Casting Announced For New Georges Sound Rep at The Flea Theater

New Georges (Susan Bernfield, Producing Artistic Director; Jaynie Saunders Tiller, Managing Director) will present two experimental plays in which sound design is intrinsic to story, text and theatrical landscape in rep together at The Flea Theater (20 Thomas Street between Church Street and Broadway), February 14-March 4. The rep will feature the World Premiere of This is the Color Described By the Time, conceived and directed by Lily Whitsitt and created by Door 10, along with the World Premiere of Sound House, written by Stephanie Fleischmann (Red Fly, Blue Bottle at HERE; Eloise & Ray with New Georges) and directed by Debbie Saivetz (Our Dad is in Atlantis with Working Theater). Tickets (starting at $25) will go on sale Tuesday, January 16 and will be available for advance purchase at www.newgeorges.org. New Georges is a 2017-18 Anchor Partner at The Flea.

In THIS IS THE COLOR DESCRIBED BY THE TIME, collaboratively created by the performance laboratory Door 10, audience members wear individual headphones to drop inside the imagined unconscious of avant-garde writer Gertrude Stein. Through this intimate approach, the audience experiences Stein's repeated and unusual phrases as layers of thoughts, voices and memories interwoven into a rich soundscape.
THIS IS THE COLOR DESCRIBED BY THE TIME is a fractured journey through Stein's daily routine in France during World War II as she struggles with writer's block, listens to the radio, shares a meal with Alice B. Toklas, and confronts her own mortality. Dramatizing her friendships with Vichy official Bernard Faÿ and humanist playwright Thornton Wilder, the piece examines Stein's forgotten politics and raises questions about the inextricable link between the political, personal, and artistic.

The cast for THIS IS THE COLOR DESCRIBED BY THE TIME will feature Stephanie Roth-Haberle (Drama Desk Award nominee for Artist Descending a Staircase; The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time), Christina Rouner (The Malcontent with Red Bull Theater; Coram Boy on Broadway), Ean Sheehy (Red-Eye to Havre de Grace at New York Theater Workshop; Shrunken Heads at Playwrights Horizons), and Ben Williams (Gatz with Elevator Repair Service; A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes with New Georges/Women's Project). The design team will include Sound Design by Ben Williams (Elevator Repair Service), Costume Design by Alice Tavener (PIONEERS#goforth at Jack; I'm Bleeding All Over at LaMama), Lighting Design by Reza Behjat (Tear a Root from the Earth at the New Ohio) and Set Design by Amy Rubin (Miles for Mary with The Mad Ones at Bushwick Starr/Playwrights Horizons; How to Live on Earth with Colt Coeur) with Associate Director Jim Dawson and Door 10 line producer and co-founder Sarah Peterson.

Performances will be Wednesday, February 14 at 7pm, Thursday, February 22 at 7pm, Friday, February 23 at 3pm & 8pm, Sunday, February 25 at 7pm, Tuesday, February 27 at 7pm, Wednesday, February 28 at 7pm, Friday, March 2 at 8pm, and Saturday, March 3 at 2pm.

SOUND HOUSE is inspired by the haunted and often funny sound worlds of idiosyncratic 20th century British composer Daphne Oram, inventor of Oramics, a precursor to the synthesizer. This multi-strand sound-generating machine serves as a structural model for an architectonic play in which disparate eras, worlds and time signatures collide as Daphne's present-day alter ego, Constance Sneed, investigates the condition of invisibility that plagues her, too, and envisions a world in which old ladies do not die alone or forgotten.

The collaborators have developed the play not only as text but as a "multidimensional object" -- precisely constructed yet constantly shifting -- in which sound not only carves out story, but functions as an experiential road map to the distortions of time and space that are central to Oram's ideas. Their mission: create a true "sound house," an immersive sonic experience.

The cast for SOUND HOUSE will feature Vicky Finney Crouch (Piper Theatre Productions), James Himelsbach (The Talking Band's The Room Sings at LaMama; The Assembly's I Will Look Forward to This Later at The New Ohio), and Susanna Stahlmann (Hedda Gabler with Wandering Bark Theatre). The design team will include Sound Design by Tyler Kieffer and Brandon Wolcott (Signature Plays at Signature Theatre Company; The Profane at Playwrights Horizons), Set Design by Marsha Ginsberg (Master at The Foundry Theater; Angel Reapers with Signature Theater), Costume Design by Olivera Gajic (God's Ear with New Georges/Vineyard Theater; This Was the End at The Chocolate Factory), Lighting Design by Kate McGee (The Hunger Artist at The Tank; My Lingerie Play at Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), and Movement by Brendan Spieth (Those Lost Boys: 10 Year Reunion at Ars Nova).

Performances will be Tuesday, February 20 at 8pm, Wednesday, February 21 at 7pm, Saturday, February 24 at 2pm & 7pm, Sunday, February 25 at 2pm, Thursday, March 1 at 7pm, Friday, March 2 at 3pm, Saturday, March 3 at 7pm, and Sunday, March 4 at 2pm.

Stephanie Fleischmann (Playwright, Sound House) is a playwright and librettist whose texts serve as blueprints for intricate three-dimensional sonic and visual worlds. Her "lyrical monologues" (The New York Times), "smart" opera libretti (Opera News), plays and music-theater works have been performed internationally and across the U.S. Her plays, which include Eloise & Ray (New Georges) and Tally Ho (Roundhouse Studio, London) have been performed at venues ranging from the Exit Festival (France) to Synchronicity (Atlanta), Son of Semele (LA), and Roadworks (Chicago). Her work has been developed in NYC at Soho Rep, Mabou Mines/Suite, the Public and more. Selected music-theater works: Red Fly/Blue Bottle (HERE; EMPAC; Noorderzon) and The Secret Lives of Coats (Red Eye) with Christina Campanella; The Sweetest Life, with Saskia Lane (New Victory, the Vineyard). Opera libretti: The Long Walk (Opera Saratoga; Utah Opera; Pittsburgh Opera); In a Grove, (Mahogany Opera Group); After the Storm (Houston Grand Opera's HGOco); The Property (Lyric Opera of Chicago); Boundless (HGOco). Selected grants/foundations/awards: Arts Council England; 3 NYSCA Individual Artist Commissions; NEA; Howard Foundation Fellowship in Playwriting for Sound House; 2 NYFA Fellowships; Tennessee Williams Fellowship; Frederick Loewe Award; MAP Fund; Greenwall Foundation; Mid-Atlantic Arts Fund; NY State Music Fund. Residencies: Macdowell, Hedgebrook, HARP, New Georges Audrey Residency, American Lyric Theater, Playwrights Center, New Dramatists. www.stephaniefleischmann.com/

Debbie Saivetz (Director, Sound House) has directed and developed new plays at New York, regional and international theaters such as the Foundry, Fulcrum, Clubbed Thumb, Rattlestick, E.S.T., Working Theater, Voice & Vision, Red Bull, INTAR, American Lyric Theater, the Lark, the Playwrights' Center, Hartford Stage, the Goodman, the Guthrie, Long Wharf, Seattle Rep, Teatro Helénico and Lab Trece (Mexico City), La Casa de los Teatros (Oaxaca), and Teatro Lfa Llave (Santiago, Chile). She directed the New York premiere of Javier Malpica's Our Dad is in Atlantis (Working Theater) and the Mexican premiere of Sarah Ruhl's La Casa Limpia / The Clean House (Teatro Helénico, Mexico City). Most recently, she directed Verónica Musalem's Rebanadas de vida / Slices of Life for Lab Trece in Mexico City and Ruhl's Eurídice at La Casa de los Teatros in Oaxaca. She performed in Exodus (LONEtheater), a site-specific intervention created by Argentine theater artist Matías Umpierrez for NYC's undergroundzero Festival. She is an alumna of the Drama League Directors Project and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, a former New Dramatists resident director, and a New Georges Affiliate Artist and 2015-16 Audrey Resident. She teaches in the Department of Theatre and Dance at Montclair State University.

Lily Whitsitt (Director/conceiver, This is the Color) is a director and interdisciplinary artist and founding artistic director of Door 10 performance group. Her work has been presented at Baryshnikov Arts Center, HERE, Jack, NYU, Wesleyan University, CalArts, and site-specific locations. Internationally she has presented work at Centquatre (Paris) and PACT Zollverein (Essen). Lily is co-producer of the film Burn Country, starring James Franco and Melissa Leo, which premiered at the 2016 Tribeca Film Festival. She received her M.F.A. in directing from CalArts. Lily is also Community Manager of the TED Fellows program, where she develops and supports this dynamic network of global visionaries. Her work has been supported by LMCC, San Francisco Film Society, The Drama League, Time Warner Foundation/ Women's Project Lab, Orchard Project, Feldstärke International, and CalArts. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and two-time recipient of the Princess Grace Award.

Door 10 (Artistic Director Lily Whitsitt, Production Manager Sarah Peterson) is a group of artists investigating the intersection of performance, art, and media. Our work combines the theater, the street, and the dinner table, mixing heightened reality, real life and robust imagination in an effort to explore the complexities of being alive. We create live events that celebrate the physical, the raucous, the intimate, and the unexpected. www.door10.org/

New Georges, founded in 1992, is one of New York City's premiere downtown theaters, a strategically small company with a national reputation as a hub and a launchpad for the most adventurous theater artists (who are women) working today. Through productions of boundary-pushing new plays, several varieties of play development programs, and our indispensable workspace, The Room, we support the largest ongoing working community of women theater artists in New York City and have launched an unprecedented generation of women playwrights and directors. Honors for New Georges, its plays and its people include 3 Obie Awards, The Lilly Award, the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the Kesselring Prize, and New York Magazine has called New Georges an "important, risk-taking organization." Notable productions include Hilary Bettis' Alligator, directed by Elena Araoz, the first production in The Sol Project; Kate Benson's 2015 Obie Award-winning A Beautiful Day in November on the Banks of the Greatest of the Great Lakes, directed by Lee Sunday Evans; Marielle Heller's The Diary of a Teenage Girl, directed by Sarah Cameron Sunde and Rachel Eckerling; Eisa Davis' Angela's Mixtape, directed by Liesl Tommy; Jenny Schwartz's God's Ear, directed by Anne Kauffman; Heidi Schreck's Creature, directed by Leigh Silverman; Sheila Callaghan's Dead City, directed by Daniella Topol; and Lisa D'Amour's Anna Bella Eema, directed by Katie Pearl; we have provided critical early-career opportunities to additional playwrights and directors who include Lucy Alibar, Rachel Bonds, Rachel Chavkin, Rachel Dickstein, Portia Krieger, Maria Mileaf, Lila Neugebauer, Jen Silverman, Diana Son, Kathryn Walat, Tracey Scott Wilson, Anna Ziegler and many more. www.newgeorges.org

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