred Feet Tall with Benjamin Scheuer and Jemima Williams, adapted from their eponymous children's book. She will also be voicing a role in a new audio series from the creators of "Archive 81." Melis is the recipient of the Sundance Interdisciplinary Program grant and the New York Community Trust/Van Lier Fellowship. She has had writing commissioned by and developed at Atlantic Theater Company (Middle East Mixfest), Ars Nova (Play Group member), New York Theater Workshop (2050 fellow), Dramatists Guild (DGF fellow), The Eugene O'Neill Theatre Center, National Alliance for Musical Theatre, Goodspeed, New Group, Roundabout Space Jam, LaMaMa, the Lark, Noor, Golden Thread Productions, 24 Hour Plays, Magic Theatre and BRICLab in the U.S., as well as the Finborough and Park theatres in the U.K. Melis' screenplay ARI (Bee) was at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival as part of Maison des Scenaristes, and her series pilot for MANAR was selected for the Orchard Project's Episodic Lab, and IFP week. She has also worked on the development of a screenplay with Revelations Entertainment headed by Morgan Freeman. Her plays include HOUND DOG, Scraps and Things, Field, Awakening, Dragonflies, AZUL, When My Mama was a Hittite, Fractio Panis, Manar, 330 Pegasus: A Love Letter, Indigo Dreams, OPET Diaries, and Gilded Isle. She has taught at NYU, The New School, and King's College London. Education: King's College London (PhD), Columbia University (MFA), Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (Acting), Tufts University (BA). Representation: CAA and Brillstein Entertainment Partners.

The Lazours (composers) Daniel and Patrick Lazour are brothers and music theater writers. Their musical We Live in Cairo premiered at the American Repertory Theater in May 2019 directed by Taibi Magar. Their album Flap My Wings (Songs from We Live in Cairo) was recorded in quarantine and features the Lazours as well as major activist-songwriters from across the Arab world. Their new musical community project, Night Side Songs, about cancer treatment, patients, and caretakers was workshopped at the Johnny Mercer Writers Colony at Goodspeed Theatre, Yaddo, and is being developed with the American Repertory Theater and Harvard University. They are working with Ritesh Batra to adapt his film The Lunchbox for the stage, commissioned by Lincoln Center Theater. Their movie musical Challenger: An American Dream is about Teacher in Space Christa McAuliffe and the Reagan White House; and they are developing a 60-minute song titled Romulus & Remus, or How We Came to Live in the Festering Wound of the West. Patrick and Daniel were 2015-16 Dramatists Guild Fellows, MacDowell Fellows and are New York Theatre Workshop Usual Suspects. They were artists-in-residence at the American University in Cairo and are teaching artists at Lincoln Center Theater. @frereslazour.

Machel Ross (director) (she/her) is a Dominican American director and creative collaborator based in NYC, who specializes in the development of new work and aesthetic world building. Regardless of medium, she's invested in generating rigorous images, in support of framing stories to their fullest potential. She's developed work with Aziza Barnes (NANA), Agnes Borinsky (A Song of Songs) Daniella De Jesús (Mambo Sauce), Deaf West (T), PigPen Theatre Company (Phantom Folktales), Ellen Winter (This House Is your Home), and directed the world premiere of Jeremy O. Harris' Black Exhibition at The Bushwick Starr, where she is now the Associate Artistic Director. Machel is a 2022 Lily Award winner, a 2020-2022 WP Directing Fellow, a 2020 Sundance Theater Lab fellow, and a 2019 grant recipient of the Women's Fund for Film, TV and Theatre for her short film Signs He Made at Home. BFA-NYU Playwrights Horizons Theater School.

Avi Amon (music director & sound designer) is an award-winning, Turkish-American composer, sound artist, and educator. Avi's music for theater, film, and dance has been developed or presented by: Cannes, HBO Films, Spotify, Tribeca Film Festival, Hulu, New York Theater Workshop, Page73, SoHo Rep, The Civilians, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Danspace, Actors Theater Of Louisville, St. Louis REP, PlayCo, Target Margin, The O'Neill, Edinburgh Fringe, Roundabout Theater, and Spoleto Festival USA, among others. Avi is the resident composer at the 52nd Street Project, an inaugural fellow with THE WORKSHOP at the Hendel Center for Justice & Ethics, and teaches at NYU Tisch. aviamon.com.

Frank J. Oliva (set designer) is a Cuban-American Stage Designer. With Machel Ross: Black Exhibition, A Song of Songs (Bushwick Starr) Bernarda Alba (Playwrights Downtown), Tiny Desk (NPR), and others. Recent work with The Shed, Clubbed Thumb, Weston Playhouse, Geva Theatre, Two River Theatre, Miami New Drama and The Cincinnati Symphony. Associate Designer: Hangmen, Oklahoma! and West Side Story. Executive Committee Member of Wingspace, Member of USA Local 829 and graduate of NYU. frankjoliva.com.

Qween Jean (costume designer) is a New York City based Costume Designer who has fully committed her voice to the advocacy of marginalized communities, emphasizing Black Trans people. Recent theatre: soft, Corsicana, Wedding Band, On Sugarland, Black No More, I Need Space, Macbeth In Stride, Semblance, Our Dear Dead Drug Lord, Siblings Play, Amen Corner, Rags Parkland Sings The Songs For The Future, Good Grief, Othello, and the acclaimed What to Send Up, When it Goes Down. MFA from NYU Tisch. Black Trans Lives Matter!

Tuçe Yasak (lighting designer) has been following light in NYC since 2008, creating over 100 site-specific light installations for performance in the US and abroad. Yasak received the 2018 BESSIE (...Memoirs of a... Unicorn by Marjani Forte-Saunders at Collapsable Hole and NYLA) and 2019 BESSIE (Oba Qween Baba King Baba by Ni'Ja Whitson at Danspace) for Outstanding Visual Design with her lighting design. Light, movement, and architecture intertwine in Yasak's work to support space-making and story-telling.

About the HOUND DOG cast

Olivia AbiAssi (she/her) is a Lebanese-American actor/writer based in Brooklyn. Recent theater credits include: Eh Dah? Questions For My Father (NYTW/Next Door), First Down (59E59), and The Commons (59E59). Additionally, she is working on a new motion-capture video game project, co-writing/producing her first comedy pilot, and shamelessly re-watching Fleabag.

An avid theater musician, percussionist/drummer Ashley Baier has performed on Broadway with Six and The Lightning Thief, appeared at La Jolla Playhouse and on tour with Hundred Days, and toured nationally with How the Grinch Stole Christmas. A proponent of new musical theater, she originated the drum books for several musicals including Interstate, American Morning, and Pryor Rendering. She can be seen playing throughout NYC with Brass Queens. ashleybaier.com.

Originally from Southern California, Ellena Eshraghi moved to New York to earn her BFA in Drama and Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts- where she studied at the Atlantic Acting Studio and Stonestreet Studios. She served as a member of NYU's premier sketch comedy group Hammerkatz for four years, serving as the director of the group for two years. HOUND DOG is her New York stage debut. ellenaeshraghi.com.

Mel Hsu (she/they) is a sonic painter of impossible worlds. As a multi-instrumentalist, Mel often ventures from her classical roots as a cellist into unexpected, cross-disciplinary collaborations. Rooted in Philadelphia, Mel's restless spirit finds adventure across time zones and oceans as musical and administrative support for others who inspire her. Mel is a spreadsheet nerd, a slow reader, and a shameless instigator of kitchen dance parties. melaniehsu.com.

Matt Magnusson is thrilled to be making his Off-Broadway debut. Other favorite credits include: Mr. Holland's Opus (World Premiere), Jersey Boys (Ogunquit Playhouse), Grease (ElginWintergarden Theatre), Spring Awakening (Over the Moon Prod.), American Idiot (Glory Struck Prod.), Floyd Collins (La Miranda PAC). Film: American Girl, Nightingale: A Melody of Life, The Secret Life of College Girls, Saint, Hallpass Nightmare. When not acting Matt is writing and recording music with his wife in their band Big Sur Bound.

Sahar Milani Off-Broadway: The Visitor (The Public Theater), Borders (York Theatre), 7 Doors (BAM), Akhenaten the Musical (Triad Theater). TV: "The Endgame" (NBC), "Let the Right One In" (Showtime), "Law & Order" (NBC). Upcoming Film: "The Visitator" starring alongside Kevin James. For my Dad, always.

Laith Nakli is a Syrian actor/writer. He studied acting at the William Esper Studio and made his stage debut in War at the Rattlestick Playwrights Theater Company. Other credits include Cry of the Reed (Huntington Theatre), Inana (Denver Center), Aftermath (NYTW), Food and Fadwa (NYTW). His play, Shesh Yak, premiered at the Rattlestick Playwrights. He can currently be seen as Uncle Naseem on the HULU series Ramy and Sheikh Abdullah on MARVEL's Ms Marvel. Film & TV credits: Swallow, 12 Strong, The Wall, The Long Road Home, The Blacklist, Third Watch, The Sopranos, among others.

Jonathan Raviv is thrilled to be joining Ars Nova and the crew in the world premiere of HOUND DOG. An Emmy Award winner and original cast member of the 10-time Tony Award-winning musical, The Band's Visit, Jonathan has extensive off-Broadway and regional theater, television and film credits and has done voice over, commercial and motion capture work.

Maya Sharpe is a multi-passionate maker and thinker. Maya's passion lies in exploring simplicity in humanity through composition to demonstrate that there is more of a connection and love between everything than the politically derived disconnect and hatred. Maya has been seen on stage in such things as; HAIR (The Public Theater, Broadway & West End), Anything That Gives Off Light (The TEAM), La MaMa Cantata (La MaMa), 1969: The Second Man. (NEXT DOOR @nytw), Animal Wisdom (Bushwick Starr) and many others. Maya has a band called Maya Sharpe & The Natural, which performs in various venues in NYC and Los Angeles. mayasharpe.com.

About Ars Nova

Ars Nova exists to discover, develop, and launch singular theater, music and comedy artists in the early stages of their professional careers. Our dynamic slate of programs supports outside-the-box thinking and encourages innovative, genre-bending new work. Dubbed by The New York Times as a "fertile incubator of offbeat theater," Ars Nova blurs genres and subverts the status quo. With our feverish bounty of programming, we are the stomping ground and launching pad for visionary, adventurous artists of all stripes. By providing a protective environment where risk-taking and collaboration are paramount, Ars Nova amplifies the voices of a new generation of diverse artists and audiences, pushing the boundaries of live entertainment by nurturing creative ideas into smart, surprising new work.

Ars Nova has been honored with an Obie Award and a Special Citation from the New York Drama Critics' Circle for sustained quality and commitment to the development and production of new work. Notable past productions include: three-time Lortel Award-winner Oratorio for Living Things by Heather Christian, directed by Lee Sunday Evans; "Outstanding Musical" Lortel Award-winner and The New York Times' "Best of 2018," Rags Parkland Sings the Songs of the Future, created by Andrew R. Butler, directed by Jordan Fein; The Lucky Ones, created by The Bengsons and Sarah Gancher, directed by Anne Kauffman; "Outstanding Musical" Lortel Award-winner KPOP, created by Jason Kim, Max Vernon, Helen Park, and Woodshed Collective, directed by Teddy Bergman; "Best New American Theatre Work," Obie Award-winner and "one of the best new plays in the last 25 years" (The New York Times), Underground Railroad Game by Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard, directed by Taibi Magar ; The New York Times' and New York Post's "Best of 2015," Small Mouth Sounds by Bess Wohl, directed by Rachel Chavkin; the Tony Award-winning smash-hit Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812 by Dave Malloy, directed by Rachel Chavkin; the world premiere of the 2009 season's most-produced play boom by Peter Sinn Nachtrieb, directed by Alex Timbers; the show that put Bridget Everett on the map, At Least It's Pink by Everett, Michael Patrick King, and Kenny Mellman, directed by King; and Lin-Manuel Miranda and Thomas Kail's first New York production, Freestyle Love Supreme by Anthony Veneziale and Miranda, directed by Thomas Kail (Broadway 2019).

Please visit arsnovanyc.com to learn more.

About PlayCo

PlayCo (Kate Loewald, Founding Producer and Robert G. Bradshaw, Executive Producer) is an Obie Award-winning Off-Broadway theater. PlayCo produces adventurous new plays from the U.S. and around the world, to advance a dynamic global experience of contemporary theater and expand the voices and perspectives represented on U.S. stages.

PlayCo has produced 40 new plays from the United States, Central and South America, Europe, Russia, South and East Asia, and the Middle East. PlayCo's distinctive international programming links American theater with world theater, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays. Previous productions include Jorge Ignacio Cortiñas' wry and wrenching Recent Alien Abductions, Lee Sunday Evans' New York Times Critics' Pick production of Stefano Massini's Intractable Woman: A Theatrical Memo on Anna Politkovskaya, Amir Nizar Zuabi's This Is Who I Am and the sold-out Oh My Sweet Land, Guillermo Calderón's Villa, Christopher Chen's Caught (Obie Award for Playwriting, 2017), Maria Milisavljevic's Abyss, Kyle Jarrow & Lauren Worsham's The Wildness, Debbie Tucker Green's generations, Aya Ogawa's Ludic Proxy, Antonio Vega's Django in Pain and The Duchamp Syndrome, and more.

PlayCo's office space on the island known as Mannahatta (Manhattan), and the rehearsal and performance spaces we use throughout New York City are located in Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people.

For more information, please visit playco.org.

To post a comment, you must register and login.