Polybe + Seats Presents A THOUSAND THOUSAND SLIMY THINGS, 4/23-5/9

The theater company Polybe + Seats is proud to announce its spring 2010 production of A THOUSAND THOUSAND SLIMY THINGS. Conceived and directed by Artistic Director Jessica Brater and written by Company Member Katya Schapiro with the company, the production will have a limited engagement of 9 performances only at the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge (290 Conover Street at Pier 44) in Red Hook, Brooklyn. 

Performances begin Friday, April 23rd and will play Friday-Sunday evenings at 7pm through Sunday, May 9th.

Tickets, which are priced at $18, are available immediately through Smarttix online at www.smarttix.com or by calling 212.868.4444. 

Opening the day after Earth Day, A THOUSAND THOUSAND SLIMY THINGS fuses nautical mythology and literature with oceanography and marine biology, hoping to inspire meditation on the literal plasticizing of the ocean habitat.

A man floats on the open ocean, clinging to his best friend - an ever-shrinking bit of iceberg. He gazes below the surface of the water and thinks he sees...mermaids performing Ibsen's Lady from the Sea? Elsewhere, a salty sea captain shuttles back and forth from the miles-wide vortex in the North Central Pacific known as the Garbage Patch, delivering messages in bottles and smuggling the impossible. Elsewhere still, a marooned sea creature rants and a strange disease is spreading. All will collide in a mythic place called Florida.

Inspired by the Weeki Wachee Mermaid Park - one of the nation's oldest roadside attractions (and smallest cities) - A THOUSAND THOUSAND SLIMY THINGS is a floating fantasia, staged on board a docked barge in Brooklyn's historic Red Hook District. The production carries the energy of Earth Day forward and incorporates: material culled from sources ranging from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner and Moby Dick to oceanographic blogs and transcripts of first-hand interviews with the Weeki Wachee mermaids; original material generated by over 20 actors, writers, and designers over two years; and a portable set composed of reclaimed plastic objects. In the midst of the world's debate about how to reverse humanity's global impact - or whether there's been any significant impact at all - Polybe + Seats confronts a frightening possibility: What if there's nothing to be done? What does one do in the face of inevitable, unavoidable change?

Polybe + Seats, founded in 2001, creates plays and projects that experiment with language, structure, visual imagery, and storytelling. A THOUSAND THOUSAND SLIMY THINGS follows on the heels of Polybe + Seats' successful run of Granada - an original commission written by Avi Glickstein for the company - at the Access Theater in Tribeca. Theater Online called the production "a storytelling tour- de-force ...[an] explosion of artistic expression." The company was selected to participate in Suzan Lori- Parks' 365 Days/365 Plays festival and has produced new plays by writers including Sally Oswald and JorDan Harrison. 2006's The Charlotte Salomon Project: Life? Or Theater? was a Foundation for Jewish Culture commission developed in residency at Mabou Mines/Suite and performed at Brooklyn Fire Proof in Williamsburg and presented by the University of Michigan at the Walgreen Drama Center in Ann Arbor.

A THOUSAND THOUSAND SLIMY THINGS - supported in part by a grant from The Nancy Quinn Fund, a project of A.R.T/New York - features Carmel Amit, Elaine O'Brien, Jenni Lerche, Sarah Sakaan, Eugene Santiago, Hilary Thomas, and Ari Vigoda, has set, prop, and puppet design by Eli Kaplan-Wildmann, lighting design by Natalie Robin, costume design by Bevan Dunbar, original music by Jason Binnick, choreography by Lindsay Torrey, dramaturgy by Miriam Felton-Dansky and Stacey Cooper McMath, and stage management by Ai Ling Loo.

For more information, please visit www.polybeandseats.org.

About The Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge

The Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge is housed aboard the Lehigh Valley Barge No. 79, built in

1914 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The Museum's mission is to provide waterfront access and low-cost arts & education programs while fostering historic preservation and a better understanding of the NY Harbor as a waterway carrying commerce and commuters. For more information visit www.waterfrontmuseum.org.

About Jessica Brater (Director)

Jessica Brater is the founding Artistic Director of Polybe + Seats. She is currently leading Polybe's collaborative development process for A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things. Work-in-progess showings have been presented at Mabou Mines ToRaNaDa Studio, the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center, chashama, and the Bushwick Starr. In November 2009 she directed Granada, a new play commissioned by Polybe from NYU M.FA. playwright Avi Glickstein. Brater was a resident artist at Mabou Mines/Suite to develop The Charlotte Salomon Project, for which Polybe also received a New Play Commission from the Foundation for Jewish Culture. The Charlotte Salomon Project was produced at Brooklyn Fire Proof in November 2006 and was presented by the University of Michigan in April 2007 for the opening of the Walgreen Drama Center. Directing work away from the company includes a workshop of Sibyl Kempson's KurbisGeistNacht at Dixon Place (2007) and Are You A Bird or a Dodo? Or, Aristophanes' Birds for Target Margin at HERE (2007). Other directing work for Polybe includes Careful of Eights: Four (Five) short plays by Gertrude Stein at Dixon Place's Not for Broadway or the MET Either, the HERE American Living Room Festival where it was presented as Two in Two, and at Columbia University as part of a conference on Stein featuring renowned scholar Ulla Dydo (2004-2005) and premieres of Sally Oswald's Two Spent Swimmers at the Brown University New Plays Festival (2002) and Desmond or Abraham and Frances at the New York Fringe Festival (2001). She received her B.A. from Barnard College and is a doctoral student at the CUNY Graduate Center program in Theatre Studies. 

About Katya Schapiro (Playwright)

Katya Schapiro is a writer, performer and core producing member with Polybe + Seats. She conceived and co-produced Polybe's SpeakEasy series, and the Play Group first reading evenings. For Polybe, she also directed the premiere of David Egan's On and Giri at Union Docs in the fall of '05, performed in the Ladies' Auxiliary Telephone Bees at the Brick and the Tank, Here We Go! (365 Days/365 Plays), Life? or Theater?: The Charlotte Salomon Project, and the several workshops of A Thousand Thousand Slimy Things (formerly A Sea Change). A workshop of Katya's play Better Angels, directed by Shira Milikowsky, was produced by Polybe at the Bushwick Starr in October 2007. Katya is a graduate of Barnard College, and has trained with Vernice Miller of ALAT and at Shakespeare & Company in Lenox, MA. She is currently an MLS student at Pratt Institute.

Directions to the Waterfront Museum and Showboat Barge by public transportation: NOTE: There may be service changes during the run of the show. Please check www.mta.info and A,C,F,2,3,4,5 to Jay St./Borough Hall or M, N, R to Court Street Station. From there, take the B-61 Bus from Jay & Willoughby or Court St. & Atlantic Ave. towards Red Hook. Exit at Van Brunt and Beard Streets. Walk on Beard toward Van Brunt for two blocks; turn left on Conover St. Entrance gate is on the right just before the waterfront.

OR

F train to Smith and 9th Street. From there, take the B-77 Bus to Conover St. at the corner of

Coffey St. Walk south on Conover toward the waterfront. Entrance gate is on the right.

 

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