The Tank and Full Circle Theatre Co. Announce Public Domain Results

THE TANK & FULL CIRCLE THEATRE CO. announce public domain poll results. The Tank is located at 354 W. 45th Street, New York, NY 10036. A, C, E, to 42nd Street; 1, 2, 3, S, 7 to Time Square

Voting Results and Series Dates

Beginning in September, The Tank and Full Circle Theatre Company are producing a monthly staged reading series featuring plays in the public domain with no copyright restrictions. Once a play has entered public domain, it belongs to everyone. It becomes ours to do with as we please. As such, we thought it'd be cool if we offered up some of the creative decision-making to our audiences. We've selected our first seven plays, and seven directors with very different approaches. We had our audiences assign a play to each director. Polls closed on July 6th and the results are in!

September 23, 24 at 7:30pm: Garrett Zuercher directs Philoctetes by Sophocles
What do you get when you mix treachery, morality, wounds that won't heal, Heracles's bow and arrows, a chorus of sailors, and the fate of the Trojan War? The answer: a legend that three of the most celebrated Greek playwrights wrote about. After contracting an obnoxiously smelly snakebite on the way to Troy, Philoctetes finds himself abandoned by his shipmates en route. Ten years later, Odysseus returns with Neoptolemus to double down on his deceit by stealing Philoctetes's weapon, which Odysseus needs (according to prophecy) to win the never-ending war.

A deaf actor, director and playwright based in New York City, Garrett Zuercher's work has been seen around the world on stages and screens, both big and small. As a director and playwright, his primary goal is to develop new and innovative methods of combining spoken English and American Sign Language in theatrical works accessible to both hearing and deaf audiences.

October 21, 22 at 7:30pm: Andrew Scoville directs The Tragical Comedy of Dr. Faustus by Christopher Marlowe
"Ugly Hell, gape not! Come not Lucifer! I'll burn my books!-O Mephistophilis!" So ends what is regarded as the first ever dramatization of the Faust legend and possibly the most notorious tale about the appeal of sin. True, Faustus meets a dismembered end, but for 24 years he was the most powerful magician on Earth. Sure, according to Marlowe, the Doctor regrets his fateful choice, but this is Public Domain! So, was the deal worth it? What's more important: your soul or your fun?

Andrew Scoville is a Brooklyn based theater director, installation artist and video designer. For the past couple of years he has been fostering his relationship with technology in his theatrical work. Artistically he has relied heavily on movement, music and media, but still finds fascination in the complexities of human language. He strongly believes that theater is ultimate collaborative art and the most effective way to engage with artists of every medium at the same time. That is why he does it.

November 18, 19 at 7:30pm: Andrew Neisler directs Ivanov by Anton Chekhov
In 1887, Anton Chekhov was commissioned to write a four-act comedy. Two months later, Ivanov premiered in Moscow. In typical Chekhovian style, the play centers on a debt-ridden, Russian landowner whose wife contracts Tuberculosis. Instead of taking care of her, Nikolai Ivanov falls in love with the daughter of his moneylender. Hilarity ensues. Come witness how Chekhov masterfully evokes pity for his philandering hero.

Andrew Neisler is an Atlanta-raised, now Brooklyn-based theatre artist and director. Andrew has a strong belief in collaborative development and a conviction that an impassioned community is at the core of art and the process of making it. As a director, often using well-known and classic source texts, he seeks to find the narrative thread that runs deepest in the human condition. With a childlike imagination, and a sensibility for play, he strives to bring epic stories to life with an energetic innocence and personal freshness.

December 16, 17 at 7:30pm: Homunculus Mask Theater Company directs Rossum's Universal Robots (RUR) by Karel Capek
The Futurians are often credited with the popularization and development of what we today call science fiction, somewhere around 1940. Almost 20 years earlier, the word "robot" made its premiere in Karel ?apek's play, Rossum's Universal Robots. RUR is the first story of robot revolution, and we think it's really cool that it happened to be in play form. The robots in RUR are written to be played by actors, and are almost undetectable as robots to characters in the play.

Homunculus Mask Theater Company is dedicated to creating entirely original, image based, physical theater that re-examines mask work from a modern, more relevant perspective. Our shows incorporate hand crafted, grotesque character masks with music, movement, and nonverbal story telling to explore the dark beauty that exists within and between all of us. While retaining the basic fundamentals of traditional mask theater, Homunculus strives to breathe new life into the form by introducing elements of hip hop, optical illusion, and rock and roll. The result is a brand new style of theater unlike anything else being produced today.

February 17, 18 at 7:30pm: Michael Laibson directs Anna Christie by Eugene O'Neill
Over 50 years before Neil Young sang about a "Heart of Gold," Eugene O'Neill wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning play about a prostitute who could make nuns weep with her pureness. If you liked this story when it was called Pretty Woman, then you're bound to love it when the dialogue is actually well written. But whereas Julia ends up with a millionaire, Anna lands a sailor. Some would say that love conquers all, others would call that a raw deal.

Michael Laibson is an Emmy winning Producer of Daytime Dramas. Over the past twenty years, he has led the creative teams at All My Children, As the World Turns, Guiding Light, and Another World. He started in the business as an actor, working at many theatres in Los Angeles and New York, in productions ranging from classical to musical.Michael's love for Performance Arts comes from his zealous need to communicate how and why passionate relationships are what make life ... livable.

March 17, 18 at 7:30pm: Zoe Farmingdale directs Life is a Dream by Pedro Calderón de la Barca
"¿Qué es la vida? Un frenesí. ¿Qué es la vida? Una ilusión." Life is a Dream is Calderon's examination of the human experience and the conflict between free will and fate. In LIAD, A King imprisons his newborn son due to a prophecy that he'd grow up to ruin the country. When the prince is released as an adult, he kills a man and attacks a woman, and is quickly locked back up, drugged, and told the day's events were just a dream. When he is broken back out of prison by rebels, he must decide if he is in reality or just another dream, and if those labels even have any moral bearing.

Zoe Farmingdale writes: " In my approach to art, the following things are of utmost importance: SENSE OF HUMOR, awareness (of space, self, and theatre as a construction); voice and body control; listening; economy/brevity My taste includes: beauty + sadnesss, honesty, clear purpose, humility, ensemble work, funny that becomes dangerous My background makes me keenly aware of: feminism (in particular, opportunities for women performers); transitions as part of the performance; the space being used I have lots of training/experience with: dance + movement, improv comedy, music, voice."

April 21, 22 at 7:30pm: Rafael Gallegos directs Demetrius by Frederich Schiller
Demetrius is Schiller's unfinished work based on the ephemeral Russian czar between 1604 and 1605. Demetrius was one of three impostors who claimed to be the son of Ivan the Terrible. Only the first act was completed, in which Demetrius, who believes himself to be the assumed murdered, rightful heir to the throne of the Czars, initiates a war between Poland and Moscow. The act ends when his mother, banished by the seated Czar, receives the news that her son is not dead. Schiller died of Tuberculosis before he could finish the play. He dictated the action for the rest of the play, but we're leaving it up to interpretation.

Rafael Gallegos is a theatre and opera director based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Rafael is Team Captain/Artistic Director of Conspiracy Laboratory, aka ConLab, an interdisciplinary arts team that creates new work. Rafael currently serves as Theatre Curator for The Tank and directs the FRESH OUT THE BOX series of new experimental theatre. In his work he tries to approximate the liveness of a sporting event on the stage, and he works as if he were a dj remixing a track, sampling an original source and spinning it on its head.

About the Organizers
Founded in 2003, The Tank is a non-profit arts presenter whose mission is to provide a welcoming, creative, collaborative, and affordable environment for artists and activists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas. Through a wide range of low-cost, high-concept arts and public affairs programming, The Tank seeks to cultivate a new generation of audience for live performance, civic discourse, and the work of emerging artists.

 

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