Louisa Jacobson, Ugo Chukwu & More to Star in Sarah Einspanier's LUNCH BUNCH at PlayCo & Clubbed Thumb

PlayCo has announced the cast and creative team of Sarah Einspanier's Lunch Bunch, a playful comedy surrounding a group of public defenders' occasionally outsized emotional investment in the meals they share, directed by Tara Ahmadinejad and presented with Clubbed Thumb. Originally set for a Spring 2020 production and delayed due to the pandemic, Lunch Bunch will be presented for a limited run starting March 15 2023 at 122CC, Second floor Theatre in the East Village. (Tickets for performances March 15-April 8 are on sale now.) Lunch Bunch was first developed and produced in 2019 in Clubbed Thumb's Winterworks and Summerworks series.

Lunch Bunch's cast includes Janice Amaya (Shhhh, Mushroom), Tala Ashe (English, The Vagrant Trilogy), Ugo Chukwu (Oklahoma!, What To Send Up When It Goes Down), David Greenspan (Dead Mother, She Stoops to Comedy), Louisa Jacobson (Trayf, The Gilded Age), Francis Mateo (Love to Love You Baby, Mother Courage), Jo Mei (Anatomy of a Suicide, The Great Wave), and Julia Sirna-Frest ( [Porto], The Offending Gesture). The creative team includes Jean Kim (set design), Alice Tavener (costume design), Oona Curley (lighting design) and Ben Vigus (sound design), casting by Stephanie Yankwitt CSA/tbd casting co., original casting by Clubbed Thumb.

Based on the real-life Bronx Defenders' lunch-sharing group that Einspanier heard about from a public defender friend, Lunch Bunch is a tribute to the sacrifices public servants make every day. The play's characters seek meaning and order in daily culinary minutiae amidst the failures and injustices of the systems threatening their clients' families, as the momentous (The Law) projects itself onto the mundane (their lunches). Einspanier's "charming and smart" (The New York Times, in a Critic's Pick review) play kindly exposes the quirks of its characters' coping mechanisms and communicates the dire circumstances their clients face.

Einspanier says, "This is a show about mutual care, about how we need people. What can we learn from these public defenders who are fighting against and within a system that seems to resist all attempts at change? What can their struggles, in their specific circumstances, teach us about our own? How might we combat the chaos of living? And in the process, embrace our own and one another's absurdity, avoidance, obsession, and hunger as part of what makes us human."

Intrigued by their friend's stories of (often competitively elaborate) packed lunches, Einspanier began Lunch Bunch by exploring what a character's weekly meal might say about their personality and life. Equally noteworthy was how this group of highly skilled people battling the harsh family regulation system in an under-resourced office harnessed meal-sharing as a tool to stave off burnout. With the first lunch bunch at the Bronx Defenders founded nearly a decade ago as a way for its members to help each other eat healthier/remember-to-eat-in-general-while-juggling-countless-cases, groups like Einspanier's friend's have, at times, dipped into something closer to Top Chef. Those care-based origins are ever-present, but enmeshed now with Olympian stakes that Einspanier writes, and Ahmadinejad directs, into a fast-paced and precisely staged work of theater.

Einspanier adds, "I wanted to show a workplace that was pressurized, but also ventilated with joy, energy, and levity. How do these workers bear the weight of client trauma, state power, long hours, and insufficient pay without collapsing in court? Where does this pain, stress, fear, etc. resurface? In culinary obsessions, eyelid ailments, guilty pastimes, coat closet breakdowns."

Einspanier's script bears nearly no stage directions-but rather wildly fluctuating font sizes, codified punctuation, and rhythmic spacing, lending a meticulous musicality to everyday speech, as lists of enticing ingredient combinations are layered atop characters' varied chaotic existences. Paralleling the script's symphony of overworked and gastronome voices, Ahmadinejad has brought a precise "chaireography" to her vision of the play, and its evocation of characters' individual relationships to (and sublimations of) their emotionally draining work.

Ahmadinejad says, "Sometimes I feel like I'm working with a sports team; it's very challenging to perform. The actors have to work together as a team and rely on each other, while also evoking a sense of hunger and competition among them. This speaks to the lawyers' experience, their striving in an inhospitable system to help their clients, their mutually supportive yet competitive lunch making, and the overall attempt to find balance and meaning in their lives."

PlayCo's Kate Loewald says, "We postponed this production, as so many companies did for so many indispensable works of theater, in March 2020: a moment that exposed the major holes in American institutions' capacities for care, and also bore so many revelatory and inspiring examples of it on grassroots and interpersonal levels. It's exhilarating to return to this delightful play that hilariously explores ideas of mutual care within the container of complex lunches, in a world where the things we do to keep one another healthy, to keep one another emotionally above water-and the systems within our society that prevent us from doing that-have become so central to the conversations we're having. We're honored to have The Bronx Defenders as our community partner on this show to spread the word about the important work they do and help us celebrate the work of public defenders everywhere."

Performance Schedule and Ticketing

Performances of Lunch Bunch will take place starting March 15, 2023 at 122CC. (Tickets through April 8 are now on sale here). Critics are welcome as of Thursday, March 23, for an official opening on Monday, March 27.

Tickets are on sale now at playco.org, (click here to purchase) with performances Tuesdays - Saturdays at 7pm.

PlayCo is committed to maintaining affordable access to all of its artistic programming as a core component of its mission, to create a more expansive and inclusive vision of the American theatre. The company has recently revised its ticketing structure to align even more closely with its values and ensure that price is not a barrier for the diverse communities it serves to participate in its work. PlayCo's new ticketing structure is as follows:

• Theatre For Everyone (TFE), $10: PlayCo created its TFE program in 2017, to extend a heartfelt welcome to audience members for whom access to the theatre has not historically been guaranteed, whether due to financial barriers or cultural exclusion. These audience members may include (but are not limited to) those who have been historically marginalized and excluded from the theater, first-time theatergoers, students, teachers, artists, and service workers. Previously, TFE tickets were only sold for a limited period of time. Now, a block of TFE tickets has been reserved for each performance throughout the run of the show with no time limit for purchase (subject to availability).

• General Admission, $28: General Admission tickets are calibrated to be at an accessible rate for most theatergoers, and the price includes a $3 processing fee which helps underwrite the TFE tickets. PlayCo encourages attendees who are consistently able to meet their day-to-day needs to pay the General Admission price, in order to allow those who cannot equitable access to TFE tickets. Previously, the price of general admission was $35, not including the processing fee.

• Pay-It-Forward, $65: Pay-It-Forward tickets are for audience members who are consistently able to meet all of their day-to-day needs and wish to enable PlayCo to maintain accessible ticket prices across the board. All PlayCo tickets are subsidized to some extent, as admission prices do not reflect the actual economics of producing a show and providing a living wage to artists and crew. Purchasing tickets at this rate helps PlayCo continue to prioritize equity and inclusion in its ticketing model. The cost of this ticket includes a $5 processing fee which helps underwrite the TFE tickets.

• True Value, $100: True Value tickets are for audience members who can consistently meet their everyday needs, and wish to empower PlayCo's vision for an expansive and accessible American theatre by paying the true price of the ticket without additional subsidy. The price reflects the true cost of your seat without subsidy in a financial model that would enable PlayCo to recoup the direct costs of the production. This ticket price will vary according to the cost of each production. The price includes a $7 processing fee which helps underwrite TFE tickets.

PlayCo's OpenHouse program has also been reconceived to focus on strengthening PlayCo's relationships with artists, peer theatre organizations, NYC schools, and community partners, led by PlayCo's Community Engagement Manager Carolina Do. For each production, complimentary and subsidized tickets will be distributed to community partners, and to encourage opportunities for different members of PlayCo's community to gather and connect via related programming. To optimize attendance, the PlayCo team will work with individual partners throughout the run to ensure that their community's specific access needs are addressed to the best of PlayCo's ability.

About Sarah Einspanier (Playwright)

Sarah Einspanier's plays include Lunch Bunch (last seen in Clubbed Thumb's Winterworks and Summerworks; New York Times and Time Out Critic's Picks; in development for television with A24), House Plant (New York Theatre Workshop's Next Door; 'highbrow / brilliant' in New York Magazine's Approval Matrix; Lambda Literary Award Finalist), I LOVE SEAN (Playwrights Realm Writing Fellow), The Convent of Pleasure (Cherry Lane's Mentor Project), Madonna con Bambino created with composer Deepali Gupta and director Caitlin Sullivan (Ars Nova's ANT Fest and the New Ohio's Ice Factory, curated by New Georges), Doctor De Soto and Other Stories by William Steig conceived by Miranda Haymon and co-written with Miranda Haymon and Seonjae Kim with music by Ellen Winter (upcoming tour TheaterWorksUSA), and I forgot to tell you (The Brooklyn Rail, June 2021 Issue). They have been a part of Ars Nova's Play Group, Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers' Group, and the New Georges Jam (former co-leader) and have been a resident at Millay Arts, the Hambidge Center, Sewanee Writers' Conference (Walter E. Dakin Fellow), Cape Cod Theatre Project (Noel Coward Foundation Writer in Residence), SPACE on Ryder Farm, the Mercury Store, and Erik Ehn's annual Texas Silent Writing Retreat. They teach at NYU Tisch, HB Studios, and the National Theater Institute.

About Tara Ahmadinejad (Director)

Tara Ahmadinejad is a director and co-founder of the live arts collective Piehole (Jerome Finalist 2021). She has directed and co-authored boundary-pushing live art for theaters, galleries, and digital spaces, including collaborations with the LA-based Tender Claws in AR and VR: Tendar (Sundance 2018) and The Under Presents (Oculus, Sundance 2019, Emmy Finalist). Piehole's latest work Disclaimer (Drama League Award Nominee, NYC Women's Fund), also written/performed by Ahmadinejad, premiered at The Public's Under the Radar 2021. Other recent theater directing includes Daaimah Mubashshir's Emily Black is a Total Gift (Fisher Center at Bard College), Sarah Einspanier's Lunch Bunch (Clubbed Thumb), and digital collaborations with Satoko Ichihara (Japan Society), Eliza Bent (New Georges), Rinne Groff (Clubbed Thumb), and Scarlett Kim (Oregon Shakespeare Festival). NYTW Usual Suspect; New Georges Affiliated Artist; MFA in Directing, Columbia University.

About the Cast

Janice Amaya

(they/them) is an actor, theatermaker, and educator. Recent theater credits: Shhhh (Atlantic Theater Company), Mushroom (People's Light Theater Co), Cartography (John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), Sally Forth (Lincoln Center), Tell Them I'm Still Young (American Theater Group), The Prizefighter of P.S. 217 (New Victory Theater), Your Hair Looked Great (Abrons Arts Center). Film: Patriot's Day (Lionsgate, Dir. Peter Berg), Up North (Dir. Stefanie Abel Horowitz), Citywide (Fishtown Films). They are a Co-Director at Pipeline Theatre Company and a founding member of The Hummm. MFA, Harvard University and the Moscow Art Theater. www.janiceamaya.com

Tala Ashe

(she/her): Off-Broadway: English (Atlantic Theater Company / Drama Desk nom: Outstanding Actress, Lucille Lortel and Obie winner: Best Play), The Vagrant Trilogy, Troilus and Cressida, Urge for Going (The Public), The Profane (Playwrights Horizons), The Who and the What (LCT3). Regional: Head over Heels, The Happiest Song Plays Last, Troilus and Cressida (Oregon Shakespeare Festival), Welcome to Arroyo's (The Old Globe); Love's Labour's Lost (The Huntington). TV: "The Girls on the Bus" (upcoming), "DC's Legends of Tomorrow," "American Odyssey," "Smash," "Law and Order: CI," "30 Rock," "Law and Order." BFA: Boston University, LAMDA. @talaashe

Ugo Chukwu

Most recently seen as Cord Elam in the Broadway National Tour of Oklahoma! Other credits include What To Send Up When It Goes Down (Playwrights Horizons), Do You Feel Anger? (Vineyard Theater), [Porto] (WP Theater/Bushwick Starr), Today is my Birthday (P73) and Lunch Bunch (Clubbed Thumb). Regional: Ripcord (Huntington Theater) and Adventure Quest (Edinburgh Fringe). TV/Film: "Seasoned", "Inventing Anna", "The Path", "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt", "Late Night with Seth Meyers" and "Late Late Night with James Corden". He has also appeared in commercials for Spectrum Mobile. Ugo is also a teaching artist with the New Victory theater. @ugolessinsta.

David Greenspan

is perhaps best known for appearing in his own plays, most notably Dead Mother, She Stoops to Comedy, Go Back to Where You Are, I'm Looking for Helen Twelvetrees and his solo plays The Argument and The Myopia - and for performing solo renditions of Barry Conners' The Patsy, Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude, Gertrude Stein's Four Saints in Three Acts and Stein's lectures Plays, Composition as Explanation and What are Masterpieces. He has worked with many contemporary playwrights and is the recipient of various honors including RUTHIE and six OBIES.

Louisa Jacobson

(she/her) is a graduate of the Yale School of Drama where she received her MFA in Acting. She is thrilled to be making her Off-Broadway debut after appearing in a number of regional productions (Trayf, Geffen Playhouse; Romeo & Juliet, The Old Globe; Native Son, Yale Rep; The Member of The Wedding, Williamstown Theater Festival) Currently, Louisa can be seen playing the role of Marian Brook in HBO's The Gilded Age, an original series from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes. In addition to her training at Yale, Louisa attended the British American Drama Academy and holds a B.A. in psychology from Vassar College.

Francis Mateo

Love to Love You Baby and CallBacks2022 (Teatro Círculo); Hamlet (Shakespeare@); Othello, Merchant of Venice, and Love's Labour's Lost (Shakespeare Forum); King Lear (Classical Theater of Harlem); Mother Courage (Public Theater); Red Beads (Mabou Mines); In the Name of Salome (Repertorio Español); La Canción (Repertorio Español); Bad Blood (Puerto Rican Traveling Theater). Film/TV: "Cuatro Piezas" and "Colonia" (Verandi Films); "The Holdouts" (Savin Rock Entertainment); "Fran Gil" (Rayoelú Films). Education: M.F.A. Brooklyn College (New York)

Jo Mei

Anatomy of a Suicide (Atlantic), The Great Wave (Berkeley Rep), We are Among Us (Pittsburgh City Theatre), Babette's Feast (Off-Broadway/Portland Stage), Fingersmith (American Repertory Theater), World of Extreme Happiness (Manhattan Theatre Club), King of Hell's Palace (Goodman), You For Me For You (Woolly Mammoth). TV credits include "Crashing"(HBO), "Nicki"(Freeform), "Bones" (Fox), "The Good Wife" (CBS). Jo stars in and co-wrote the award-winning film "A Picture of You"; other film credits include "A Bread Factory, Part One", "Who We Are Now", "Adult World", "The Grief of Others". Member: The Actors Center. Training: Juilliard. @jotomato

Julia Sirna-Frest is a performer, director and musician. Favorite Performance credits include: [Porto] (WP Theater, The Bushwick Starr); Seder (Hartford Stage); A Tunnel Year (The Chocolate Factory); The Offending Gesture (Mac Wellman); Comfort Dogs: Live from the Pink House (JACK). She is a founding member of the Obie award winning Half Straddle Company, productions include: Ghost Rings (TBA/PICA); Ancient Lives (The Kitchen); Seagull (Thinking of you) (The New Ohio, International Tour), In the Pony Palace/Football (The Bushwick Starr, International Tour); Nurses in New England (The Ohio); The Knockout Blow (The Ontological). Composer/Performer with Chapman/Sirna-Frest and Co-Front woman of Doll Parts, Brooklyn's Premiere Dolly Parton Cover Band, and has directed many projects written by her artistic soul mate Zoë Geltman. Member of the 2022-2024 WP Lab and New Georges Jam Cohort!

About the Creative Team

Jean Kim

(Set Designer)Jean, trained as an Illustrator at Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), and as a Set Designer at Yale School of Drama (YSD), is a New York-based designer from South Korea.

Check out her work at www.jeankimstudio.com or @jeankimstudio. "

Alice Tavener

(Costume Designer, she/hers Select designs include: Suicide Forest (Ma-Yi and Bushwick Starr; Henry Hewes Nomination); Minor Character (The Public/New Saloon); Eugene Onegin (Spoleto USA); A Raisin in the Sun (Williamstown Theatre Festival); This in the Color as Described by the Time (Door 10/New Georges); The Music Man (Sharon Playhouse); My Name is Gideon (All for One); so go the ghosts of mexico, pt 1 (La Mama); You, My Mother (La MaMa/Two Headed Calf). www.AliceTavener.com

Oona Curley

(Lighting Designer) is a lighting and scenic designer. Frequent/favorite collaborators include: Knud Adams, Tara Ahmadinejad, John Anselmo+Crew, Eliza Bent, Martha Graham Cracker, Jordan Fein, Morgan Green, Emma Griffin, Ásta Bennie Hostetter, Qween Jean, Jenn Kidwell, Jes Levine, Gunnar Montana, Kimie Nishikawa, Stoli Stolnack, Awoye Timpo, Annie Tippe, and Whitney White. Oona is a company member of Lightning Rod Special (Underground Railroad Game, The Appointment), Associate Artist: Bearded Ladies

Ben Vigus

(Sound Designer) is a New York-based sound designer. He is a core member of Piehole (Jerome finalist 2021). Recent sound: Christmas Mountain (Piehole in collaboration with New Georges, WNYC Greene Space), Underground Fairy (Japan Society), Lunch Bunch (Clubbed Thumb), Disclaimer (Under the Radar 2021, NYC Women's Fund recipient), Bad at Birthdays (feature film by Jesse Thurston), Clambake (short film by Sammy Zeisel)

Alex Williamson

(Production Stage Manager, he/him) is thrilled to once again be a part of the Lunch Bunch journey. He previously stage managed the Clubbed Thumb production of the same name in 2019. Selected SM credits include Big, Black Sunhats (Clubbed Thumb), The Joy of Painting (Clubbed Thumb), Fuente Ovejuna (The New School), Good Grief (Athena Theatre), Dogg's Hamlet/Cahoot's Macbeth (PTP/NYC), Plano (Clubbed Thumb), HAL (The New School), Lysistrata (The New School), Arcadia (PTP/NYC).

About Clubbed Thumb

Clubbed Thumb commissions, develops and produces funny, strange and provocative new plays by living American writers. Clubbed Thumb is a groundbreaker, with a precise curatorial vision and a remarkable track record for launching artists' careers; and an incubator, nurturing plays, collaborations, and above all artists, through thoughtfully deployed resources, opportunities, mentorship and hospitality.

Clubbed Thumb's plays vary in style and content, but are always 90 minutes or under. They feature substantial and challenging roles for all genders, are questioning, formally inventive, theatrical, and exhibit a sense of humor. Since its founding in 1996, the company has presented over 100 productions. Highlights from the past 25 years include professional debuts of Jaclyn Backhaus, Will Arbery, Clare Barron, Rinne Groff, Susan Soon See Stanton; the NYC premieres of Gina Gionfriddo, Tanya Saracho, Jordan Harrison, and Sarah Ruhl; and the premiere of new work by new works by Anne Washburn, Jenny Schwartz, Jen Silverman, Ethan Lipton, Erin Courtney, Lisa D'Amour and so many others. Clubbed Thumb made its Broadway debut with the Tony-nominated What the Constitution Means to Me, which premiered at Summerworks 2017.

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 41 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 theatre with world theater, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays. Previous productions include Ebru Nihan Celkan's Will You Come With Me?, 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), , 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.

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