The Civilians Announces Participants of 2013-14 R&D Group

The Civilians, the award-winning New York-based theatre company, announces the members of its 2013-14 R & D Group. The group's emerging and established artists were selected from over one hundred applicants. The R & D Group is comprised of artists from multiple theatrical disciplines. Each artist or creative team will develop an original work over the season. The artists and projects were selected to represent a range of different strategies for making new work from creative inquiry and research. This diversity of approach helps feed a culture of innovation in the group, making the R & D Group an effective lab of experimentation for the field of investigative theater.

Project-leaders for the 2013-14 R&D Group are:

Teddy Bergman (Director)

Maggie-Kate Coleman (Playwright)

Melissa Crespo (Director)

Sean Cunningham (Playwright)

Julianna Francis-Kelly (Playwright)

Morgan Gould (Director)

Erato A. Kremmyda (Composer)

Michael Liebenluft (Director)

Mary Kathryn Nagle (Playwright)

Jeanine Oleson (Interdisciplinary Artist)

Sam Pinkleton (Director/Choreographer)

Riti Sachdeva (Playwright)

Tommy Smith (Playwright)

Robbie Sublett (Actor/Writer)

Tony Torn (Director)

The group will meet biweekly for nine months, during which time each artist or team of artists will develop a new piece of theater through a creative investigation of a topic chosen by each artist. The creative process may include interviewing, community engagement, research, or other experimental methods of inquiry. Led by Artistic Director Steve Cosson and R&D Coordinator EllaRose Chary, the artists will share and discuss their methodologies and the resulting work. The process will culminate in a Reading Series in May of 2014. This is the fourth season of The Civilians' R&D Group, which has an open applications selection process. Details about applying for the 2014-15 Group will be announced in the spring of 2014.

Projects this year will investigate topics such as violence in the NFL, mental health in communities of color, and more described below.

Past group members have included César Alvarez (Futurity, The Lisps), Jason Grote (Smash, Habit), Jon Kern (The Simpsons, Modern Terrorism), Heidi Schreck (There Are No More Big Secrets), and Jackie Sibblies Drury (We Are Proud to Present a Presentation... and The Lark's Jerome New York Fellow).

Founded in 2001 by Steve Cosson, The Civilians is the center for investigative theater, supporting the development and production of new theater from creative inquiries into the most vital questions of the present. The Civilians has created fourteen original works that have been produced Off Broadway and in over 40 cities nationally and internationally, at theaters such as The Public Theater, Center Theatre Group, La Jolla Playhouse, A.R.T., HBO's US Comedy Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville's Humana Festival, London's Soho Theatre, and the Edinburgh Festival Fringe (Fringe First Award, 2006). The company's work In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards ran to critical-acclaim at The Irondale Center in Fort Greene and was one of the "10 Best Plays of 2010" in The New York Times, Time Out New York, and The New Yorker. This Beautiful City enjoyed a critically acclaimed Off-Broadway run at the Vineyard Theater in 2009 receiving Lucille Lortel, Drama League and Drama Desk nominations. Gone Missing ran for seven months at Off-Broadway's Barrow Street Theater and was cited by The New York Times as one of the "10 Best Plays of 2007." The Civilians received an Obie in 2004 in recognition of its accomplishments in its first two seasons of work.

The Civilians commission, Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play, is currently being produced by Playwrights Horizons to rave reviews. The Civilians will co-produceThe Great Immensity, a new play with music about the environmental crisis, with The Public Theater in spring, 2014. This project received a prestigious award from the National Science Foundation.

For more information, visit www.thecivilians.org.

BIOS:

Teddy Bergman (director) is a New York based director and actor. As an artistic director of Woodshed Collective, he has co-conceived productions of Twelve Ophelias (Director), The Confidence Man (Producer), and The Tenant (Director), among others. His work as a director has also been seen at Clubbed Thumb and Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. As an actor he originated the role of Fighting Prawn in the Tony Award Winning play Peter and the Starcatcher. He has also recently completed filming Fading Gigolo written and directed by John Turturro and starring John Turturro, Woody Allen, Sofia Vergara, Sharon Stone, and Liev Schrieber. Other acting work includes - Theater: Philip Goes Forth (The Mint), Sex Lives of Our Parents (2nd Stage), Peter and the Starcatcher (NYTW), Seven Minutes in Heaven (HERE), Hell House (St. Ann's), I.E.(The Flea), I Was Tom Cruise (Fringe NYC, Best Play Award), and regionally at Williamstown, Huntington, and La Jolla. TV: "Law and Order: SVU," "As The World Turns." Film work includes: Listen Up Phillip, Fading Gigolo, Hairbrained, Julie and Julia, Little Big League, Honeymoon in Vegas, and Hairbrained.

Project: nfl (with Tommy Smith)

Maggie-Kate Coleman (playwright) is a Brooklyn-based playwright, librettist and lyricist. Recent work includes Story of an Hour (Lyrics - Irondale); Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret (Lyrics -Superhero Clubhouse/Marfa Dialogues NYC); From a Childhood (Book & Lyrics - Montclair/NYC), all written in collaboration with Erato A. Kremmyda. Her musical Pop! (Book & Lyrics - Yale Rep/Studio Theatre/City Theatre Pittsburgh,etc - music by Anna K. Jacobs) garnered 3 Connecticut Critics Circle Awards and 7 Helen Hayes nominations. Current projects include book for Lightning Man (music by Jeffrey Dennis Smith, lyrics by Shoshana Greenberg), and lyrics for a song cycle with composer/lyricist Daniel Maté. She is a founder and co-curator of BASTARD PLAYGROUND, a monthly gathering for genre-flexible artists of live performance in residence at The Drama League, and is the Senior Program Representative for the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center. MFA NYU Tisch School of the Arts.

Project: Written as a site-specific work for an imaginary abandoned amusement park, untitled RADIOACTIVE project is a multidisciplinary music theatre piece anchored by the figure of Marie Curie through which we hope to examine the ways our lives have become inextricably linked with radiation and explore how love and radiation might be almost the same kind of force.

Melissa Crespo (director) is a NYC based freelance director. Recent directing credits include Chosen (HERE Arts), Sitcom for the Apocalypse (Lil Explosions Theatre Company) a site specific episodic theatre experience and recent NY Times rave, ¡Figaro! (90210) produced by Morningside Opera. She is currently developing a new play about gun violence and received her MFA in Directing from the New School for Drama. Selected assoc/asst credits: Bird in the Hand (Fulcrum Theater), Sarah Ruhl and Todd Almond'sMelancholy Play (13P), Camino Real (NYU), Everyday Rapture and Some Men (Second Stage). She was the Van Lier Directing Fellow at Second Stage Theatre and the Allen Lee Hughes Directing Fellow at Arena Stage.

Sean Cunningham (playwright)'s plays include Drama Desk-nominated God Hates the Irish, the two-part Sherlock Holmes cycle, and the musical Herbert Hoover: Tanned, Rested, and Ready to Rock (co-created with Alex Timbers) for a joint production of both the Page to Stage and Edge series at La Jolla Playhouse: each of these shows was fortunate enough to feature a score by Michael Friedman. He has written for a variety of publications on topics ranging from serial killers to the battle between rival porn parodies of The Jersey Shore, interviewed people varying from Oscar winners to Wu-Tang Clan members (specifically, Ghostface Killah), collaborated with President George H.W. Bush's former director of economic policy on a play, and been hired to write three screenplays (one of which required him to spend extensive time in Luxembourg--yes, it actually exists). A winner of the ASCAP Cole Porter Prize from Yale Drama School and a graduate of Princeton University, he is the Editorial Director for the recently launched theater magazine CHANCE and was once an editor at Maxim for Kids (honestly).

Project: Pisco is a brandy made from grapes beloved in Peru and Chile and barely known elsewhere. Now Peruvian companies are attempting to embed it in the American consciousness, so there will be five clear liquors served at every American bar: gin, vodka, tequila, rum, pisco. A look at the task of taking a Peruvian drink and somehow wedging it into America's mindset.

Juliana Francis-Kelly (playwright) is a writer, an actor, and a doll maker. As an actor, she has originated roles for legendary and emerging experimental artists, including Reza Abdoh (as a founding member of the internationally renowned Dar A Luz Company); Richard Foreman (for whom she received an OBIE Award); and for Anne Bogart, Karin Coonrod, Young Jean Lee, Alec Duffy, Pavol Liska and Kelly Copper, Lear deBessonet, Normandy Sherwood, Hal Hartley, Charlotte Braithwaite, Marie Losier in collaboration with Guy Maddin, Bryan Doerries (for Outside the Wire/Theater of War), and David Michalek (Lincoln Center Festival). Her own plays have been produced in the U.S. and Europe. Her first play, Go Go Go, was directed by Anne Bogart for PS 122, and reprised at The Institute of Contemporary Art for London International Festival of Theater. Other plays include Box, directed by Tony Torn and performed at The Women's Project, PS 122, and The Fontanon Festival in Italy; The Baddest Natashas, also directed by Torn and performed at The Ontological Theater and published by Open City Magazine; Saint Latriceeen, at PS 122 (for which she received a Sundance Screenwriters Fellowship.) Ms. Kelly is also a doll maker. One of her dolls is installed at the American Museum of Natural History's Interactive Educational Wing.

Project: The Reenactors. An actress gets cast in a play about the sole survivor of a teenage suicide pact. When she discovers mid-rehearsal that the play is based on a true story, she sets out to find the play's "real girl", sparking a darkly comic exploration of stories in art: about who gets to tell them, why they are important, and how they get told.

Morgan Gould (director) is a freelance director who has previously held staff positions at Lark Play Development Center, Cape Cod Theatre Project, and Young Jean Lee's Theater Company, where she co-created Untitled Feminist Show (BAC/PS 122) and worked on the premieres of Lear (Soho Rep) and We're Gonna Die (Joe's Pub/ 13P/ LCT3) and tours of Pullman Wa and The Shipment. Morgan is also a New Georges affiliated artist and an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Director's Lab, as well as the Ensemble Studio Theatre and Playwrights Horizons Directing Residency Programs. She was an 11-12 Artist-In-Residence with playwright Matthew Paul Olmos and a 12-13 Space Grant Recipient at Brooklyn Arts Exchange (BAX). Morgan also creates her own work with her own company, Morgan Gould & Friends, whose work has been seen at Dixon Place, The Brooklyn Lyceum, HERE Arts Center, Ars Nova, CAP21, BAX, New Georges, and The Culture Project. Morgan likes theater that doesn't like theater.

Erato A. Kremmyda (composer) is a New York based composer, originally from Athens (Greece). Currently focusing on theatre and film, she works across genres and countries. Theatre (selected): Agamemnon (Irondale, NYC); The Dot (Bios, Athens); We Are Theatre (Cherry Lane Theatre, NYC); Wagon Wheel (Lowe Foundation Development Award, Planet Connections, NYC); Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret (Superhero Clubhouse/ Marfa Dialogues NYC);Kassia (Κ.Ε.Τ, Αthens); Vanya (2 Great Jones, NYC); Revolution Trilogy (Columbia Stages, NYC); From a Childhood (Montclair, NYC). Film (recent): Τerra Tradita (Italy), 500 kilometers to summer (China), Three Candles (NYC, Olympia Dukakis). Erato is a Fulbright fellow, a core member of Bastard Playground (Drama League) and a member of the Dramatists Guild and ASCAP. Graduate: Tisch (M.F.A/scholar), Steinhardt, NYU (M.M), Athens University, Athens Conservatory (Distinction). www.eratoAkremmyda.com

Project: untitled RADIOACTIVE project (with Maggie-Kate Coleman and Sam Pinkleton)

Michael Liebenluft (director) directed Gold No Trade and Mud/Bone Collective's bilingual Mandarin/English production of The Subtle Body by Megan Campisi at Dixon Place. The production has been awarded a TCG Global Connections Grant to tour to the Shanghai Dramatic Arts Center in November 2013. Michael recently served as a directing resident at Playwrights Horizons where he assistant directed the New York premieres of The Whale, The Flick, and Far From Heaven. As a directing fellow at American Theater Company in Chicago, Michael was a main contributor to the revision of columbinus, a documentary play about the 1999 shootings in Littleton, Colorado. From 2010 to 2012, he served as an instructor at the Shanghai Theatre Academy where he directed North Bank Suzhou Creek, a new musical about Jewish refugees in Shanghai during WWII. Michael graduated from Yale University as a double major in Theater Studies and East Asian Studies. He is a 2010 recipient of a China Fulbright Research Grant as well as a member of the 2013 Lincoln Center Director's LaB. Michael is developing a stage adaptation of Sholem Abramovitsch's Benjamin the Third for the Target Margin Theater Lab, and he is collaborating with choreographer Megan Kendzior on Treats, a dance theater piece for the Bowery Arts+Sciences series.

Mary Kathryn Nagle (playwright) was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, and an honorary member of the Ponca Tribe of Nebraska. She graduated summa cum laude from Tulane Law School where she was the recipient of the Judge John Minor Wisdom Award. Upcoming productions include AMERINDA's presentation of Miss Lead at 59E59 from January 13-26, 2014. And on October 14, 2013, her play Sliver of a Full Moon will be presented at the Annual Convention of the National Congress of American Indians in Tulsa, Oklahoma-in celebration of the recent passage of the Violence Against Women Act and the Act's recognition of American Indian Nations' inherent sovereignty to protect their citizens on tribal lands. Nagle is a member of the 2013 Emerging Writers Group at The Public Theater, where she wrote and developed Manahatta. Manahatta was recently featured in The Public Theater's 2013 NEW WORK NOW! new play festival.

Project: An investigation of the crossroads between climate change and community. How is climate change altering the landscape of the American community?

Jeanine Oleson (interdisciplinary artist) is an artist whose practice incorporates interdisciplinary uses of performance, photography, film/video, and publicly-based work, often collaboratively. She attended the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Rutgers University. Oleson has exhibited at venues including: Exit Art, NY; Beta Local, San Juan, PR; X-Initiative, NY; Grand Arts, Kansas City, MO; Socrates Sculpture Park, Queens, NY; L.A.C.E., Los Angeles; Monya Rowe Gallery, NY; Samson Projects, Boston, MA; John Connelly Presents, NY; H&R Block Artspace, Kansas City Museum of Art, MO; Participant, Inc., NY; MOMA/PS 1, Queens, NY; Pumphouse Gallery, London; White Columns, NY; and Art in General, NY. Oleson has received a Franklin Furnace Fellowship and a Jerome Foundation Travel and Study Grant in 2009; Brooklyn Arts Council Community Arts Regrant, 2008 and 2009; and Professional Development Fellowship, College Art Association, 1999-2000. She's also been in residence at Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture and Smack Mellon Studio Program, NY. Oleson is an Assistant Professor of Photography in the Department of Art, Media, and Technology at Parsons the New School for Design. www.jeanineoleson.com

Project: A performance and exhibition about connoisseurship in a neoliberal culture increasingly alienated from affective enthusiasm told through objects, video, performance and public programs. Current research is: Catherine the Great's librettos, interviews with fairly extreme cultural consumers in NYC, theories about animal communication, GMO/bio-hoarding, and the history of Strauss' Ariadne auf Naxos.

Sam Pinkleton (director) is a New York City-based director and choreographer. Recent choreography credits include Mr. Burns, A Post-Electric Play (Playwrights Horizons), Natasha, Pierre, and the Great Comet of 1812 (Kazino), Buyer and Cellar (Barrow Street/Rattlestick), Spring Awakening (Olney Theater Center), Love Machine (Incubator), and The Material World (Dixon Place). He is co-director of The Dance Cartel's long-running ONTHEFLOOR at the Ace Hotel and was Associate Director for Nicky Silver's The Lyons on Broadway. He is a core company member of dance-theater company Witness Relocation and teaches Bustin' Moves and other lowbrow dance classes at NYU/Playwrights Horizons. As a director and/or choreographer, Sam has also developed new work with the Vineyard Theatre, The O'Neill, Joe's Pub, Primary Stages, Atlantic Theater Company, Ars Nova, Dixon Place, La MaMa, NYU, and Pittsburgh City Theatre. Current/Upcoming projects include choreographing Marie Antoinette (Soho Rep), directing Fix Me, Jesus (Abingdon Theater Company), and choreographing the stage adaptation of Percy Jackson & The Olympians: The Lightning Thief for Theatreworks USA. www.sampinkleton.com

Project: untitled RADIOACTIVE project (with Maggie-Kate Coleman and Erato A. Kremmyda)

Riti Sachdeva (playwright) is a theatre maker, dancer, and cultural worker. Acting highlights include work with Disney Channel, HBO, National Hispanic Cultural Center, and performances of her original plays in LA, Toronto, and NYC. Her work has been developed and/or produced by The Joseph Papp Public Theater, Minneapolis PlayWrights Center, Kennedy Center, MT Works, Planet Connections Festival, Center for Regional Studies (UNM), and the Lincoln Center Director's Lab. Sachdeva is primary instigator ofmidNite's cHiLd Productions. http://www.facebook.com/midniteschild

Project: I've heard it said that being around people who are depressed, paranoid, or compulsive makes one depressed, paranoid, or compulsive; that insanity is contagious. How can we make possible that love, laughter, and faith be just as contagious and be strategies of support that create systems of wellness? How do systems of racism, misogyny, economics, and violence trigger symptoms and effect recovery of Mental Disorders?

Tommy Smith (playwright)'s plays include Zero, (Ensemble Studio Theatre; d. Billy Carden), PTSD (E.S.T.; d. Billy Carden), White Hot (HERE Arts Center; d. May Adrales & West Of Lenin, d. Braden Abraham), Pigeon (E.S.T.; d. Billy Carden), The Wife (Access Gallery; d. May Adrales), Sextet (Washington Ensemble Theatre; d. Roger Benington), Caravan Man (Williamstown Theatre Festival, music & lyrics by Gabriel Kahane, d. Kip Fagan), Demon Dreams(Magic Futurebox, music by DJ Spooky, d. Kevin Laibson), A Day in Dig Nation (PS 122, co-written and d. Michael McQuilken), Air Conditioning (Eugene O'Neill Playwrights Conference; d. Steve Cosson), among others.

Project: NFL Football players have become embroiled in criminal activity on a pace and scale unparalleled in professional sports. Each year, dozens of players - Aaron Hernandez, Nate Newton, Pacman Jones, Jovan Belcher, Ray Lewis - commit crimes ranging from petty to horrific. A docudrama, nfl follows the real-life stories of a handful of these athletes, charting their progress from innocent sportsmen to unhinged criminals.

Robbie Sublett (playwright) - As a writer, You Better Sit Down: tales from my parents' divorce produced off Off-Broadway at The Flea and at the Williamstown Theatre Festival (published by Dramatists Play Services) and the solo show Calacas produced at Clurman Festival of the Arts in NY (optioned by Amanda Lipitz Productions). Additionally, multiple sketch comedy shows at the Upright Citizen's Brigade. As an actor, Broadway: Other Desert Cities (Lincoln Center). Off-Broadway/NY: You Better Sit Down; American River (Lesser America, NYIT Best Actor nom.); American Songbook (Jazz at Lincoln Center); Perfect Harmony; Gone Missing; Mabou Mines' FINN; Zayd Dohrn's Long Way Go Down. Regional: Emerson College; Williamstown; Chicago Shakespeare; NJ Shakespeare. Film: I Don't Know How She Does It; White Irish Drinkers; Hachi: A Dog's Tale; Mystery Team; Lifelines. TV: "Perception"; "Golden Boy"; "The Good Wife"; "Speed Racer: The Next Generation"; "Casper's Scare School"; "Team Umizoomi"; "Video Game Princess" animated pilot. The Civilians: Associate Artist. NYU: BFA-Stella Adler.

Project: In May 2003, a special needs student named Ruben Vela finally graduated from Bishop High School at the age of 20. Two months later-much to the shock of his small Texas town-this beloved local fixture was dead. State and local authorities ruled Ruben's mysterious death accidental, but town lore to date hints that perhaps something far more troubling was responsible. East On Fourth Street investigates what exactly did or did not happen to Ruben in this quaint South-Texan town.

Tony Torn (director) is an actor and director known for his extensive work with Reza Abdoh and Richard Foreman, and for being the founding director of Reverend Billy and The Church Of Stop Shopping. Other directing credits include The Red Rose (an adaption of Shakespeare's History Plays focusing on Queen Margret), Two By Synge, Party Time and This Strange Attachment (Leopold Zappler), The Thirteenth Sunday in Ordinary Time and Sop Doll! (Lee Ann Brown), Door Wide Open (based on the letters of Jack Kerouac and Joyce Johnson), The Baddest Natashas and Box (Juliana Francis Kelly). He is also an award winning filmmaker whose feature, Lucky Days ( Co-Directed with his sister Angelica) won best film at the Coney Island International Film Festival. Tony recently made his Broadway debut as Rusty Trawler in Truman Capote's Breakfast At Tiffany's, and is currently developing an adaptation of Alfred Jarry's Ubu trilogy featuring the music of cult band Pere Ubu.

Project: The Reenactors (with Juliana Francis-Kelly)

To post a comment, you must register and login.