Target Margin Theater to Kick Off 24th Season with 'STEIN LAB' at The Bushwick Starr, 1/9

Target Margin Theater kicks off its 24th season, dedicated to Gertrude Stein, at The Bushwick Starr in January with its TMT Stein Lab. Curated by TMT Artistic Producer John Del Gaudio, over 75 artists will contribute to seven original pieces and three special events.

From Target Margin's earliest years, Gertrude Stein's playful spirit has been resonant and the company most recently staged her A Family of Perhaps Three directed by TMT Artistic Director David Herskovits. The TMT Stein Lab will explore more than 15 texts including her plays, operas, geographies, lectures and letters. There will be something for everyone as Stein's recurring themes of landscape, intellect, narrative and memory intersect with her rigorous sense of play.

The Lab, which has served over 1,000 emerging and mid-career artists since 1993, will feature work by Lead Artists Nic Adams, Adam R. Burnett, Nikki Calonge, Nehassaiu deGannes, Aaron Ethan Green and Megan Hill. There will also be a public showing of Stein's Reread Another directed by TMT's Artistic Director David Herskovits, a panel with Julia Jarcho, Shonni Enelow and Karinne Keithley Syers, a kickoff reading with TMT Associated Artists and a free daylong workshop/showing.

The Bushwick Starr theater is located at 207 Starr Street, Brooklyn, NY [between Irving and Wycoff]. Directions: Via Subway take the L Train to Jefferson Street, exit at Starr Street, walk against traffic on Starr, and the theater is 3/4 of a block on the right. For detailed driving directions visit: www.thebushwickstarr.org/DIRECTIONS. Tickets are $15 at www.thebushwickstarr.org. To RSVP to free events, email info@targetmargin.org.

Performance Schedule for The TMT Stein Lab:

PART I

WHITE WINES (AFTER PLAYS)

Lead Artist: Nic Adams

Texts: White Wines / Plays

Please join us at 27 rue de Fleurus for a salon of hermetic curiosities. Come enjoy our collection of fine art, and partake in the conversation on plays. White wines will be served, but not turkey and bones. Wear your finest, tiniest hat, and steel yourself for slumber-party-style punch-drunk giggle-fits. You're welcome. We thank you.

playing with...

Five Historic Children Who Are Not

Lead Artist: Nehassaiu deGannes

Texts: Third Historic Drama / Three Sisters Who Are Not Sisters / Accents in Alsace

Rising waters, dredge of memory, in the hoof of tear gas & dogs---a roadside goddess! The silent nod. A tv revolution. It's all child's play, after all.

Thursday 1/15 at 7:30pm

Friday 1/16 at 7:30pm

Saturday 1/17 at 7:30pm

Tuesday 1/20 at 7:30pm

Wednesday 1/21 at 7:30pm

Friday 1/23 at 7:30pm

Saturday 1/24 at 9:30pm

ACT SECOND

ERIK SATIE / IF I TOLD HIM / ERIK SATIE

Lead Artist: Adam R. Burnett

Texts: If I Told Him / Erik Satie / Geography / Land of Nations [Subtitle and Ask Asia] / Van or Twenty Years Later

Does theater make you nervous? Not here! Join us as we uncover the comfort and joy in Gertrude's portraits and landscapes, exploring time as a ceaseless, ecstatic flow and attempt the impossible of being absolutely in the present: here, now. No, here now.

playing with...

A NICE STORY or WE GET IT, GERTRUDE

Lead Artist: Megan Hill

Texts: Reflections on the Atomic Bomb / A Play Called Not and Now / Flirting at the Bon Marche

Too much information. No common sense. A mysterious assemblage. Famous friends. A dance that looks like a dance but is not a dance. Maybe a cello. Maybe a laugh. Maybe a maybe a maybe a maybe. Wake a question. Eat an answer. Rinse. Repeat. That's the answer.

Thursday 1/22 at 7:30pm

Friday 1/23 at 9:30pm

Saturday 1/24 at 7:30pm

Tuesday 1/27 at 7:30pm

Wednesday 1/28 at 7:30pm

Friday 1/30 at 7:30pm

Saturday 1/31 at 9:30pm

LAST PART

SHE COUNTS HER DRESSES

Lead Artist: Nikki Calonge

Texts: Miss Furr and Miss Skeene / Counting Her Dresses

Inspired by the illustrations of Ethel Mars and Maud Hunt Squire, She Counts Her Dresses celebrates Gertrude Stein's depiction of this real-life couple through the compulsion to travel and dance. Miss Furr and Miss Skeene demand that the audience read with us, be gay with us, be regularly gay with us, and to sing until we can be proud of tomorrow.

playing with...

STEIN-DRAG

Lead Artist: Aaron Ethan Green

Text: Baby Precious Always Shines

Love notes exchanged between Mr. Cuddle-Wuddle and Baby Precious, otherwise known as Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, provide the building blocks for this whirlwind drag romp.

Thursday 1/29 at 7:30pm

Friday 1/30 at 9:30pm

Saturday 1/31 at 7:30pm

Tuesday 2/3 at 7:30pm

Thursday 2/5 at 7:30pm

Friday 2/6 at 9:30pm

Saturday 2/7 at 7:30pm

REREAD ANOTHER

Directed by David Herskovits

Text: Reread Another A Play To Be Played Indoors or Out I Wish to Be a School.

I remember everything. You were so kind. I did love you I know it and you knew it I know you knew it because we both remember it and we know what we remember is what we know so it is true our love it was true.

Friday 1/9 at 7:30pm

Saturday 1/10 at 5pm

B.Y.O.S.

Come hear our Associated Artists and friends read their favorite Stein. If you feel it, bring yours!

Saturday 1/10 at 7:30pm

THINKING(s) and MAKING(s) STEIN

A discussion between Julia Jarcho (Playwright & Director, Minor Theater / Assistant Professor of English, New York University), Shonni Enelow (Assistant Professor of English, Fordham University) and Karinne Keithley Syers (Performance Maker & Founder/Coeditor, 53rd State Press).

Wednesday 2/4 at 7:30pm

AN INVITATION: WE ALL MAKE THINGS ALL TOGETHER ONCE

Do you like to make funny things for fun? Do you like to puzzle out the language of G. Stein? We do too. Come to The Bushwick Starr in the afternoon and bring your heart. Together we will make a play for fun. Then we will show it to people in the evening. Maybe that will be the best way.

Friday 2/6

Work starts at 2:00pm

Performance at 7:30pm

All special events are pay-what-you-can or free (you decide). To RSVP, email info@targetmargin.org.

Permission for the texts has been granted by the Estate of Gertrude Stein, through its Literary Executor, Mr. Stanford Gann, Jr. of Levin & Gann, P.A.

About Target Margin Theater: For twenty-four years, Target Margin Theater has been at the forefront of New York's alternative theater scene and has been praised for its bold and sometimes wild interpretations of classic dramas and lesser-known works. TMT has presented ambitious re-thinkings of plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Brecht, Gertrude Stein, and Beaumarchais, among others. TMT has also created original works and new music/opera over the years and has served nearly 1,000 artists (mostly emerging) through its annual Lab including Kristin Marting, Taylor Mac and Rachel Chavkin. The company's production of Mamba's Daughters received the Obie Award and was a sensation of the 1999 Spoleto Festival, and its epic production of Goethe's Faust received critical acclaim. Recent productions include Uriel Acosta: I Want That Man! at The Chocolate Factory and Uncle Vanya and The Tempest at HERE.

About The Bushwick Starr: The Bushwick Starr is an Obie Award winning non profit theater that presents an annual Season of new work in theater, dance, and puppetry. We are an organization defined by both our artists and our community, and since 2007, we have grown into a thriving theatrical venue, a vital neighborhood arts center, and a destination for exciting and engaging performance. The Bushwick Starr's mission is to help ambitious artists and ambitious audiences find each other. We provide a springboard for emerging professional artists to make career-defining leaps, and we are a sanctuary where established performance companies come to experiment and innovate. Our past seasons have included new work from groundbreaking artists such as Dave Malloy, The Debate Society, the TEAM, Half Straddle, and Witness Relocation.

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