Hook And Eye Invades The Flea

LOOK OUT! Hook & Eye Theater is landing at The Flea with three outrageous new ideas to share. From a They/Them Generation riff on 1920s drag culture set against a Mae West play, to a tale of the MTA's wayward past and perhaps glorious future in the form of a subway ride, and an original play about a narcissistic soldier from the Gulf War in a play about identity, responsibility, and community. Hook and Eye Invades The Flea offers three unique visions for your pleasure. Each night a staged reading of our newest original work Echo & Narcissus and in-progress material from our inaugural Spoolers' Eliza Bent and Roger Q. Mason.

Echo & Narcissus

Devised by the ensemble of Hook & Eye

Conceived and Directed by Chad Lindsey

With Cynthia Babak*, Meghan Grover, Carrie Heitman*, Sam Khazai, Elizabeth London*, Sade Namei*, and Chris Wendelken*

Pleasure Men

Spooler Lead Artist: Roger Q. Mason

Directed by Michael Alvarez

With Justin Choi, Jared Brendan Hopper, Matthew Lynch, Roger Q. Mason, Kelindah Schuster, and Vince Ryne

The Light at the End of the Tunnel

Spooler Lead Artist: Eliza Bent

Directed by Sarah Hughes

With Regan Sims, Ryan Haddad* and Fernando Gonzalez*

*Appearing Courtesy of Actors' Equity Association

Dates and times:

Thursday, May 2nd @7pm

Friday, May 3rd @7pm

Saturday, May 4th @7pm

Location:

The Flea Theater

20 Thomas St, New York, NY 10007 (between Broadway & Trimble Place)

The Spoolers are a program of Hook & Eye Theater created and led by member Javan Nelson. Reservations and Inquiries: hookandeyetheater@gmail.com

About the Company:

Hook & Eye builds inspiring, inquisitive original works of theater. We devise through ensemble co-creation and co-authorship on themes of history, science, and myth. Hook & Eye's work has been called "rich, intelligent, funny," and "a testament to the collaborative process of theatre making." Our original works - each crafted over one to two years - brims with magic, rhythm, and ridiculousness; built in worlds where the obvious is harpooned by the absurd. Works include: FIDIGITAL SPRING (2012), a rhapsody of movement and mobile devices in homage to Stravinsky's Rite of Spring. THE SUMMONERS (2014), supposes that America has been "sun-less" for three years. It's an impressionistic flip-book of what occurs when big capital meets small-town America in times of crisis. GOD IS A VERB (2015), inspired by the mind and myth of R.Buckminster Fuller. Set in 1969, the play follows a team of academics set out to play a game with one goal: make the world work for all of humanity. SHE-SHE-SHE (2018), shares a modern tale of alienation through the stories of six women skipping across generations. Set on Bear Mountain in a New Deal-era women's work camp, the play explores the nonlinear nature of progress, and our complex relationship with our inheritance. Hook & Eye serves as resident playwriting instructors at New York's Professional Performing Arts School.

Chad Lindsey (Director Echo & Narcissus) is an actor, director, and artist based in New York. He holds a degree in music from Valparaiso University. He is the co-artistic director of Hook & Eye Theater. On his way to becoming a theater director, he danced with modern dance companies, apprenticed with a furniture designer for six years, won a snow sculpting contest, choreographed a ballet or two, was in a boy band, mowed lawns, and spent a decade facing himself on the packaging of hair-spiking gel. Chad directed Hook & Eye Theater's The Summoners (2014), God is a Verb (2015), and She-She-She (2018).

Christopher Ross-Ewart (Sound Design Echo & Narcissus) is a sound designer, composer, and performer from Vancouver, Canada. Learning the cello at an early age, his musical experience ranges from orchestral and chamber music to experimental electronic composition. Studying theatre at the University of Toronto led him to his first experience composing and performing music for theatre. After creating original work in Vancouver and Toronto, he completed the MFA program in Sound Design at Yale School of Drama. Now working across the US and Canada, his experience ranges from performer to composer to designer, in theatre, musical theatre, dance and installation.

About the Spoolers:

Eliza Bent (Lead Artist) is Brooklyn-based playwright and performer. Bent's plays have been developed and presented in productions, readings, and workshops at the Abrons Arts Center, JACK, Clubbed Thumb, the Atlantic, the Bushwick Starr and New York Theatre Workshop's Next Door series. Residencies: SPACE on Ryder Farm, New Georges Audrey Residency, Target Margin Institute Fellow, MacDowell Colony Fellow, inaugural Humanities Initiative Artist in Residence at the University of Scranton for 2018-19. Awards/Citations: LMCC Work Space 18/19, Critics Pick for Toilet Fire, 2014 Payne Award for Outstanding Theatrical Event, LMCC process grant. Bent is a former senior editor at American Theatre magazine, a frequent guest artist at the Great Plains Theatre Conference, and an adjunct lecturer in creative writing at Brooklyn College where she received an MFA in playwriting. Next up Bent will perform in Lunch Bunch with Clubbed Thumb in May and Leap and the Net Will Appear with New Georges in June.

Sarah Hughes (Director) is a director and producer of theater and new media. Her theater work has been seen at Abrons Arts Center, BAM Next Wave, The Bushwick Starr, JACK, and more, and she's co-created VR pieces for Tribeca Film Festival, New York Theatre Workshop, and The New York Times. Alongside her freelance directing she worked for many years with Elevator Repair Service and Target Margin Theater, and is now Director of Artistic Programming at Theatre Row and teaches at NYU and Dartmouth College. Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, WP Theater Directors Lab Member, The Civilians R&D Group alum, residency recipient at The Drama League, New Georges, LPAC, and Target Margin Theater.

Roger Q. Mason (Lead Artist) is queer, Black/Filipinx writer who mines the intersection of history, memory and identity through the ritual of performance. His work often investigates the vulnerability of masculine identity. Mason's works include The White Dress, Wind People, and Onion Creek. They've been seen at such venues as New York Theatre Workshop, New Group Theatre, McCarter Theatre Center, Ensemble Studio Theatre/LA, Son of Semele Theatre, Steep Theatre, Chicago Dramatists, and the Kraine Theatre. Mason was recently named finalist for the Lark Playwrights' Week and semi-finalist for the Bay Area Playwrights Festival. His short play Hard Palate was nominated for a Theatre Innovator Award. Mason has held residencies at Lambda Literary, Fresh Ground Pepper, and Skylight Theatre. Recent commissions include work with Company of Angels, Serene Playhouse, Steep Theatre and the Fire This Time Festival. Mason holds an MFA from Northwestern University, MA from Middlebury College, and BA from Princeton University.

Michael Alvarez (Director) has a diverse, and international, body of work - inclusive of classic and contemporary plays, new work, musical theatre, devised theatre, site specific/immersive theatre, performance art and art installations and events. In New York he has directed several new works by playwright Annie R. Such and directed Trouble: A New Rock Musical, which he co-wrote with composer Ella Grace, at the New York Musical Theatre Festival. Additionally, he directed Back by Brett Epstein at Gallery Players and Harold Pinter's The Room as part of the Drama League Fellowship at the Hangar Theatre. He studied Performance Art at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama in London and Directing at California Institute of the Arts. While at CalArts he directed The Seagull by Anton Chekhov, Salome by Oscar Wilde, Little Eyolf by Henrick Ibsen and Shakespeare's Anthony and Cleopatra. Upcoming: a world premier adaption of Peter Pan at the Serenbe Playhouse (June 2018); a devising new work based on Antonín Dvo?ák's opera, Rusalka in Los Angeles; and developing a new indie-pop music theatre adaptation of the mythology of Salome with Ella Grace and Roger Q. Mason. He is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab and a 2017 Drama League Directing Fellow; and has been selected as a 2050 Directing Fellow at New York Theatre Workshop.

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