HURRICANE SLEEP - A New Play Announced At IATI Theater

IATI Theater in a co-production with The Box Collective presents Hurricane Sleep, a new female-centered experimental play about trauma and how healing begins with the most intimate self to reverberate through dimensions of time and being, written and co-directed by Andrea Goldman. Julia Watt and Goldman co-direct a cast of five, including George Bass*, Shashwat Gupta, Neysa Lozano, Rachel Schmeling and Heaven Stephens*. Ten performances will be staged at IATI Theater from May 2-12, 2019.

Set in New York City during Hurricane Sandy, Sal finds herself trapped in a flooding bodega alongside a local girl named Ome. This claustrophobic setting will become Sal's canvas to rapidly flow, like the fast winds that menace the building, in a journey of self-discovery while facing the ghosts from the past and the dreads of the future. Between boxed wine, ayahuasca and maybe a séance, it is disaster that brings us closer together and true intimacy is found when we least expect it.

Challenging the traditional (and usually male established) dramatic structure, Hurricane Sleep is a female-centered piece that explores the complexity of identity when the most intimate parts of the human mind - dreams, longings, and memories -run free and become tangible. The flow of movement and language uses specific Holistic Actor techniques to bring the narrative to a visceral place.

"About both personal and collective healing, I also see Hurricane Sleep as a metaphor for something larger: the rupturing rage and anger of our natural world--the Earth, our mother, the divine feminine rebelling from centuries of exploitation in the form of droughts, hurricanes, rising temperatures, floods," stated playwright Andrea Goldman. "She's been battered, beaten and raped long enough. On a meta-level the play harkens to our relationship with the natural world-the ultimate goddess, the great mother, of whom we are all a part."

Tickets are $25 for adults, $20 for students and seniors. For more information and tickets, call 212-505-6757 or visit IATITheater.org.

Performances will be held from May 2nd-12th on Tuesdays-Thursdays at 7:00 p.m., Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00 p.m., and Sundays at 3:00 p.m.

Hurricane Sleep is presented by IATI Theater in collaboration with the box collective. Dramaturgy and Movement Coach: Sara Fay George; Production Manager: Elizabeth Schweitzer; Set Designer: Mike Mroch; Composer/Sound Designer: Matt Sherwin; Lighting Designer: Elizabeth Schweitzer; Costumer Designer: Valentine Mussi; Stage Manager: Jennifer Healy; Public Relations: Paul Siebold/Off Off PR.

Andrea Goldman (playwright/co-director) established the box collective in 2010 as an artistic collaborative to promote a new kind of experiential theatre in the New York art scene & beyond. Some previous work with the box: La Cueca (writer/performer) at ARTSOLAR & NY Chelsea Art Museum, Wild Horses (writer/co-director) at Guild Hall JDT lab, 116 (co-director) at New Ohio, The Stadt Elegies (performer) at galleries for Venice Biennale & Milan Expo, Sometimes at Night (writer/performer) in Berlin, among others. Most recently she debuted From the Heartland at the NY UnitedSolo Festival (directed by Sara Fay George) and Static Apnea (co-created and performed with Julia Watt) in New Zealand. She has a master's in classical theatre from the Bristol Old Vic and has performed as Olivia in Twelfth Night (Elm Shakespeare), Calpurnia in Julius Caesar (Elm Shakespeare) and Angelica in The Rover (Bristol Old Vic). She was recently nominated for an IRNE for Best Supporting Actress in the role of Kia in The Last Schwartz. She is the co-founder of Viscus Film (www.viscusfilm.com) which has garnered numerous laurels and festival recognition for its slate of shorts and is currently in production with its first feature: Pen Pals. You can catch her in the new series Too Old To Die Young directed by Nicholas Winding Refn coming to Amazon very soon. She believes in exploring provocative themes that hit the audience right in the gut-evoking visceral sensibilities and leaving a lasting imprint on the psyche. For more about her work visit: www.andreagoldmanweb.com

Julia Watt (co-director) is a theatre artist living and working in Brooklyn, NY. She has performed and/or developed work at such notable institutions as: The Public Theatre's Under the Radar Festival (NYC); WNYC Greene Space (NYC); A Noise Within (LA); La Mama ETC (NYC); Huntington Theatre (Boston); Court Theatre (Chicago); Studio Theatre (DC); PCPA Theaterfest (CA); New York Shakespeare Exchange (NYC); The Invisible Dog (NYC); and The Alabama Shakespeare Festival (AL). Her work with the box collective includes 116: A Shakespeare Play (The New Ohio Theatre); Wild Horses (Guild Hall); and co-devising and performing Static Apnea (Performance Arcade, Wellington NZ & Deep Anatomy Festival, Auckland, NZ). Julia is a founding member of the american vicarious and is currently developing an adaptation of Jane Bowles' Two Serious Ladies. She holds an MFA from The Alabama Shakespeare Festival and a BA in Theatre from the University of Southern California.

Sara Fay George (dramaturg/movement coach) - is founder of The Holistic Method, a physical acting technique designed bring participants into confident connection with themselves and elicit fully embodied storytelling. She worked as the Resident Movement Coach with The Actors Space, Berlin, The Fritz-Kirchoff Schule and has been training actors across America and Europe since 2010. She currently teaches Williamson Technique at the Maggie Flanigan Studio in New York City. Sara Fay is an artist of many mediums. She identifies as a visual artist, theater artist, educator, and playwright. Immersive directing credits include Swan Song: Voices on Climate Change, in collaboration with COP 21 and Climate Change Theater Action and In or Out, which took audiences behind the doors of a spiritual cult. From the Heartland of Nausea, premiered at the United Solo Festival October 2017. This summer her play , Last Life: A Shakespeare Play, will be presented with the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. www.sarafaygeorge.com

IATI Theater is a New York-based, non-profit performing arts organization founded in 1968 by Venezuelan director Abdón Villamizar and a group of Latino writers and actors, dedicated to serving all audiences in both the Spanish and English languages. IATI's vision is to bring art into the lives of those in poverty, ethnic and cultural isolation. IATI artists address contemporary issues of broad human interest and frame them in an appropriate cultural context of powerful social impact to provoke introspection and social awareness. IATI is devoted to facilitating the emergence of new artistic talents in the disciplines of theater, music and dance.

The Box Collective is an international company run by women that originated as an ensemble in New York. Consisting of artists who hunger to challenge the traditional theatre scene and engage their audience through a real experience, our work evokes visceral reactions beyond passive entertainment. This is theatre of immediacy, necessity and risk-taking. Beginning from an organic creative process, the ensemble works together to create a holistic performance experience. This is theatre that comes from a question and a need to know. The objective is the creation of living art that allows an audience to exist within the production and thus in turn be changed by the experience.

*Appearing courtesy of Actors' Equity Association. AEA Showcase.

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