Target Margin Theater Announces WE WILL CARE FOR YOU, Performative Action Distributing 100 Face Masks

Target Margin Theater has announced WE WILL CARE FOR YOU, a performative action distributing 100 face masks via bike messenger across Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. Handmade by award-winning costume designers Dina El-Aziz, Ásta Bennie Hostetter, and Normandy Sherwood, 50 face masks will be available to the public for a contribution. An additional 50 will be donated to The Academy of Medical and Public Health Services who will distribute them for free to essential workers and undocumented community members in South Brooklyn. Donations of any amount are accepted, however, the public is encouraged to give $20 to cover the costs of the face masks.

To alleviate stress on essential workers, face masks will be delivered via bike by Target Margin's Founding Artistic Director David Herskovits and Associate Artistic Director Moe Yousuf to anyone in Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens. All face masks will be sealed in a ziplock plastic bag and will sit for 72 hours prior to delivery. Care-instructions and a handwritten thank you letter will be included with each order.

WE WILL CARE FOR YOU is part art object, part health initiative, and part performative action. It supports artists and activates the local community in Sunset Park while also embracing Target Margin's DIY handmade roots and classic bike culture in New York City.

More information can be found at targetmargin.org/face-masks/.

Dina El-Aziz has been the Costume Designer for Target Margin's ongoing work on The 1001 Nights since 2017. She says, "I, like many others, began the quarantine feeling absolutely helpless. I could not provide the same support as doctors, nurses, and essential workers, and with canceled productions, the prospect of sitting idle during a pandemic saddened me as I am used to always being active. Eventually, friends and colleagues encouraged me to join the mask-making movement, and now that I fill my hands with work that I feel a sense of pride knowing I am using my skillsets to help others in a time of need."

Ásta Bennie Hostetter has worked on Target Margin productions since 2005; she last designed for Reread Another. She says, "On March 11, I came home from a show that was in early previews. I was feeling mildly depressed and impotent, frozen -- it didn't even occur to me to start sewing. But then a friend for over 10 years asked me to make her one. And then I realized that my landlady, who has lived on the floor below me since 1965, did not have a mask. Being asked for help called me into being helpful, and I'm so thankful to have friends who love me enough to ask for my help."

Normandy Sherwood was a 2018 TMT Institute Fellow and has been designing for TMT's Present Shame and Further Woe. She says, "As a theater goblin, I always have excess materials, but when my teaching job went remote and everything else stopped, I suddenly had a lot of excess time and excess anxiety to burn through as well. That's why I started making masks, to do something small and practical. I had been mailing these masks on demand to friends and acquaintances and I was excited when Target Margin Theater reached out with the offer to join this larger performance/service project-- especially because I was so sad to have had to pause my work as costume designer of TMT's production of Moe Yousuf's Present Shame and Further Woe. I'm glad to be doing this mask-making work while looking forward to the future times when we resume that theater-making work."

About the Artists

Dina El-Aziz is a British-Egyptian Costume Designer, currently residing in New York. A graduate of the Design for Stage and Film MFA program at NYU Tisch School for the Arts, Dina has worked on theatre productions in NYC, and regionally in the US. Her most recent productions include P*ssy C*ck Know Nothing (Target Margin), King Lear (Northern Stage), Noura (both The Guthrie and The Old Globe), and Selling Kabul (Williamstown Theater Festival). www.dinae.me

Ásta Bennie Hostetter is a costume designer whose recent work includes: Gnit (Theater for a New Audience), Mrs. Murrays Menagerie (Mad Ones), Usual Girls (Roundabout Underground), Dance Nation (Playwrights Horizon), Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout Underground), The Lucky Ones (Ars Nova). Miles for Mary (Playwrights Horizon), Porto (WP Theater), Wolves (Lincoln Center), John (Signature), Men on Boats (Playwrights Horizons), Regional: Goodnight Nobody (McCarter), Midsummer Night's Dream (Cal Shakes) Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night (KCrep), El Coquí Espectacular (Two River), Member of minor theater, Target Margin Theater, The Mad Ones. She has an MFA in Theater Design from CalArts. www.astabennie.com

Normandy Sherwood makes theater. She's a playwright, costumer, director, and performer. Her shows include Madame Lynch (Archive Residency, 2019), Tiny Hornets (2017), Permanent Caterpillar (2016) , and The Golden Veil (2012) among others and they have been presented in NYC at The New Ohio Theatre, The Public Theater, The Kitchen, Dixon Place, The Brick and more. She and Craig Flanagin make no-wave music-driven spectacles with their company, The Drunkard's Wife. She was a co-Artistic Director of the OBIE-award-winning National Theater of the United States of America (2000-2017, R.I.P.). She is a current HARP artist in residence at HERE Arts and was a 2018 Fellow in the Target Margin Theater Institute. She has been a resident at the MacDowell Colony, Yaddo, the Millay Colony and more. As a costumer she has designed for Rachel Chavkin, Young Jean Lee, Faye Driscoll (BESSIE Award, 2009) and many more, and her designs have been nominated for Henry Hewes Awards twice. She wrote two books: Animals vs. Furniture (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2013-- a children's book) and A New Guide to Rhetorical Gesture and Action (53rd State Press, 2017-- an "acting manual" in collaboration with James Stanley and Jesse Hawley). Also, she plays in the band God Is My Co-Pilot and teaches Expository Writing at NYU. www.thedrunkardswife.com

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