The Tank Moves to New Home for 2017-18 Season, Featuring YOKAI, PILLOWTALK and More

The Tank will present their 2017/18 Season out of a new home at 312 West 36th Street which boasts two theater spaces, a 98 seat proscenium and 56 seat blackbox. Building upon The Tank's 14-year legacy of providing a home for new work by emerging artists, The Tank is thrilled to bring their producing and presenting together under one roof.

Following the success of recent Tank productions (critically acclaimed and Drama Desk-Nominated works like ADA/AVA, YOUARENOWHERE, THE PAPER HAT GAME and THE EPHEMERA TRILOGY as well as the 2017 premiere of A HUNGER ARTIST) The Tank will bring its multi-disciplinary presented programming together with fully-produced new theatrical works to its new venue, at 312 West 36th Street. This marks a moment of major growth for The Tank, which will now be able to more than double its already prolific year-round programming and robust services for emerging artists in Manhattan.

The Tank is helmed by Co-Artistic Director Rosalind Grush, who has seen the company through the last four years of growth and successes. She is joined by newly-appointed Co-Artistic Director Meghan Finn (dir. DOOMOCRACY), who joined in April after co-producing ADA/AVA, YOUARENOWHERE, THE PAPER HAT GAME and Mac Wellman's THE OFFENDING GESTURE (which she also directed), during her time as Associate Artistic Director of 3-Legged Dog.

"This is a truly transformative moment for The Tank," says Co-Artistic Director Rosalind Grush. "We are one of the few arts organizations whose model is based on more. More artists bringing their ideas to the table makes for a better, deeper, more complex conversation. More shows means increased opportunities for innovation, for experimentation, for polished work pushing the boundaries of what you'd think is possible in a theater, for scrappy passionate work created in a week in response to what's happening right now in our country. More means inclusiveness. More means that you'll see work here that wouldn't or couldn't happen anywhere else. And even with more, even with having seen literally over 1,000 performances during my tenure here, I'm still constantly surprised, delighted, disturbed, and forever changed by the performances on our stages."

"This move and the expansion of our programming and services that comes with it represents our commitment to more artists, more art, more ideas - each unique, each political, each the lifeblood of what makes New York City a global cultural center." -Co-Artistic Director Meghan Finn

---

YOKAI, Remedy for Despair

Created by Award-winning Norwegian Company, The Krumple

United States Premiere, September 11-24

In a desolate space stands a group of curious looking people. With miniature trees and paper seagulls in their pockets they begin to recreate the world as they see it. A premeditated car accident, a ravenous cod and a dreadful Christmas Eve are part of the chaos created by the Y?kai. Combining dance, magic, poetry and sheer stupidity, The Krumple tells a contemporary tale of our attempts to find hope in moments of despair.

Sam's Tea Shack

Written by Ben Gassman, Directed by Meghan Finn

Featuring Sam Soghor with Design by Normandy Sherwood

New York Premiere, September 12-October 1

Steeped in a reverence for the F train as the new Silk Road, SAM'S TEA SHACK is a part-Ashkenazi Jewish boy's fantasy he is amongst is ancestors: central Asian nomads. In this malleable exchange between audience and Sam, he serves tea, talks about the neighborhood, Persian emperors, going to high school with Lin Manuel Miranda, dumplings and samosas, and whatever is on your mind--it's a piece about cultural identity vs. national identity. It's a comedy.

Wood Calls Out to Wood

Written by Corinne Donly, Directed by Polly Noonan

World Premiere, November 2017

An adaptation of Hieronymus Bosch's 15th century triptych "The Garden of Earthly Delights," Wood Calls Out to Wood is a painting translated into a play, a landscape turned into a soundscape. It is a precise and deeply silly experiment in the possibilities of combination--of single syllables combining to make words and single people combining to make couples. The audience first encounters the play as they would a picture hanging on a distant wall, in large swaths of color and pattern. When taking a closer look, however, strange Boschian beings begin to emerge: Two horses in a neigh-scent relationship, a vacant treehouse in need of a tenant, and a man with a grape for a head.

PILLOWTALK

Conceived & Created by Kyoung's Pacific Beat

Presented as part of Exponential Festival

World Premiere, January 2018

PILLOWTALK is an intimate two-character drama centered around Sam and Buck, a newlywed interracial gay couple. Using inventive staging incorporating elements of ballet's pas de deux, the play examines the evolving values of gay marriage and asks whether queer communities of color can truly celebrate marriage equality in times of #BlackLivesMatter?

[Flying] Dutchman: A Rite

Presented by Theatre of War

February 2018

Amiri Baraka's 1964 text serves as foundation for a timely reconstruction examining eloquent blind fury, racial hysteria, sexual hysteria, and white obsession with silencing the black voice/body. (Flying) Dutchman is part ceremony, clown show, rite, and seance created to navigate the haunted, outer reaches of the human psyche. And to conjure up Baraka himself for marching orders, words of wisdom, our final wake up call. Join Theatre Of War as we wipe away the dust from this artifact of a play, hoping it will serve as talisman and compass in these abnormal times.

Leisure, Labor, Lust

Written by Sara Farrington, Directed by Marina McClure

New York Premiere, April 2018

A triptych presented as an evening-length work, LEISURE, LABOR, LUST is inspired by the worlds of Edith Wharton and Jacob Riis explores the class system, sexual politics, decadence, and treatment of mental illness in 1907 New York. When performed in succession, all three parts present a truly American story that transcends time, reminding us that classism, racism, and sexism have always been woven into the fabric of American life and evolve as we do.

SHEEP #1

Created by Nekaa Lab and Sachiyo Takahashi

New York Premiere, May 2018

Inspired by Saint-Exupéry's writings, sheep #1 is a story of our protagonist - a tiny sheep - who starts its journey in search of the meaning of life. With ultimate simplicity and bold abstraction, this piece was conceived in 2006 as the first Microscopic Live Cinema-Theatre experience crafted by Sachiyo Takahashi. Performed in real-time, the storytelling magnifies miniature worlds, projected onto a large screen. A tabletop in front of the audience serves as a stage where Takahashi manipulates small characters and props. Through the use of manual visual effects accompanied by original soundtrack, the audience is invited to an intimate dream-like experience enhanced through the combination of cinematic presentation and live operation.

Manufacturing Mischief: The Adventures of Professor Chomsky VS. The Print-A-Friend Menace (Working Title)

Conceived by Pedro Reyes

Written by Paul Hufker, Directed by Meghan Finn

World Premiere, June 2018

The latest puppet endeavor from Mexico City-based visual artist, Pedro Reyes, the inaugural Dasha Zhukova Distinguished Visiting Artist at MIT Center for Art, Science & Technology where he has been developing the piece. Pedro has been working with puppets since 2008, using philosophers and revolutionaries from different periods in history as protagonists. While at MIT, Reyes met with Noam Chomsky and was granted his permission to do a puppet play using him as the main character. This piece will incorporate the Noam Chomsky puppet as well as 23 puppets from his past works. To create this work, Pedro will collaborate with the team from his recent celebrated production of DOOMOCRACY produced by CreativeTime, writer Paul Hufker, and director Meghan Finn.

---

The Tank is a non-profit arts presenter serving emerging artists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas and forms of expression. We serve over 1,000 artists every year in over 400 performances, and work across all disciplines, including theater, comedy, dance, film, music, public affairs, and storytelling. Our goal is to foster an environment of inclusiveness and remove the burden of cost from the creation of new work for artists launching their careers and experimenting within their art form. The heart of our services is providing free performance space in our 98 seat proscenium and 56 seat blackbox that we operate in Manhattan, and we also offer a suite of other services such as free rehearsal space, promotional support, artist fees, and much more. We keep ticket prices affordable and view our work as democratic, opening up both the creation and attendance of the arts to all. Since its founding in 2003, artists who have come through The Tank include Alex Timbers, Amy Herzog, Lucy Alibar, Mike Daisey, Reggie Watts, Kyle Abraham, Andrew Bujalski, We Are Scientists, and tens of thousands of others. Visit www.thetanknyc.org.

Rosalind Grush (Co-Artistic Director) has been leading The Tank for nearly four years. During her tenure, she has overseen more than 1,000 multi-disciplinary performances of new work by emerging artists. In addition to spearheading countless programming initiatives, she produced four Drama Desk nominated shows in the Unique Theatrical Experience category, and four New York Times Critics' Picks. She has also worked in various administrative capacities with Obie Award-winning theater company The Civilians, Playwrights Realm, Ars Nova, and more. She has been a script-reader for SPACE on Ryder Farm, Playwrights Realm, and The Relentless Theater Award. She has been on grant panels for the Department of Cultural Affairs of the City of New York, Brooklyn Arts Council, and A.R.T./NY's Nancy Quinn Fund. She has been a guest speaker for classes at the Columbia Graduate School of the Arts, the Columbia University Internship Experience, Bard College, Baruch College, and others. She has written several scripts that have been read or produced at The Tank. She is a graduate of Columbia University and grew up in Los Angeles.

Meghan Finn (Co-Artistic Director) is a director based in Brooklyn, NY who took over as Co-Artistic Director of The Tank in April of 2017. Prior to that she was the Associate Artistic Director of 3LD where she co-presented The Tank's celebrated 2015/16 Season. She recently she directed DOOMOCRACY by artist Pedro Reyes for Creative Time at the Brooklyn Army Terminal. Other recent credits include: CHARLESES by Carl Holder (The Tank at The Brick for Save & Print), Sam's Tea Shack by Ben Gassman and Sam Soghor (The Tank at STK), The Offending Gesture by Mac Wellman (The Tank/3LD at The Connelly); American Power performed by photographer Mitch Epstein and Composer/Cellist Erik Friedlander at the V&A London and The Wexner Center, Columbus, Ohio; Gary Winter's DAREDEVIL at The Brick; The Downtown Loop by Ben Gassman (3LD/3D+ Productions/Teeth of Tooth Atelier); Take Me Home by Alexandra Collier set in a taxi cab (Incubator Arts Project/LPR), The Service Road by Erin Courtney, Motel Cherry by Peggy Stafford (Summerworks Clubbed Thumb/New Georges HERE ) and 3 2's; or AFAR by Mac Wellman (Dixon Place). BA USC, MFA Brooklyn College.

Pictured: Co-Artistic Directors Rosalind Grush and Meghan Finn at the 2017 Drama Desk Awards

To post a comment, you must register and login.