New Play AN OTHELLO THING to Open in January at The Tank

The Tank (Rosalind Grush and Rania Jumaily, Artistic Directors), a non-profit arts presenter located in the heart of midtown, will present AN OTHELLO THING, an experimental play that involves abstract language, non-linear storytelling, and an awareness by the performers of their performance. In this play, written by Sean Edward Lewis, a man (Lewis) and a woman (Claire Campbell) carry out violent Othello Experiments in their domestic domain. A man playing Iago as a cop barges into the scene after receiving a domestic complaint. Lewis's piece is a poetic response to Shakespeare's play, and Lewis has previously created plays drawing inspiration from Macbeth and Hamlet. LILAC CO. productions have been seen at Dixon Place and the Under the Radar Festival, as well as at Secret Project Robot. AN OTHELLO THING will premiere January 8-10th and 14-17th at 7pm, at The Tank, 151 West 46th Street, 8th Floor, NY, NY.

Past works by Lewis and the Lilac Co. have been called "the best work I saw at Under the Radar" (Fernando Rubio), "work of pure poetry" (Daniel Pettrow, The Wooster Group), "disconcerting and exciting" (Lewis Klahr, Filmmaker, CalArts), and a "total surprise" (Kenneth Collins, Temporary Distortion).

Tickets are on sale at brownpapertickets.com.

LILAC CO is an experimental theater company based in Brooklyn since 2006 and project of writer Sean Edward Lewis. This ensemble driven company has been in constant laboratory in church basements and abandoned storefronts, creating a body of work based on the writings of Lewis, and described by Thom Donovan of the Brooklyn Rail as "recalling literary experiments such as those of Gertrude Stein, Samuel Beckett, Lewis Carol, and Antonin Artaud." Recent curatorial attention from the Public Theater and elsewhere sees the project moving from D.I.Y. environments to full productions with showings at the Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival incoming series in 2013 and 2014.

The Tank is a Manhattan-based non-profit arts presenter. We serve emerging and established artists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas and forms of expression. Our goal is to foster an environment of inclusiveness and remove the burden of cost from the creation of new work for artists launching their careers and experimenting within their art forms. The heart of our services is providing free performance space in the 62-seat black box that we operate in Manhattan, and we also offer a suite of other services such as free rehearsal space and promotional support. We present performances across a range of disciplines: theater, music, dance, comedy, film, storytelling, and public affairs. We keep ticket prices affordable and view our work as democratic, opening up both the creation and attendance of the arts to all and positioning the arts within civic and socio-political discourse.

Founded in 2003 by nine emerging artists, The Tank has since provided an artistic home for thousands of New York City-based performers. Artists who have presented work at The Tank early on in their careers include Alex Timbers (Tony-nominated theater director), Reggie Watts (theater performer/ comedian/ musician currently on the IFC TV show Comedy Bang! Bang!), Amy Herzog (Pulitzer Prize- nominated playwright), Lucy Alibar (whose one-act play Juicy and Delicious premiered at The Tank and was adapted to be the Oscar-nominated Beasts of the Southern Wild), Hattie Mae Williams (founder of The Tattooed Ballerina, Knight Arts Challenge Grantee), Andrew Bujalski (film director, Computer Chess), and We Are Scientists (rock band). The Tank has been honored with an official City Council proclamation, chosen for the WNYC *STAR* initiative, and featured on CNN, BBC, ABC World News Now, the NY Times, and more.

For information, please visit www.thetanknyc.org.

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