New Ohio Theatre to Present NOW IN PROCESS 2023 in February

New Ohio Theatre will present the 2023 edition of Now In Process, its annual in-person presentation of work-in-progress projects. Three works from this year's lineup comment on issues recently present in the public eye - war in Ukraine, race in America, and extinction of entire species of animals - while the fourth is a meditative musical about an iconic Persian woman of Sufi tradition. The shows, conceived and produced by a diverse group of NYC-based artists, are Untitled Ukraine Project by The Mill (Feb 1-2), Embodied by Jaime Sunwoo / Free Rein Projects (Feb 4-5), Rubalee by Caborca (Feb 8-9), and Longing Lights by Deniz Khateri and Bahar Royaee (Feb 11-12). All shows take place at New Ohio Theatre (154 Christopher Street, NYC). Each work will receive two performances on subsequent evenings, with the second night also available as live streaming at https://watch.eventive.org/newohiotheatre/live. Tickets are $15 and can be purchased at https://ci.ovationtix.com/34708/production/1146395.

Now In Process is New Ohio's free-floating, ad hoc, instant-gratification, impulse-driven, pop-up work-in-progress showing that offers NYC indie theatre artists the opportunity to flex their muscles, share their current thinking, and test their next great idea. Initiated in 2013, the series has hosted a wide roster of artists, among them The New Georges, Theatre in Quarantine's William Joshua Gelb, Meta-Phys Ed., Eliza Bent and Knud Adams, and many others.

PROGRAM DETAILS

Wednesday, February 1, 2023, at 7:00 pm
Thursday, February 2, 2023, at 7:00 pm
+ Live Stream: https://watch.eventive.org/newohiotheatre/play/62d03312beafa100a34a066f

The Mill presents

Untitled Ukraine Project

Text by Yevgenia Belorusets
Adapted by Sara Farrington
Directed by Jaclyn Biskup
Stage Manager Nat DiMario
Costume Design by Kristy Hall
Lighting Design by Jackie Fox
Created by and featuring Monica Goff, Rachel Griesinger, Kara Jackson, Jennifer McClinton, and Aurea Tomeski

Untitled Ukraine Project is a stage adaptation of selected short stories from Lucky Breaks, written by Yevgenia Belorusets, reimagined by playwright Sara Farrington, directed by Jaclyn Biskup, and devised and performed by our ensemble of five female actors. The stories are often bleakly comic, beginning and ending abruptly, depicting the haunting effects of the 2014 Russian invasion on the lives of civilian women. A woman who runs a flower shop vanishes suddenly and no one asks questions. In another, a woman takes her war-induced rage out on her broken umbrella. In another scene, a woman on a crowded street suddenly decides she can no longer walk and renders herself forever a "living monument." The absurdist tone and language of each brief story is transformed into a physical score, bending reality to capture the rootless tortured experience of female victims of war and occupation. Running time: 60 minutes

Saturday, February 4 at 7:00 pm
Sunday, February 5 at 7:00 pm + Live Stream:
https://watch.eventive.org/newohiotheatre/play/639a0d3ba497a40876839c11

Free Rein Projects present

Embodied

Written and directed by Jaime Sunwoo
Sound and Lighting Design by Matt Chilton
Video Design by Andrew Murdock
Video Design Consultant: Yudam Hyung Seok Jeon
Cast TBA

Four performers convey multiple layers of embodiment as they share the accounts of fifty-five interviewees all responding to a single prompt: "Describe a time you were acutely aware of your race." Responses range widely - tense, awkward, vulnerable, insightful, defensive, comforting, and absurd - and are expressed through movement, verbatim performance, live sound manipulation, interactive projections, and live feed cameras. Embodied explores how we perceive messages when they're being delivered by people with different race and gender identities and how individuals experience race in America - a survey of reflections, desires, insecurities, fears, and defenses as people analyze their perception of self and others. Running time: 45 minutes

Wednesday, February 8 at 7:00 pm
Thursday, February 9 at 7:00 pm + Live Stream:
https://watch.eventive.org/newohiotheatre/play/639a0e13aaf0b800f48ec508

Caborca presents

Rubalee (Excerpts)

Written and directed by Javier Antonio González
Music composed by David Skeist and Michael Rekevics
Performed by Yaraní del Valle Piñero, Courtney Ellis, Susannah Hoffman, Marty Keiser, Tania Molina, Jordan Rutter, Pelé Sanchez Tormes, and David Skeist

In this experimental musical, featuring choral singers and black metal percussion, Rubalee, a young North Atlantic right whale, undertakes a migration across the equator to Eubalena, the legendary home of her endangered species. Changes in feeding patterns due to oceanic warming, butchery by shipping vessels, entanglement in fishing lines, and an onslaught of industrial noise pollution have rendered their home waters a kind of hell. The impending extinction of her species, devastating on its own terms, becomes a stand-in for everything hanging in the balance of human behavior, including our own existence - while They, Them, and Her debate strategies for saving the whales, of which less than four hundred remain in the North Atlantic. Running time: 45 minutes

Saturday, February 11, at 7:00 pm
Sunday, February 12, at 7:00 pm + Live Stream:
https://watch.eventive.org/newohiotheatre/play/639a0ea6e463180071bd6a92

Longing Lights

Written and directed by Deniz Khateri
Music composed by Bahar Royaee
Cast TBA

Based on Tazkirat al-Owlia, a mystical book by the thirteenth-century poet Attar Neishabouri about the biographies of great saints and elders of Persian Sufism, Longing Lights tells the story of Rābiʿa, the only female Sufi in this book. This work-in-progress piece is an experiment on opera and body language that is about the visible and invisible world of human thoughts; reflections that have been neglected in the midst of political and social upheavals between the iron lands and digital forests. Running time: 35 minutes

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

The Mill (Producing Company, Untitled Ukraine Project) was founded in 2002 by artistic director, Jaclyn Biskup, as Experimental Theatre Chicago. After the company evolved and broadened its scope, the name was changed to represent its new mission: to produce theatre progressive in form and content. Biskup's father worked at US Steel - unaffectionately dubbed "The Mill," for over thirty years and the name is an homage to him and her family's South Side of Chicago working-class roots. The Mill is known for its stylish energetic stagings and bold theatricality, including the Chicago premieres of Suzan-Lori Parks' Venus and Ken Urban's The Private Lives of Eskimos (or 16 Words For Snow), and In NYC, Worse Than Tigers and Nicholas, Maeve, Marianne, one of Indie Theatre Now's 20 Best of NYC Fringe. TheMillTheatre.org.

Jaclyn Biskup (Director, Untitled Ukraine Project) is a director and producer working in theatre, television, and film. She received an Emmy nomination and was a Peabody Finalist for the digital series The Secret Life Of Muslims and currently works as the creative producer at New Ohio Theatre. Assistant director to Tony Award-winning director Anna D. Shapiro on the Broadway productions of The Minutes (Tracy Letts) and Straight White Men (Young Jean Lee). Founding artistic director of The Mill, directing and producing over 20 productions. NYC work includes Worse Than Tigers (Mark Chrisler), Nicholas, Maeve, Marianne (Matthew Stephen Smith; one of Indie Theatre Now's 20 Best of NYC Fringe), Hot Steams (Zach Wegner), and It's Just Weird Now (Halley Feiffer). Her work has been seen at New Ohio Theatre, MCC Playlabs, New Dramatists, Rattlestick, Dixon Place, Town Stages, and NYC International Fringe Festival. She's assisted on productions at Steppenwolf, The Public, and The American Musical Theatre Workshop. Digital projects include work for Broad Stream, PBS NOVA, Vox, Delta Air Lines, Caltech, and Harvard. She holds a BA degree in Theater from Northern Illinois University and MFA in Directing from Northwestern University. www.jaclynbiskup.com

Sara Farrington (Playwright, Untitled Ukraine Project) is an NYC playwright, screenwriter, and co-founder of Foxy Films, with Reid Farrington. MFA from Brooklyn College w/ Mac Wellman. Author of the book The Lost Conversation: Interviews with an Enduring Avant-Garde, (53rd State Press/TCG 2022). Sara's plays have been nominated for two Drama Desk Awards and critically acclaimed by The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Wall Street Journal, American Theatre Magazine, El Diario, The Village Voice, Lighting & Sound in America, NY1. Recent & Upcoming plays: A Trojan Woman, (the world ended tonight), CasablancaBox, Mendacity, Leisure Labor Lust, BrandoCapote, The Return, Honduras, Near Vicksburg, Mickey & Sage (published by Broadway Play Publishing, Inc.), The Rise & Fall of Miles & Milo, Cosmicomics. Sara recently completed the feature film, Mendacity, directed by Reid Farrington, featuring Foxy Films. www.ladyfarrington.com

Jaime Sunwoo (Writer and Director, Embodied) is a Korean American multidisciplinary artist from New York working in theater, film, visual art, and public art. Her works connect personal narratives to global histories through surreal storytelling. She studied art at Yale University and was a fellow for Ping Chong and Company and The Laundromat Project. Her work has been presented at Park Avenue Armory, Abrons Art Center, BAX, The Tank, Dixon Place, Flux Factory, and Art in Odd Places. She has done artist talks and panels at The Met, Museum of Food and Drink, Yale, NYU, and Stony Brook. Through her production company Free Rein Projects, she received awards from QCA, Asian Women Giving Circle, NYC Women's Fund, Brooklyn Arts Fund, The Laundromat Project, and The Jim Henson Foundation for her play Specially Processed American Me. Her multimedia piece Embodied received support from The Franklin Furnace Fund and Brooklyn Arts Fund. jaimesunwoo.com

Caborca (Producing Company, Rubalee) is a bilingual ensemble making theater and film under Puerto Rican director Javier Antonio González since 2009. They work in NY and tour nationally and abroad at the intersection of Latine and experimental arts where audiences are hungry for our politically charged and formally innovative reflections on colonial power dynamics. Caborca's artists combine disciplinary backgrounds in visual arts, postmodern dance, music, and performance with rigorous experimental processes, continually reinventing their practices. www.caborca.org

​​Deniz Khateri (Writer and Director, Longing Lights) is an actor, director, playwright, shadow puppetry artist, and animator based in New York. Her works experiment with form and focus on memory, grief, immigration, and the concept of home. Deniz has performed extensively in Tehran, Boston, and New York, and her plays have been performed in several national and international festivals. She has designed and directed shows and shadow puppetry visuals for several contemporary classical composers and companies, including Guerilla Opera and Long Beach Opera, and Dinosaur Annex. Her animated documentary web series Diasporan (which she wrote, directed, animated, and performed in), exploring the daily struggles of immigrants, was honored with an NYFA award. Khateri holds an MA in theatre from Hunter College of New York. www.denizkhateri.com

New Ohio Theatre is a two-time OBIE Obie Award-winning theatre under the leadership of Robert Lyons, Artistic Director, and Jaclyn Biskup, Creative Producer. The New Ohio serves New York's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting bold new work from downtown's diverse independent theatre community. They believe the best of this community, the small artist-driven ensembles and the daring producing companies who operate without a permanent theatrical home, are actively expanding the boundaries of what theatre is, how it's made, and who makes it. From their home in the West Village's historic Archive Building, the New Ohio provides a high-profile platform for downtown's most mature, ridiculous, engaged, irreverent, gut-wrenching, frivolous, sophisticated, foolish, and profound theatrical endeavors.

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