NAKED Angels Take Up Residence At The Cherry Lane Theatre, Opens Season With NAKED INCUBATOR Series
By: Gabrielle Sierra Sep. 17, 2009
New York's Naked Angels (Geoffrey Nauffts, Artistic Director; John Alexander, Managing Director; Andy Donald, Associate Artistic Director; Brittany O'Neill, Producer) has announced that they will be in residence at the Cherry Lane Theatre (38 Commerce Street) and the Cherry Pit (155 Bank Street) this autumn. To kick off their 2009 - 2010 season, the company invites artists and theatergoers to its "Naked Incubator Series," which will include the following as part of the company's unique creative process:
Tuesdays@9 (every Tuesday, beginning September 22) Naked Angels' presents its weekly cold-reading series where writers are invited to bring in a ten-page sample of current projects and cast the pieces on the spot. This program, serving over 200 writers each year and drawing audience members and volunteer artists, allows writers to hear their work in front of a live audience in its rawest form. The Naked Angels' most recent production, Next Fall began as part of Tuesdays@9.
1st Mondays (every 1st Monday of each month, beginning September 14) From T@9, writers submit to our monthly, full-length reading series, which unveils a brand new play every month, giving playwrights the invaluable opportunity to hear his or her words lifted from the page to the stage in its entirety for the first time.
Angels in Progress (October 22-24, 8 pm at the Cherry Pit) A workshop series that gives several plays (TBA) an intensive rehearsal period and performance in whichever setting best serves the needs of the piece, be it a reading, staged reading, or performance.
Naked Angels' season will continue for two energizing weeks this winter in late January 2010 with Naked Footprints: An Issues Project at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre (416 West 42nd Street). Embodying the company's highest artistic aspiration - a community-based theater that is social, diverse, and dialectic - the Issues Project is a two-week event that challenges the disparate talents of the Naked Angels' membership, rallying writers, directors, actors, musicians, and filmmakers to speak out against a pressing social or political concern. For over 20 years the company has taken on controversial issues from gun control to the Iraq war, faith to human rights, in what very well might be the signature work of Naked Angels.
Naked Footprints will consist of curated evenings of short plays, videos, first-person storytellers, music and political discussion all addressing one of our most urgent topics today: Sustainability. Whether triggering fiery debate about our environment or troubleshooting how to rescue our depressed economy, it's clear that leading a more sustainable life demands we conduct our businesses, culture, and politics differently to secure a healthy future. And sustainability also relates to the individual. How does one sustain a relationship? Your moral code? A family? These are just some of the ideas and questions the Naked Angels hope to raise and tackle in their upcoming Issues Project.
The Issues Project is Naked Angels' most direct way of addressing the company's mission, creating a pertinent evening with nothing short of humanitarian objectives - spreading awareness, provoking dialogue, sparking change. To that end, Naked Angels engages its surrounding community and businesses to forge new creative partnerships that will stimulate audience members to take action long after they have left the theater.
Regular Issues Project contributors include Naked Angels company members Jon Robin Baitz, Patrick Breen, Nicole Burdette, Warren Leight, Kenneth Lonergan, Rob Morrow, Geoffrey Nauffts, Frank Pugliese, Theresa Rebeck, Marisa Tomei, as well as Naked Angels affiliated artists and friends such as Stephen Belber, Will Eno, David Marshall Grant, Dan Klores, Itamar Moses, David Rabe, Jose Rivera, and many others.
Following the success of last summer's Next Fall, Naked Angels will produce the world premiere of another bold new work in spring of 2010 at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre. Details of this production are forthcoming.
Naked Angels is a group of theater artists united by a desire to strengthen their community and individual artistic life through the creation of new work. Formed in 1986 by a group of restless and ambitious artists, the name was taken from John Tytell's book, Naked Angels, which referred to Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs and other Beats as "a generation that wanted to break out of convention and scream." Sometimes outraged, often irreverent, occasionally absurd, and always intelligent, enthusiastic and fun, Naked Angels' work was a spark to which audiences were quickly drawn. Dedication to the emerging artist has lead to the company's reputation for developing and producing outstanding, innovative plays. Over the years, Naked Angels has presented hundreds of readings, workshops, and full-scale productions. From Warren Leight's Tony Award winning Side Man to John Robin Baitz's The Substance of Fire, Kenneth Lonergan's The Starry Messenger to David Marshall Grant's Snakebit, Naked Angels has always been a place where new work flourishes. Some of their more recent efforts, Stephen Belber's Tape, Will Eno's Thom Pain (based on nothing), Elizabeth Meriwether's The Mistakes Madeline Made, and Spalding Gray: Stories Left to Tell have gone on to receive critical acclaim both here and abroad. Most recently, Naked Angels' production of Next Fall, written by Artistic Director Geoffrey Nauffts, received critical acclaim for its run at the Peter Jay Sharp Theatre last summer.
Cherry Lane Theatre serves as a vital lab for the development of new American plays and the cultivation of a diverse, multigenerational audience. Their priMary Focus is the playwright as central to the dramatic event and the text as intrinsic to theatrical innovation and excellence. As New York's longest continuously running Off-Broadway theatre, Cherry Lane has helped to define American drama, fostering theatre that is daring and relevant for 85 years. Founded in 1997, their resident not-for-profit company produces under the leadership of Angelina Fiordellisi, Artistic Director and James King, Managing Director. Production history includes The American Dream and The Sandbox, Hoodoo Love, Dutchman, Bhutan, Happy Days, Saint Lucy's Eyes, Women on Fire, Havana Is Waiting, Black Humor: The Comedy of Lewis Black, Fugue, Open Heart, slag heap, and Huck and Holden. Co-Productions: Lascivious Something, Love is My Sin, The Ladies and Gun Club. Commissioned work includes The Cook, String of Pearls, and Seminar, a new play by Theresa Rebeck. Their newest space, The Cherry Pit, features late-night, innovative, and avant-garde programming. Their Mission: To create theater that perpetuates Cherry Lane's groundbreaking history of discovering, developing and producing new voices for the contemporary American Theatre. www.cherrylanetheatre.org.
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