The Kitchen to Premiere New Tina Satter Work

Award-winning writer and director Tina Satter, along with her company Half Straddle, re-imagine and re-invigorate cult pop and literary tropes in an effort to trouble and question language and identity. As company member Jess Barbagallo has written, "Characters in Tina's plays are often on the precipice of a subversive self-discovery, and articulate a sad but liberating and intrinsically queer value: that the self is perhaps never to be discovered, but always to be made." In Satter's meticulous landscapes, both actors and characters playfully embrace fluidity, feminine agency and subversion. Critics have marveled at Satter's theatricality. Ben Brantley in The New York Times called her work, "enchanting," and, "so very refreshing" while Helen Shaw in Time Out New York declared, "Satter's Half Straddle company is launching a particularly coordinated goal-line drive to a new feminist form."

Now in the world premiere of Ancient Lives, Half Straddle's Kitchen debut and the Company's seventh evening-length work, Satter creates another fully realized world, delicately littered with rich cultural references-teen movies like Heathers, Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Miller's The Crucible, and Emily Dickinson's adolescent letters-to explore the mutable nature of family, friendship and love. Chris Giarmo's live mixed score merges with Ilan Bachrach's video landscape to create a brand new coming of age narrative in which a teacher leads three students away from society. When they start an alternative TV station in the woods and meet a young warlock who alters the group dynamic, their fragile new family begins to fray. Ancient Lives presents a darkly humorous consideration of how we make meaning for ourselves and our communities and features performances by Half Straddle veterans Jess Barbagallo, Eliza Bent, Emily Davis and Julia Sirna-Frest, along with guest Lucy Taylor (Elevator Repair Service's Gatz and The Select; The Sun Also Rises).

The creative team for Ancient Lives includes Andreea Mincic (set design), Enver Chakartash (costume design) Zack Tinkelman (lighting design) Elizabeth DeMent (choreography).

Performances of Ancient Liveswill take place January 7-17 (see above schedule) critics are welcome as of January 9 for an official opening January 10 at The Kitchen located at 512 W. 19th Street, Manhattan. Tickets are $20($15 students, seniors) and can be purchased at thekitchen.org or by phone at 212.255.5793 x11.

Half Straddle is an Obie Award-winning ensemble that makes plays, performances, videos and music written and directed by Tina Satter. This critically acclaimed company began in 2008; has toured its shows in the U.S., Europe, and Asia; has had several plays named New York Times Critics' Picks; and in 2013 won the Obie Award for emerging theater company. Named a "2011 Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch" by Time Out New York, Satter was a recipient of the 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award, among other honors, and attended Brooklyn College's M.F.A. Playwriting program.

Tina Satter was born in a small town in New Hampshire. She received her bachelor's in Literature from Bowdoin College before moving to Portland, Oregon for eight years. There, she began writing and performing in plays while attending Reed College for a M.A. in Liberal Studies. After a stint teaching playwriting in Durango, Colorado, Satter moved to New York, where she now resides, and attended Brooklyn College's M.F.A. Playwriting program run by downtown theater legend Mac Wellman.

Named a "2011 Off-Off Broadway Innovator to Watch" by Time Out New York, Satter was a recipient of the 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award, and has had residencies at Yaddo, Wooster Group's Performing Garage, Kitchen L.A.B, MASS MoCA, and New Museum. She has been a guest artist and teacher at Princeton University, Reed College, Playwrights Horizons Theater School, and Fordham University. She will be a visiting professor at the University of Michigan this coming spring.

Ancient Lives is made possible with support from The MAP Fund, a program of Creative Capital supported by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and in part by public funds from New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. Tina Satter received a 2014 Doris Duke Impact Award (Theatre). Ancient Lives was developed, in part, during a residency at The Kitchen.

The Kitchen is one of New York City's most forward-looking nonprofit spaces, showing innovative work by emerging and established artists across disciplines. Our programs range from dance, music, performance, and theater to video, film, and art, in addition to literary events, artists' talks, and lecture series. Since its inception in 1971, The Kitchen has been a powerful force in shaping the cultural landscape of this country, and has helped launch the careers of many artists who have gone on to worldwide prominence