WP THEATER Announces Programming for Spring 2021

WP Theater has announced programming details for their Spring 2021 Season, which continues to lift up the work of Women+ theater artists in creative new ways that reflect these complicated times. All events are free. Access to the events require a reservation at www.WPTheater.org.

"After a fall filled with the creation of innovative programs, development of original work, and hearings of brilliant new plays, we are thrilled to dive into 2021 with a slate of offerings that take unique advantage of the creative potential of virtual space, and which are in real conversation with the current moment," says Producing Artistic Director Lisa McNulty. "We are so grateful to continue to be able to support our incredible community of Women+ artists and to share work that tells the story of who we are as a society, and how the creative voice prevails in the face of any obstacle."

WP will kick off 2021 on January 28 with The Nourish Project, conceived and directed by current WP BOLD Associate Artistic Director Rebecca Martínez (Here We Are - New York Times Critic's Pick). Created in collaboration with a multidisciplinary cast of musicians, dancers, storytellers, writers, and cultural organizers from around the country, including playwright Jaisey Bates (the day we were born), international touring artist Edna Vazquez, Bessie Award-winning choreographer Joya Powell and performers from her dance company Movement of the People, organic farmer and artist Nikiko Masumoto, theatermaker Latrelle Bright (The Water Project), award-winning performing artist Joaquin Lopez, performer Jono Eiland (Miss You Like Hell), NYC Youth Poet Laureate Camryn Bruno, Lighting Designer Jennifer Fok (I Am My Own Wife), Sound Designer Christopher Darbassie (The Black Exhibition), and Virtual Designer Sara Sawicki (Manual Cinema's Frankenstein). The Nourish Project explores the idea of how we nourish ourselves. Using music, dance, and poetry curated through a framework of the five senses and four natural elements, The Nourish Project hosts a space for audiences to follow their curiosity and explore their own paths during the experience. The event hopes to offer replenishment for the soul and invites people to find a moment of rest in a weary world. This immersive live event will run from January 28 - February 7.

The Nourish Project is produced with support from a generous grant from The Jenna and Paul Segal Foundation, which sponsors a world premiere by a female creative team through the Heidi Thomas Writer's Initiative, named for acclaimed British playwright and screenwriter Heidi Thomas.

Following their acclaimed 2017 partnership on One Night Only, WP Theater co-presents Keep Moving, conceived and created by WP Domestic Partner Monica Bill Barnes & Company, in a collaboration with sixteen dancers from New York City's Hunter College. Keep Moving is a theatrically innovative and heartfelt look into how one group of women preserve their identities as artists and dancers during a time when there are no studios or theaters to move in. Structured in chapters, the visual podcast merges choreography from the cancelled premiere of Monica Bill Barnes & Company's The Running Show (due to COVID restrictions) with performance footage, recorded interviews, self-taped personal reflections, at-home rehearsals, and phone conversations. The chapters vary in length from a 4-minute video to a 22-minute audio clip that could be paired with a walk outside or preparing dinner. Each chapter responds to the underlying and challenging question of how dancers, who work so hard to keep moving, find a way forward while live performance is on pause.

The Keep Moving team includes Editorial Adviser Robyn Semien (This American Life), Associate Producer Elizabeth Furman (Days Go By), Web Designer and Creative Consultant Indah Walsh (Indah Walsh Dance Company), and Rehearsal Director Flannery Gregg (Little Women). Keep Moving will be available to stream from February 15 - 28.

Presented in collaboration with Red Bull Theater, WP presents a live, virtual reading of Galatea, written by WP Playwrights Lab Alum MJ Kaufman (Chilling Adventures of Sabrina, How to Live on Earth), and directed by Will Davis (India Pale Ale, Men on Boats) on March 22, with subsequent airings March 23- March 26. First staged in the 2018 WP Pipeline Festival, Galatea is a trans love story set against the backdrop of a climate crisis. Loosely based on John Lyly's 1585 play Gallathea, Galatea tells the story of two young women from a village threatened with flooding who escape to the nearby woods disguised as boys and fall in love. The cast includes Grammy Award winner Ty Defoe, Jo Lampert (Hundred Days, Joan of Arc), Eve Lindley (AMC's Dispatches from Elsewhere), Aneesh Sheth (Netflix's Jessica Jones), Futaba Shioda (Rent 20th Anniversary tour),and TL Thompson (Is This a Room).

WP will continue their 43-year history of presenting innovative new work with Weightless, a rock opera by The Kilbanes - married San Francisco songwriting and performing duo Kate Kilbane and Dan Moses - directed by WP Lab Alum & 2018-2019 WP BOLD Associate Artistic Director Tamilla Woodard (Where We Stand, Hadestown).

"Weightless has a well-crafted form, and its spoken dialogue melds beautifully with the propulsive score. Weightless is an accomplished work, and an entertaining one." -NY Times

"[T]he Kilbanes could fly endlessly into space on a single, hypnotically executed chord... To watch this show is to be reanimated with a childlike sense that our choices have magical origins and magical ripple effects." -San Francisco Chronicle

Sisterhood. Love. Betrayal. Flight. Weaving together ancient myth and indie rock, Weightless tells the tale of two deeply devoted sisters, Procne and Philomela, separated by circumstance, who must travel across worlds and make devastating sacrifices in order to reunite, and the god who shapes and is shaped by that journey. Inspired by a tale from Ovid's Metamorphoses, Weightless is a visual concept album-the band and the cast are one and the same-blurring the line between actors and musicians, between musical theater, video art, and rock concert, and between the virtual world and a world in which we can all hold and feel one another again. Weightless blends storytelling, concert footage, and animation into a virtual experience like no other. Kilbane and Moses are joined onscreen by fellow performer/band members Lila Blue, Kofy Brown, Dan Harris, and Joshua Pollock. The creative team includes Animator and Editor Katherine Freer (Lifespan of a Fact, The Band's Visit), Director of Photography, Peggy Peralta (award-winning documentaries Harana, and A New Color). The musical will stream in April & May 2021.

Weightless is produced with support from piece by piece productions.

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RESERVATION INFO:

For additional information and to reserve your spot for each of the projects in 2021, please visit: www.WPTheater.org. Once reserved, a web link will be e-mailed with instructions about how to access each piece.

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