Loading Dock Theatre has announced the 6 artists and projects in residence as part of the second season of Forklift. The 2018 reading series' lineup will build on the success of Forklift's first season in 2017, and will feature artists inspired by drag, music, current events, and multimedia, in a celebration of new work held at the company's Downtown Brooklyn space.
Lead artists for the 2018 Forklift Reading Series include Daaimah Mubashshir, Troy Deutsch, Asia Gagnon, Sam Schanwald, and Ry Szelong. Forklift is curated by Charles Quittner.
"The Loading Dock is a weird and magical space-we've conjured up office cubicles, spaceships, and cruise liners, and this fantastic group of artists promises a whole new set of adventures. Each one of these artists is queering the confines of theatre, and golly I can't wait to see what they cook up."
2018 Forklift lineup
Forklift Sampler
March 25 2018, 7pm
170 Tillary Street
Come join Loading Dock for our show-meets-party season opener, featuring a delicious spread of performances by our 2018 Forklift resident artists. Songs! Plays! Pizza!
The Weekend on Flaming Road
By Daaimah Mubashshir
Directed by Callie Jane Farnsworth
April 8, 2018, 7pm
170 Tillary Street
In The Weekend on Flaming Road, we are taken down an "Afro-New Wave, existential rabbit-hole exploring the absurdity of living in black skin. Six episodes will be made from Daaimah's Everyday Afroplay - a daily theatrical writing meditation on blackness or the black body, in its' ever mutating and varied forms, aiming to create a cauldron of text that exists outside industry constraints.
Twin Sized Beds
By Sam Schanwald
Directed by Caitlin O'Connell
Featuring music by Avery Leigh Draut
April 29 2018, 7pm
170 Tillary Street
Our treehouse has a twin bed, a lantern, a shag carpet full of bugs, and a rotary dial phone. It's a real place, and also a piggy bank for those stirrings you got inside your pubescent body in grade school. From the window, we can see the twin boys who live next door undressing and dressing themselves for soccer practice. Sit down with a coloring book and, please, save some fruit snacks for the others. There has to be enough for all of us. We're stuck in here.
Feminists in the Woods
By Asia Gagnon
Developed with Thomas Constantine Moore
May 20 2018, 7pm
170 Tillary Street
An exploration of human intimacy and vulnerability through a series of true stories, wildly untrue stories, and sex-positive fairy tales. Through comedy and confession, an animal called "feminist" attempts to blur the lines of gender that are typically attributed to specific experiences and emotions. Can this creature be trusted? Some men will tell you.
A Video World
By Troy Deutsch
Directed by Charles Quittner
June 17 2018, 7pm
170 Tillary Street
Miles wants to move to Hollywood and be famous more than anything. When a man returns to their small Midwestern town and offers an opportunity to audition for Kevin Costner's new movie, Miles realizes this might be the one chance he's been dreaming about. A Video World shows us a world of shadows, lit only by the stars in a young boy's eyes.
Interabang
By Ry Szelong
August 19 2018, 7pm
170 Tillary Street
Last year, a "lecturer" at the Japan Society tried to compare 1600s kabuki theatre to Alexis Michelle on season 9 of RuPaul's Drag Race. Today, I am writing a family diary play that is perpetually in-progress, maybe because of the ?? at the bottom of the swimming pool. Interabang is a fragmented portrait of shame, queerness, and half-East-Asian-American identity in one family, and of the half-true ancestral curse that lurks under their kitchen sink. #lmfao #fml #dying #dead #risen #cursed
About Loading Dock Theatre
Loading Dock was formed by playwright/director Leegrid Stevens and actor Erin Treadway. The company is based in Brooklyn where they rehearse and build shows. The primary focus of Loading Dock is to create original plays that explore the extremes in human behavior. They produce emotional, character-driven plays with an experimental edge. Along with nine Innovative Theatre Award nominations and four wins, critics have called Loading Dock productions "a marvel of theater craft and theater art" (NY Theatre - Spaceman) that "hits us right in the gut and heart" (Theatre That Matters - The Twelfth Labor); and their production of Ms. Julie, Asian Equities was named one of Broadway World's Top Eleven Theatrical Experiences of 2015. Loading Dock is currently represented Off-Broadway with Spaceman playing through March 14th at Wild Project. More information can be found at http://loadingdocktheatre.org/leegrid/plays/spaceman/
2017 marked the first Forklift reading series and featured presentations by Thicket & Thistle, Charlie O'Leary, Noah Mease, Scott Reynolds, and Leegrid Stevens. More information can be found at http://loadingdocktheatre.org/forklift/.
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