Corkscrew Theater Festival To Present CORKSCREW 4.0

Corkscrew Theater Festival in collaboration with Sheep Eats Wolf will present corkscrew 4.0, a series of interactive online experiences as twisted, unsettling, absurd, and alienating as the internet itself. Available at corkscrew4pt0.com starting Monday, August 10 through Sunday, August 23, these experiences are inspired by the plays programmed for what would have been Corkscrew's fourth summer season of five world premieres and four readings.

In light of COVID-19, Corkscrew has committed to producing this exact line-up in August 2021 and supporting the artists in the meantime in the creation of these entirely new works. Each production team received $750 in production subsidy for their 2020 projects as well as the first half of their originally planned $1,500 commissioning fees; the reading series teams received an additional $500 fee for their projects.

The creative teams behind the five world premiere productions have adapted, reimagined, and exploded their plays, ending up with five unique interactive web experiences:

Bloom Bloom Pow becomes a darkly comic, biodegradable choose-your-own-adventure through the depths of the world's bodies of water, from the team of Genevieve Simon, Katherine Wilkinson, and Sun Kee Hil; co-produced by Emma Maltby and Brittany Proia.

Playwright Andrew Siañez-De La O presents a mixed media composition based on the opening scene from his Mexican fantasy epic The Ortiz Twins Are Coming Home, with artwork by Maria Feuereisen and music by Benjamin Velez.

Rachel Calnek-Sugin's Tradwives pulls you into an internet rabbit hole via the desktops of the wives and girlfriends of white supremacists. Directed by Mia Fowler, produced by Abigail Jean-Baptiste.

Waters_of_Oblivion.exe sends you on an interactive, audiovisual journey through a bureaucratic underworld, where you encounter intimate questions around grief, memory, and death. Devised by Cinthia Chen, Tina-Hanaé Miller, Maya Simone Z., and Elizabeth Sun.

In Yankees, it's Study Abroad Florence 2015! Introduce yourself to the Facebook group, check out the program website, and get ready to become a citizen of the WORLD. Written by Serena Berman based on her play, directed by Jake Beckhard, produced by Less Than Rent.

Three plays slated for staged readings in 2021 are also finding expression in new media this summer: a short video gallery based on Viviana Prado-Núñez's And the Trees Fall Down; a teenage-love chatroom experience by Billy McEntee and Charles Quittner, inspired by McEntee's play Cory and Smin's Love Conquers the Earth; and the latest episode of Bun in the Oven (Dr. Eustice Sissy's competitive-baking-show-recap podcast), created by Nic Adams and Lee Rayment based on their madcap cabaret "Stiff Drink!?" with Dr. Eustice Sissy (PsyD).

Finally, corkscrew 4.0 will present one "live" event: on Wednesday August 19 at 7pm, Ruth Tang hosts a party in a Google Sheet inspired by Future Wife, their play about goats and the economy. Audience members will be able to RSVP at corkscrew4pt0.com starting August 10.

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