The Motor Company Launches New Site Specific Laundry Play Festival!

LAUNDRYFEST will make its world premiere at The Soap Box, 110 Saratoga Ave, Brooklyn NY 11233. The show will be comprised of site specific and site responsive pieces in an actual laundromat. The festival, produced by The Motor Company (Lillian Meredith, Artistic Director; Jessica Schmidt, Producing Director), will feature new short plays and musicals by Sean Pollock, Billy Recce, Ben Holbrook and Cherry Lou Sy. Directors include NJ Agwuna, David Kahawaii, Phoebe Padget, and Lillian Meredith. The festival is co-curated and co-produced by Sean Pollock. The performance schedule is Friday, June 8th, Saturday June 9th, Friday, June 15th, and Saturday June 16th at 9:00PM; Sunday June 10th and Sunday June 17th at 7:00PM. Admission is free of charge to the public.

"The Motor Company's mission is to use public spaces as the impetus for free theatrical events. I believe that live theater, told in and for familiar places, can augment our relationship to our city and surroundings," Lillian Meredith, Artistic Director and Founder of the Motor Company, said.

"LaundryFest is the latest addition to our site-responsive productions, including our long-running Communal Spaces community garden play festival and our winter series, Intimate Bar Plays. Unlike the gardens and the bars of our other festivals, the laundromat is not built for leisure; it is a space for chores, a place where people come to do work, and yet it also fosters community and connection - our laundromats, like our bodegas or our playgrounds, are all familiar and yet uniquely our own. We belong to these spaces, and they belong to us, and our neighborhoods thrive because we come together and spend time with one another, even when we're busy. LaundryFest is a celebration of chores, of work, and of New York and New Yorkers".

"I'm so excited for this special opportunity to bring the arts to the community," said Waleed Cope, owner of the Soap Box. "I'm a big supporter of local artists and I'm glad to provide a space for this kind of work. I've never seen theatre in a laundromat before, but I guess there's a first time for everything."

LILLIAN MEREDITH (Artistic Director/Director/Curator) is a director and theater artist from New York City. She has developed new plays with playwrights, directors, and devising ensembles for a variety of companies and venues, including Theatre for a New Audience, Soho Rep, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, Dixon Place, Culture Project, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Columbia University, UglyRhino, Galapagos Art Space, and the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center National Playwrights Festival, among many others. She is an alumna of Vassar College and the National Theater Institute, a former directing intern with Actors Theatre of Louisville, and a member of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, and the inaugural Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship. She is currently pursuing her MFA in Directing from Brooklyn College.

Jessica Schmidt (Producing Director/Curator) is a Brooklyn-based freelance producer and arts marketer. Recent producing credits include Danger Signals (New Ohio Theatre) and Red Wednesday (Mabou Mines) with Built for Collapse. She has also worked on projects at Dixon Place, HERE, BRIC, IRT Theater, 59E59 Theaters, and Columbia University. This marks Jessica's third project as Producing Director of The Motor Company, after the most recent season of Communal Spaces and Intimate Bar Plays.

Sean Pollock (Writer/Curator) is a multi-disciplinary writer, director, designer, and artist based out of Brooklyn. Recent credits include: The Bed Show, Super Short Site Specific Festival, Phantom of the Paradise (Secret Loft), Intimate Bar Plays, #serials (The Flea), A Very...Scientology Pageant: In Concert (54 Below) I'm Smiling Because I'm Uncomfortable (NYC and Touring), Greed Play, This Is A Play About Newscasters. Off-Broadway: Trump Rally (United Solo/Theatre Row). He currently serves as the Literary Associate for The Dirty Blondes and Company Member of Unattended Baggage. Training: Ithaca College, NTI, Directors Labs: North, Chicago and West. www.seanpollock.net insta: @seanzyart

Billy Recce (Writer/Composer) is a writer, composer and performer living in New York City. His show "Balloon Boy: The Musical" has been presented at the Kraine Theatre (NYC), The International Thespian Festival (Lincoln, NE), The Green Room 42 (NYC), Monarch High School (Fort Collins, CO) and Theatre Row (NYMF). At 17, he was the youngest writer to ever get selected for the prestigious New York Musical Theatre Festival, a production that was featured on Timeout's "11 Shows You Should Catch at NYMF" and Playbill's "Top Ten Shows Not To Miss At NYMF". His musical "Wally Weasel's G.O.P Jamboree!" recently had its world premiere production at Fordham University in October 2016. His musical "The Charlatans", premiered at Fordham University in February 2018. As a singer-songwriter, his concert "Songs To Pop Balloons To: The Music of Billy Recce" played at the York Theatre Company in August 2016. In July 2017, he made his 54 Below Debut with "The Perks of Being A Snowflake: Songs by Billy Recce", a show that he also presented in September 2017 at The Metropolitan Room. He is currently the Head Writer and Composer of BroadwayWorld's award winning, musical web-series "Rachel Unraveled" and a writer for "The Birds and The BS with Jordan Roth". His songs have also been heard at other various venues across Manhattan, including The Duplex, Don't Tell Mama's, and Tune In Time. In 2017, Recce was the recipient of the York Theatre Company's NEO Award. In 2018, his song "Go Into Finance" received the MAC Award for Best Comedy/Novelty song. As a playwright, he is the winner of the 2014 VSA Playwright Discovery Award for HAPPY, and his other plays have been performed at the Kennedy Center, the Cherry Lane Theatre and the 2014 NYSTEA conference. Billy is currently a rising senior in the prestigious playwriting program at Fordham University, Lincoln Center. He is represented by The Paradigm Agency.

Ben Holbrook (Writer) is a playwright and filmmaker whose works have been produced, developed, or commissioned by: Fundamental Theater Project, Ruddy Productions, The New York International Fringe Festival, The Memphis Fringe Festival, Ugly Rhino (LA), Seoul Players (SK), Holiday House, Find the Light (LA), The Irish Arts Council, 45th Street Block Association, and Paper Lantern Theatre Company (NC). His prose has been published in "Call of the Void", a journal of visual and literary arts. He's been awarded the Drama League Rough Draft Residency (partnering with Sam Underwood), the Edward Albee Foundation fellowship, Fresh Ground Pepper's Playground Playgroup Residency, and is the inaugural recipient of the Peter Shaffer Award for Excellence in Playwriting. He is a member of the Dramatists Guild and Fundamental Theater Project's resident playwright. More info at http://holbrook.nyc

CHERRY LOU SY (Writer) is currently a MFA Playwriting candidate at Brooklyn College with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney; her work has been developed or shown in La MaMa Experiments, Rising Circle Theater Collective, The Letter of Marque, New Ohio Theater, Brooklyn College, the Wild Project, the Brick Theater and Primary Stages' ESPA; finalist 2018 Space on Ryder Farm Working Farm Residency; finalist 2017 Bay Area Playwrights Festival; nominated for the 2018 Cherry Lane Mentor Project; performer in Ping Chong's Undesirable Elements series (Secret History) and a recipient of the Tow Student research grant to go to Berlin, Germany; her essays have been published in HowlRound and the Latino Rebels' Bolder Anthology.

ANDREW PORTER (Composer) is a composer currently pursuing his undergrad in Music Composition at Brooklyn College, with a focus on writing for musical theatre. His influences stem from artists in a wide variety of genres, popular and traditional, such as Queen, Jethro Tull, Coltrane, Sondheim, Debussy, and Liszt. In his words, his style is "a mix of Jazz, Blues, and French Impressionism."

NJ Agwuna (Director) is a freelance theater and film director from central Maryland, currently working on her MFA at Columbia University. She approaches theatre with curiosity and wonder, believing that theatre can not only heal us, but show us all the possibilities of the world that we inhabit. She has worked on a national and international scale exploring classic text, developing new plays, devising, and investigating new ways to reach audiences. She would like to thank Sean for trusting her in the driver's seat, the cast and crew for all of their amazing hard work, and Lillian for this amazing opportunity. Some of NJ's credits include Freedom Train ( Director), The Tempest (Director), Endangered: the Eco Musical (Associate Director), Love and Information (Director), Good Man(Director), Town Hall (Director), Truth or Lie (Director), Garbage (Director), Then She Fell (ASM), Amazing Spider-Man 2, Daredevil, and Jessica Jones. More at: www.njagwuna.com

PHOEBE PADGET (Director) is a New York based theater director, specializing in the development of new work. She is a graduate of the Maggie Flanigan Studio, a 2013 Labyrinth Theater Acting Fellow as well as the company's inaugural Directing Apprentice. She is a founding member of Ruddy Productions where she directed pieces like Come and Take It -winner of The Nu*Ten Festival- and Sinners On A Southbound Bus - selected as a FringeFAVE in the 2016 New York Fringe Festival. Phoebe is a 2018/2019 Rockwell Scholar at Primary Stages, an Artistic Intern at WP Theater and the Office Manager at Five Ohm Productions. She has worked with LAByrinth Theater Company, The Kraine Theater, FringeNYC, NYU Tisch, Eager Risk Theater Company, Six Part Productions, Nuance Theater, Ruddy Productions, Primary Stages' ESPA and more.

DAVID KAHAWAII (Director) is a NYC based director and recent graduate of Fordham's Directing Program. Fordham Directing Credits include Bent, The Nether, and the premiere production of Tyler! a musical horror by Franco Giacomarra. Additional credits include This Way Out (Strawberry One-Act Festival, Best Director Nomination), and The North American Premiere of Taste of Love by Zhan Zie. David was a member of the Hangar Theatre Lab Company where he assistant directed on productions of In the Heights, James Joyce's The Dead and The Velveteen Rabbit and directed a workshop of Caryl Churchill's Love + Information. He has also worked on readings and workshops with HERE Arts Center, Abingdon Theatre Company, and New York Live Arts. David will be directing Meadows by Miles Gutierrez-Riley at the Hudson Guild Theater later on this summer.

TICKET INFORMATION: First come, first serve, beginning 30 minutes before curtain. Suggested donation of $5-10 or pay-what-you-can. Cash, check, or digital payment systems like PayPal or Venmo are accepted. Checks can be made out to The Motor Company's fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, and digital payments can be made at paypal.me/TheMotorCompany or Venmo @The-Motor-Company-NYC.

MORE INFO: https://themotorcompany.wordpress.com/about/

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