Axis Theatre Presents World Premiere of THE VAST MACHINE Tonight

Axis Theatre will present the world premiere of The Vast Machine, a new play written and directed by Randy Sharp about the dilemmas facing the crew of a slave ship at sea in the Middle Passage. Performances will take place tonight, October 1, through October 24 at Axis Theatre (1 Sheridan Square) in the West Village.

Although the ocean-going element of the slave trade was outlawed internationally in 1808, human beings continued to be shipped to work in the plantations and factories of the New World. The governments of the United Kingdom and America developed a kind of police fleet called Interceptors that patrolled the Middle Passage, arresting and sometimes disposing of slave ship crews before returning the captives to the African continent.

The Vast Machine takes place on the Perisher, a Guineaman completely becalmed on a mirror-like sea and trapped under an endless gray dome. Following an unsuccessful slave insurrection, the crew is almost completely decimated by illness, alcohol and accident, and is quickly running out of food and water. The remaining five members must decide what to do with the 235 living people beneath the deck. They spy a tiny speck on the horizon line. Is it an Interceptor? A fellow slaver who may tow them to safety? A whaling ship that could spare oars and a long boat?

The Vast Machine explores questions including: Who were the crewmen that perpetrated the complex and multi-faceted crime of slavery? Who would take this work knowing what it entailed? Is there a vast machine that still grinds away today existing only because of the complacency and fear of the witness?

Casting for The Vast Machine will be announced later this summer. The production will feature set design by Chad Yarborough, lighting design by David Zeffren, costume design by Karl Ruckdeschel and dramaturgy by Marc Palmieri.

Randy Sharp is Axis Theatre Company's founder and Artistic Director. She has been writing and directing theater for 30 years. Her plays include the Drama Desk Award-nominated Last Man Club (published by DPS), Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow (published by DPS and performed every December in NYC and around the country) and Hospital, a long-running serial about the interior life of a man in a coma, which is a West Village phenomenon each summer. She wrote and directed Solitary Light, a musical created with Paul Carbonara (Blondie) about the 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire.

Sharp's directing credits include Last Man Club, Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow, Hospital, Edgar Oliver's East 10th Street: Self Portrait with Empty House (Fringe First Award, Edinburgh Fringe; Spoleto Festival USA 2011) and In the Park, A Glance at New York (Edinburgh Fringe & NYC), Julius Caesar and the U.S premiere of Sarah Kane's Crave, starring Deborah Harry.

Randy Sharp founded Axis Company in 1996. The company acquired a permanent home in 1998 at 1 Sheridan Square in New York City's West Village. Built in 1834 by Samuel Whitmore, the building once housed Café Society, the historic site of performances by Billie Holiday, Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughn, Art Tatum, Big Joe Turner and other jazz greats; and later was the home of Charles Ludlam's Ridiculous Theatrical Company. Axis transformed interior performance space into one where audiences are totally immersed, surrounded by the experience of a theatrical production the moment they enter. Distractions from the material are minimal.

Among the wide variety of works Axis has produced in the theater are Beckett's Play; Benjamin Baker's 1848 vaudeville A Glance at New York (also at the Edinburgh Festival); the U.S. premiere of Sarah Kane's Crave, starring Deborah Harry; the premieres of Edgar Oliver's East 10th Street (New York Times Critic Pick; Fringe First Award at Edinburgh Fringe Festival; Spoleto Festival, USA) and In the Park; David Crabb's Bad Kid (New York Times Critic Pick, now an acclaimed book published by HarperCollins Perennial); Marc Palmieri's The Groundling; and Sharp's Drama Desk-nominated Last Man Club, Solitary Light, Nothing on Earth, Down There, Seven in One Blow and Hospital.

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