Sibllies Drury's REALLY Adds Show at Abrons Arts Center

Abrons Arts Center and New York City Players' American Playwrights Division present REALLY, a new play written by Jackie Sibblies Drury, directed by Richard Maxwell and designed by photographer Michael Schmelling.

Performed by Elaine Davis, Tavish Miller and Kaneza Schaal, REALLY is a play about grief, intimacy and the difference between goodness and greatness seen through the lens of photography. A black woman takes pictures of her artist boyfriend's mom. As they jockey for a claim to him, they try to redefine themselves in the wake of his legacy.

Presented by Abrons Arts Center and New York City Players, REALLY is in its final week of performances and must close April 2. Performance are taking place at Abrons Arts Center (466 Grand St, Manhattan). Tickets are $35 and can be purchased at abronsartscenter.org or by calling 212.352.3101.

The play is the first from Sibblies Drury since she received the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize in Drama and the United States Artists Donnelly Fellowship in 2015.

Michael Schmelling's design concept for Really was awarded a grant through the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund. With his design Schmelling is seeking to, "complement a script that seeks to investigate the process of fixing memories and images." The concept for the design of the production was to place the action on a lightly constructed set that refers to the conventions of a photo studio, while focusing on the gestures that are required to operate a camera and manipulate a subject. But we also wanted to bring the photographic image into the space itself, and place the actors and the audience in the locus of where the image is physically created. The question of how images would be created there, for the audience to see, found an answer: a room-sized camera obscura. The camera obscura exploits the optical phenomenon of allowing a brightly lit image through a small hole into a darkened box (where it appears inverted), so that the solitary experience of looking into a camera becomes a public viewing of an image. This live "photograph" is not kept anywhere other than perhaps in the mind's eye of the viewer.

This world premiere is the fourth production from New York City Players' (NYCP) American Playwrights Division, which helps emerging experimental directors and playwrights take true risks in their work with the company's financial and artistic support. Mentorship and production support are core values of NYCP, and the American Playwrights Division is the company's flagship program to further those values. Previous American Playwrights Division productions include Tina Satter's House of Dance (written and directed by Ms. Satter) in 2013, Julia Jarcho's Dreamless Land (written and directed by Ms. Jarcho) in 2011, and Christina Masciotti's Vision Disturbance (directed by Richard Maxwell) in 2010.

About the Artists:

Jackie Sibblies Drury is a Brooklyn-based playwright. Her plays include We Are Proud to Present a Presentation About the Herero of Namibia, Formerly Known as South West Africa, From the German Sudwestafrika, Between the Years 1884-1915, Social Creatures and And now I only dance at weddings. The presenters of her plays include Soho Rep, Victory Gardens, Trinity Rep, Matrix Theatre, Woolly Mammoth, Undermain Theatre, InterAct Theatre, Actors Theater of Louisville, Available Light, Company One, and The Bush Theatre in London. Sibblies Drury hasdeveloped her work at Sundance, The Ground Floor at Berkeley Rep, A.C.T., The Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, New York Theatre Workshop, PRELUDE.11&14, The Civilians, The Bushwick Starr, The LARK, The Magic Theatre, The Bay Area Playwrights Festival and The MacDowell Colony. She was a dramaturg for Zero Cost House by Pig Iron Theatre Company & Toshiki Okada and The Garden by Nichole Canuso Dance Company. She received the 2012-2013 Van Lier Fellowship at New Dramatists and was the inaugural recipient of the 2012-2014 Jerome Fellowship at The LARK. She is a NYTW Usual Suspect and is currently a member of The Writer's Room at Manhattan Theatre Club and Ars Nova.

Richard Maxwell studied acting at Illinois State University and then became a co-founder of the Cook County Theater Department. Maxwell is the recipient of the 2014 Spalding Gray Award from the commissioning consortium of Performance Space 122, the Andy Warhol Museum, On the Boards, and the Walker Art Center. He is a 2012 Doris Duke Performing Artist and has received a 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship, two OBIE Awards, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant, and was an invited artist in the Whitney Biennial (2012). Recent projects include Maxwell's plays The Evening (Part 1), Isolde and Neutral Hero; Devotion, a dance by Sarah Michelson with text by Maxwell; Ads, a video play conceived by Maxwell; and two sections of the 24-hour, site-specific adaptation of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest in Berlin. His book, Theater for Beginners, was published in 2015, by TCG.

Michael Schmelling is the author of several photo books, including The Plan (J+L Books, 2009), Atlanta: Hip Hop & The South (Chronicle, 2010) and My Blank Pages (The Ice Plant, 2015). Schmelling is also a graphic designer, having designed books for Damiani, Glenn Horowitz Booksellers, Blum & Poe, and the Neuberger Museum of Art. He designed and edited the 2011 book Golfwang (Picturebox) by Oddfuture, and photographed and designed Friedrich Kunath's You Owe Me A Feeling (Blum & Poe 2012). Schmelling's illustrations have appeared on the New York Times Op-Ed page, as well as in 5 Dials. He is also a frequent collaborator with New York City Players, and won an OBIE Award for his lighting design of Richard Maxwell's play, Drummer Wanted. Schmelling's work from The Plan was included in the 2013 ICP Triennial: A Different Kind Of Order; his first one-person museum exhibition, Your Blues, a commission from The Museum of Contemporary Photography, was presented in 2014.

Kaneza Schaal (Girlfriend) is a New York City based theater artist. On stage she has worked with The Wooster Group (Vieux Carré, Early Plays), Elevator Repair Service (The Sound and the Fury, The Select, Fondly Collette Richland), Richard Maxwell/New York City Players (Early Plays, Theatercon), Claude Wampler (N'Pas), Jay Scheib (Bellona, Powder Her Face), Jim Findlay (Dream of the Red Chamber), New York City Opera (Powder Her Face), and National Public Radio (Selected Shorts). This work brought her to venues including BAM, The Kitchen, St. Ann's Warehouse, New York Theater Workshop, The Public Theater, Baryshnikov Arts Center and Symphony Space. On camera Schaal has worked with Kathryn Bigelow, Marya Cohn, Josephine Decker, Alix Pearlstein, Chelsea Knight and the "Law & Order" team.

Schaal created and directed Go Forth inspired by The Egyptian Book of the Dead presented as part of PS122's COIL Festival, 2016. Schaal was an Artist in Residence at the Baryshnikov Arts Center and received a 2014 Princess Grace Award grant, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council Process Space residency, Bogliasco Fellowship, Nathan Cummings Foundation grant, Foundation for Contemporary Art Emergency Grant, and Princess Grace George C. Wolfe Award. She was a member of Kara Walker's 6-8 Months Space and her video work appeared in Visionaire. Schaal has been invited to speak at New York University, Yale University, BAM, The Brooklyn Book Festival, the River-to-River Festival and her alma mater Wesleyan University, CT.

Elaine Davis (Mother) is an actor/ playwright. She is member of WedRepCo, a company of actors developing and performing original work, which has also premiered a number of her plays. WedRepCo credits include: A Gathering of Unusual Proportions (performer), Declassified (performer), Rope (performer), The Way Home (playwright & director) and Remember Love. Recent credits include a staged reading of In Bed with Roy Cohn, directed by Katrin Hilbe and Queen Gertrude in Hamlet at the ATA theater.

Tavish Miller (Calvin) recently performed in Object Collection's Cheap&Easy at La Mama Club, Psychic Readings Co.'s Miss Chthonic Dream Star Pageant at JACK, and 7 Daughters of Eve Thtr & Perf Co. Let Us Now Praise Susan Sontag, written and directed by Sibyl Kempsonat Abrons Art Center.

New York City Players (NYCP) is a theater company founded by Artistic Director Richard Maxwell in 1999. NYCP has been presented in New York and in over twenty countries and has received national and international recognition, including five Obie Awards. For more, visit www.nycplayers.org.

The Abrons Arts Center is the Obie award-winning performing and visual arts program of Henry Street Settlement. The Abrons supports the creation and presentation of innovative, multi-disciplinary work; cultivates artists in all stages of their practice with educational programs, mentorships, residencies and commissions; and serves as an intersection of engagement for local, national and international audiences and arts-workers.

Each year the Abrons offers over 250 performances, 12 gallery exhibitions and 30 residencies for performing and studio artists, and 100 different classes in dance, music, theater, and visual art. The Abrons also provides New York City public schools with teaching artists, introducing more than 3,000 students to the arts.

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