The Tank Announces 2019-2020 Season

 

The Tank will present its 2019-20 season at 312 West 36th Street in its 98-seat proscenium and 56-seat blackbox spaces. This season marks The Tank's 2nd anniversary in its home on West 36th Street and embodies the company's mission to break down economic barriers and invest in emerging artists by sustaining an incubator and home for the creation and presentation of their work.

After five years of leadership, co-Artistic Director Rosalind Grush has left The Tank. Her partner Meghan Finn takes on the role as the company's sole Artistic Director. Finn has guided the artistic vision of The Tank since 2015, first as a co-producer and director then later as part of the company's artistic leadership. Having led the company through the move to The Tank's new location, and overseen its rapid growth over the past two seasons, Finn now enthusiastically takes the helm as Artistic Director.

She is joined by newly-appointed Managing Producer Danielle Monica Long King. Danielle was most recently the Director of Cultural Programs at Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, where for the past 7 ½ years, she has focused on making space for artists of all disciplines and career stages to experiment, hone their creative practice, and foster dialogue with the public by presenting their work in nontraditional spaces, most notably in the annual River To River Festival, for which King has been curator and producer. She brings to The Tank outstanding leadership in and knowledge of the field as well as passion for supporting emerging artists, multidisciplinary practices, and facilitating experimentation and dialogue.

"The Tank is one of the last places in Manhattan where emerging performing artists can afford to make their work," says Meghan Finn, Tank Artistic Director. "As we move into the company's exciting 17th Season, I cannot imagine a better partner than Danielle Monica Long King to join me in leading this organization into 2020."

Tonya Pinkins' Truth and Reconciliation: Womyn Working it Out!

Lucy Thurber, Glory Kadigan, Carmen Rivera, Nandita Shenoy, Tonya Pinkins, Kristine M Reyes, Jasmine McLeish, Angela Sclafani, Jaisey Bates, and Nikkole Salter, directed by Tonya Pinkins.

October 3 - 6, 2019

Tonya Pinkins' Truth and Reconciliation: Womyn Working it Out! is a collective piece of theatre that includes multiple 10-minute plays and songs by and about womyn. Each play contains different ways womyn oppress each other and how we find ways to heal.

The Séance Machine

Written by EllaRose Chary & Brandon James Gwinn, Directed by Julia Sears

October 10 - 31, 2019

Do you believe in time travel? Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in...science? What if you could listen to the voices of the past as easily as you listen to your favorite podcast? EllaRose Chary, Brandon James Gwinn, Kimberly Hyacinthe and The Tank will present a unique a theatrical demonstration - the unveiling of visionary scientist Dr. Carolyn Blau's Mechanical Wave Reassembly Hypercardioid Sequencing Model. Join us at the forefront of science and sound as we introduce the world to the work of Dr. Blau and her associates.

BrandoCapote

Written by Sara Farrington, Directed by Reid Farrington

November 1 - 30, 2019

BrandoCapote is a multimedia dance theater piece inspired by Noh Theater, Brando's filmography and a 1957 New Yorker magazine profile of the actor by Truman Capote. Disguised as an interview, BrandoCapote evolves into our own version of In Cold Blood, Capote's true crime masterwork. In BrandoCapote, like In Cold Blood, Capote puts a human face on an inhuman act, exposing generations of toxic masculinity, abuse and violence, while exorcising the demons of American celebrity.

In Blue

Written & Directed by Ran Xia

December 4 - 15, 2019

Theirs is a friendship measured in 28 postcards, 5 horses painted blue, and all those letters from war. On her posthumous search of Franz Marc's missing masterpiece, the Tower of Blue Horses, Else Lasker-Schüler must learn to let go.

Or, An Astronaut Play

Written by Johnny G. Lloyd, Directed by William Steinberger

January 4 - 26, 2020

The Astronaut School has four students - but only one can actually make it to outer space. Who has what it takes? Does anyone even know what it takes? Following the experiences of Daria, an intense, focused student, Claire, a woman struggling to fully realize her own ambitions, Paul, a hobbyist, and Tom, a straight, white, American man, Or, An Astronaut Play explores who gets access to the space they want to enter, why, and what's left for the rest of us.

REALLY, REALLY GORGEOUS

Written by Nick Mecikalski, Directed by Miranda Haymon

January 23 - February 9, 2020

Enter America's disgusting and sensational future-everything is underwater, but the TVs still

work. In a moldy shack, two women slosh through life together, each the other's only remaining companion, sharing dreams of stardom and power that will never, ever, ever come true. Except when they do. Directed by Miranda Haymon (In the Penal Colony at The Tank, Next Door @ NYTW), Nick Mecikalski's Really Really Gorgeous traverses the dystopian, the outlandish, and the magical to arrive at the collision between love, celebrity... and the apocalypse.

Birthday in the Bronx

Written by Paul Hufker, Directed by Michaela Escarcega

February 20 - March 8, 2020

Rocky is a Latina from the Bronx. She's hella good at field hockey. Good enough to leave 8th grade in the Bronx and go to a fancy white people high school where presidents are made. The white girls on the team seem dirty. Angrier with every goal she scores. Meanwhile, two white, straight, male sports radio hosts have been following Rocky's career. Happy Birthday. The production is based on a true story and written by Paul Hufker, directed by Tank Resident Director, Michaela Escarcega.

I am Nobody

Written by Greg Kotis, Directed by Meghan Finn

March 5 - 29, 2020

When an unhinged computer chip engineer threatens to destroy the world, his colleague is dispatched to find him and bring him home for counseling. Directed by Tank Artistic Director Meghan Finn (DOOMOCRACY, The Offending Gesture) the production is written and composed by Greg Kotis (Urinetown) and co-produced with Theatre of the Apes.

War Stories

Written by Marthe Gold

May 7 - 24, 2020

World War II New York: A restless musician who champions labor causes and a resolute pacifist fall in love but find there are battles to fight both in love and in war. Inspired by true events.

Surfacing

Conceived by Kimi Maeda

June 4 - 21, 2020

Surfacing is a portrait of a creature that is a breathing assemblage of rooms. Each of the rooms, collected from different points in time and space from Maeda's life, tells a story of love or loss. The creature's continuous effort to balance the memories of the generations that have come before with the as yet unwritten future is what gives it life and allows it to carve a place for itself in the present. Kimi Maeda's intimate and cross-disciplinary performances deal with memory, home, and trans-cultural identity. Her piece ephemera trilogy, a collection of sand drawing and shadow performances, was coproduced by The Tank and nominated for a 2017 Drama Desk Award. She was the recipient of USITT's 2005 Rose Brand Award in Scenic Design, and her costume design for Polaroid Stories was chosen for display in the 2007 Prague Quadrennial. She is currently based in Shimane, Japan.

Meghan Finn is the Artistic Director of The Tank. She is currently directing the World Premiere of Mac Wellman's The Invention of Tragedy at The Flea. Previously she directed the World Premieres of his plays The Offending Gesture (The Tank/3LD) and 3,2's; or AFAR (Dixon Place) as well as several other productions of his work. Other highlights include: WHEN WE WENT ELECTRONIC by Caitlyn Saylor Stephens (The Tank); Manufacturing Mischief: A Noam Chomsky Puppet Play (Pedro Reyes at The Tank, MIT, Carnegie Mellon, The Power Plant Art Gallery/Canadian Stage, Serpentine Gallery London, Museo Jumex Mexico City, Chicago International Puppet Theater Festival, The Night of Philosophy at the Brooklyn Public Library, the Savannah College of Art and Design); DOOMOCRACY (Pedro Reyes for Creative Time); American Power by Mitch Epstein and Erik Friedlander (V&A London, The Wexner Center),The Service Road by Erin Courtney (Adhesive Theater Project); CHARLESES by Carl Holder (The Tank);Sam's Tea Shack by Sam Soghor and Ben Gassman (The Tank). She has a BA in Theater from The University of Southern California and an MFA in Directing from Brooklyn College. www.thetanknyc.org

Danielle ML King is committed to championing boundary-blurring, forward-thinking artists and the development of new, live, performance. With Lower Manhattan Cultural Council (2012-2019) Danielle designed and shepherded programs aimed at helping artists develop their practice and conduct research, and curated and produced platforms for artists to share their work with the public and transform public space, most notably through the annual River To River Festival. She also has supported the development and production of new plays at The Public Theater, Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, and Actors Theatre of Louisville, and for Clubbed Thumb, Siti Company, 13P, P73, and the TEAM. She spent six summers facilitating new play development at the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Playwrights Conference and, with Artistic Director Wendy C. Goldberg, designed and launched the National Directors Fellowship, which supports early-career directors across the country. Danielle is a graduate of the American Express Leadership Academy and was a 2018 Distinguished Speaker at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds a B.F.A. from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts and a M.A. in Arts Administration from Columbia University.

The Tank is a non-profit arts presenter and producer. Our mission is to remove economic barriers from the creation of new work for artists launching their careers and experimenting within their art form, and to do so in an environment that is inclusive and accessible. We serve over 2,000 artists every year in over 800 performances, and work across all disciplines, including theater, comedy, dance, film, music, puppetry, and storytelling. The heart of our services is providing free performance space in our two-stage theater complex Manhattan, and we also offer a suite of other services such as free rehearsal space, promotional support, artist fees, and much more. We support work at all phases of development, from readings and residencies to fully-produced world premieres. We keep ticket prices affordable and view our work as democratic, opening up both the creation and attendance of the arts to all.

Recent Tank-produced work includes Drama Desk-nominated productions Ada/Ava (2016), youarenowhere (2016), The Paper Hat Game (2017), the ephemera trilogy (2017), and The Hunger Artist (2018), as well as New York Times Critics' Picks OPEN by Crystal Skillman, directed by Jessi D. Hill (2019), Red Emma & The Mad Monk by Alexis Roblan (2018), directed by Katie Lindsay (2018), and The Offending Gesture by Mac Wellman, directed by Meghan Finn (2016). www.thetanknyc.org

 

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