The Brick Theater Presents Arts and Activism Festival THIS IS NOT NORMAL
By: BWW News Desk May. 30, 2017
See 5-minute excerpts from festival pieces!
Limited capacity. Reserve free tickets below.
June 6 @ 8pm
Free! NOT NORMAL CABARET 1 - JUNE 9TH
Participants include the below short shows, plus speeches, action projects, comedians, musicians and other presentations TBD! Small Dinner
Written and directed by Alexis Sottile
Featuring Hope Cartelli, Jorge Cordova and Trav S.D. There are many different kinds of dinner. This one is small, in more ways than one.
alexissottile.tumblr.com The Office of Illegal People
Created by Ten Directions
A potshot on the road to citizenship by one or two creators of Bouffon Glass Menajoree and a cast of freaks. Beware, illegal people! You're about to have your door kicked in and be extremely vetted. Bad hombres - whatchoo gonna do when Office of Illegals comes for you? Featuring Toni Ann DeNoble, Roy Koshy and Timothy McCown Reynolds. illegalpeople.tumblr.com
lynnberg.com/about
Written and directed by Lesley Becker.
Has Truth Become A Popularity Contest? To win prizes, contestants on The Popular Truth Game Show must match answers, known as "the Popular Truth," coming from the TV audience, to win! Game show host Aaron Hornblas quizzes contestants played by Ruth Sullivan and Erin Brehm. June 9 @ 10pm
NOT NORMAL CABARET 2 - JUNE 16TH
Participants include the below short shows, plus speeches, action projects, comedians, musicians and other presentations TBD! Fashionable Carry
Created by Stephen Bracco
Fashionable Carry imagines a New York dinner party in which President Trump enacts a national "mandatory carry" handgun law. The Old West's quick-draw is now the law of the land out in the streets as well as in Cecil and Aaron's apartment on Columbus Avenue between Smith & Wesson. I Don't Tell Her Because She's Eight
A woman recalls her college rapist, and wonders how she will explain the election of Donald Trump to her daughter.
Written by Mike Poblete, Performed by Elizabeth Ingrham
Written and performed by Mike Poblete
And a children's story about a dog and cat analogous to the 2016 Presidential election.
mikepoblete.com
June 16 @ 10pm NOT NORMAL CABARET 3 - JUNE 23RD
Participants include the below short shows, plus speeches, action projects, comedians, musicians and other presentations TBD! What Feels To My Heart
Created by Iliria Osum and Sarah Means
Written in response to Trump's election and his increasingly draconian threats to immigration policy, What Feels To My Heart investigates a marriage with this tension writ large across it.Tim Kaine SITS IN FRONT OF A MIRROR AND STUDIES HIS FACE
Created by Jordan Barsky
Tim Kaine learns that Hillary has come down with pneumonia, and that things are about to change. June 23 @ 10pm MAINSTAGE PERFORMANCES America's Greatest Disaster Movie Ever! A Puppet Cabaret
Created by Jeanette Yew
In the tradition of political puppetry, Jeanette Yew presents a puppet cabaret.
jeanetteyew.com
90 minutes
Sat July 1 @ 3:30pm, Sun July 2 @ 8pm, Thu July 6 @ 7pm Americana Psychobabble
created + performed by Alexandra Tatarsky
co-directed by Meryl Sands
Join acclaimed solo performer Alexandra Tatarsky in a post-inauguration exorcism, an irrational rejuvenation ceremony, a delirious investigation of American violence & emptiness. Its findings exist somewhere between sad clown song, dance in the abyss, hysterical healing ceremony, and desperate diatribe to take back ecstatic nonsense as an act of resistance.
tar-tar.biz
60 minutes
Sat June 10 @ 8pm, Sun June 18 @ 8pm, Thu June 29 @ 9pm Between Friends
The Sycamore Theatre Co.
Two old college friends at opposite sides of the political spectrum sit down to dinner one month after Donald Trump has been elected.
sycamoretheatreco.org
60 minutes
Sat June 10 @ 4pm, Wed June 14 @ 7pm, Mon June 19 @ 9pm Delicious Filth: Grindr Play #3
by Brett Evan Solomon
directed by Emilyn Kowaleski
Jack and Jill are just trying not to hate themselves while sleeping around New York City until a gaggle of misfits from Sexual Freak Paradise show up seeking refuge from a genocidal Vladimir Putin. Objectified by those around them and by each other, Jack and Jill try to maintain their friendship in the face of an ancient prophecy, an impending war, and Shrek.
120 minutes
Fri June 23 @ 7pm, Sat June 24 @ 11pm, Mon June 26 @ 9pm The Drinking Bird (staged reading)
By McFeely Sam Goodman
Directed by Sarah Hughes
Performed by Alexander Borinsky and LUCY KAMINSKY
The Drinking Bird is a dialectical play about the meaning of work in an increasingly technological age. What is work for? How can we make it more meaningful? Could robots taking over our jobs be a good thing? The Drinking Bird is the first part of The Roosters, a trilogy of plays exploring the problems of 21st-century global capitalism.
90 minutes
Wednesday, July 5th 9pm
FREE Father - Daughter
The Playwriting Collective
Writer-Director: Joshua Young
Actors-Collaborators: Briana Femia and John Carhart
Amidst the chaos of a mass public shooting, a daughter calls her father. She's been shot and she worries this will be the last time the two can ever speak. In a real time conversation he tries his best to help her survive, while she does her best to say goodbye.
ThePlaywritingCollective.com
50 minutes
Sat June 10 @ 6pm, Sun June 18 @ 5pm, Tue June 20 @ 9pm [FLYING] Dutchman: A Rite
THEATRE OF WAR
Text by Amiri Baraka + Jean Genet
Directed/Sound Design by Christopher-Rashee Stevenson
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 theater piece, clown show, rite, and seance created to navigate the haunted, outer reaches of the human psyche and 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.
facebook.com/Theatre-of-WAR-132287063485843/?pnref=lhc
60 minutes
Sat June 10 @ 2pm, Tue June 13 @ 9:30pm, Thu June 22 @ 7pm
For Gowie: The Deceitful Fellow
For Gowie: The Deceitful Fellow is an time-bending experiment. Using a storytelling framework, the theater performance piece tells journey of generational traumas that live in the body, and how we exorcise them. It examines the world of a haunted Caribbean woman, a young man claiming his identity, and their re-encounters with the ancestors.
oceanajames.com
45 minutes
Sun June 25 @ 5pm, Mon July 3 @ 7pm, Thu July 6 @ 9:30pm Forsaken Nation
July 1, 2017
Primary Artist: Megan Lang
What do say when everyone has already said too much? I don't know... What do you notice when you walk into a room you walk into every day? Is this a riddle? What do you believe when you know your leaders are lying? Are these trick questions? What do you lose by walking away from the institutions that made you who you are? Maybe nothing. What do you do when what your flag represents is broken, and everything it stands for starts to crumble? You set it on fire....obviously.
meganlangld.com
75 minutes
Sat July 1 @ 8pm God of Obsidian
Gideon Productions
by Mac Rogers
Directed by JorDana Williams
Starring Rebecca Comtois and Mac Rogers
You have to cross an ancient, shaky bridge to get to Nathan's house. Crossing in is tricky. But crossing out - as Alice is about to discover - is almost impossible. From the writer and director of THE HONEYCOMB TRILOGY and the full creative team behind LIGATURE MARKS comes a dark fairy tale about a psychologically abusive relationship - as one woman tries to find the story that will take her back across the bridge and set her free.
gideonth.com
60 minutes
Thu June 15 @ 7pm, Wed June 21 @ 8:30pm, Fri June 30 @ 7pm Hot for Feminist Theory Professor (Excerpts)
Written and performed by Kim Katzberg and Tom X. Chao
At the College of Low Hills, one-of-a-kind Women's Studies instructor Professor Losstt-Keyes yearns for a partnership, but also struggles to keep her independence in a world where women feel more threatened than ever by unenlightened men. She meets lonely Dennis Quan of the Office of Pedagogy and Learning (who is only slightly unenlightened), and the two battle for dominance and respect in ways hilarious, unexpected, and even poignant. Award-winning writer-performer Kim Katzberg (STRAYS, TERRY: RECOVERING PET DETECTIVE) reunites with theater veteran Tom X. Chao (CALLOUS CAD, CATS CAN SEE THE DEVIL) for his first new piece in 5 years.
kimkatzberg.com
40 minutes
Sun June 11 @ 6pm, Mon June 12 @ 9pm, Sat July 1 @ 6pm
In the Pines
Patrice Miller/ Tux and Tom Productions
A dance-theater piece exploring the normalization of violence through the American murder ballad genre. Featuring a diversity of "marginalized "or "othered "bodies, In the Pines questions our objectification of violence through culture making by exploring the pop/folk aesthetics of murder ballads and juxtaposing them with stark, post-modern dance theater visuals.
patricemiller1.wixsite.com/patricemiller
45 minutes
Thu June 8 @ 9:30pm, Wed June 14 @ 9:30pm, Sat June 24 @ 9:00pm It Takes a Village
Performer/Co-Creator: Matthew Van Gessel Director/Co-Creator: Noam Shapiro
A hapless clown discovers an abandoned baby at a party. It's all fun and games until the baby wakes up. With the help of the audience, our clown will decide the baby's fate. Along the way, talking heads and foreign agents will weigh in on what's best. Will we find a way to come together or will we tear this baby apart? It Takes a Village is an interactive solo clown show.
matthewvangessel.com
noamshapiro.com
75 minutes
Sun June 18 @ 1pm Molting
Originally created by Leah Ogawa and Valerie Pham
Performer: Leah Ogawa
Musician: Lily Desmond
Lighting Designer: Tomas Del Valle
Puppet Design: Hua Hua Zhang
Molting is a multimedia show that explores the theme of violence in our world. Using movements as the main language, we incorporate shadow play, projection, and puppetry to deliver a 2-part un-traditional narrative.
leahogawa.com and valeriepham.com
25 minutes
Fri June 16 @ 9pm, Sun June 18 @ 3:30pm, Wed June 21 @ 7pm Motherland
Primary Artist: Cecilia Corrigan
Described by the New York Times as an "exhilarating 'post-internet' writer", Cecilia Corrigan wrote and stars in Motherland, a madcap tragedy inspired by the 2016 election. The show imagines the final days of the Hillary Clinton campaign, where everyone is happily lulled into a false sense of safety, living as though they are characters in the Clinton-era sitcom Seinfeld. The gradual encroachment of reality comes through the interference of Gerte (played by Corrigan), a Weimar-obsessed Cassandra whose hysterical attempts to warn Hillary about "the man with the little handsrdquo; become more and more convincing. Motherland blends screwball comedy with genuine dread, as absurd humor gives way to unthinkable reality.
ceciliacorrigan.com
70 minutes
Sat June 24 @ 5pm, Thu June 29 @ 7pm, Sun July 2 @ 6pm Mountain Language // The Monument
Theatre In Exile
June 17 - July 2, 2017
Directed by Samuel James Wilson
Mountain Language (Harold Pinter) and The Monument (Colleen Wagner) presented as a pair by Brooklyn based company Theatre In Exile underscore the tensions of an America ravaged by the prison industrial complex, a people demeaned by oppression. While Mountain Language deals with the horror of current politics, The Monument asks us to imagine a near future where we are driven to extremes in the search for truth, and possibly, reconciliation.
theatreinexile.org
105 minutes
Sat June 17 @ 8pm, Sun June 25 @ 7pm, Sun July 2 @ 3pm O, Sea!
TAPROOT
"We are not slaves of this world. We shape it."
O, Sea! is a space for healing, a performance ritual meant to confront the wounds of cultural expectation, sexual abuse and gendered violence. Based in part on ancient practices and narratives, O, Sea! uses technology, social media and personal experience to offer a raw look how we embrace our pain and our fullest selves as an act of resistance.
digdeepgetdirty.com
90 minutes
Thu June 8 @ 7pm, Sat June 10 @ 10pm, Tue June 13 @ 7pm THE RESISTIBLE RISE OF (a staged reading)
Conceived by Jaki Bradley
Written/adapted by Claire Keichel, Mara Nelson-Greenberg, Kevin Armento, Julian Christopher, Cate Yu, Will Arbery, Charly Evon Simpson and BrIan Watkins.
A group of playwrights explore, expand and adapt Brecht's 1941 parable play, The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. Each of the playwrights writes a ten-page adaptation then passes it on to the next playwright, resulting in a mash-up of some of theater's most exciting voices.
jakibradley.com
90 minutes
Tue June 20 @ 6:30pm
FREE Rotten Spring
A collaboration by A. Alena, Julia Gladstone, Fred Schmidt-Arenales, Sophie Traub and Akeema-Zane
In Rotten Spring, performers emerge from The State as custodians. Their method of maintenance examines reasoning that urges them to strive for more articulate utterances. They implore the audience to enact a seduction for themselves as one might do while looking in the mirror. Their question is, "Do we want to do better?" The performers comprise an ensemble of five NYC-based artists with backgrounds in experimental dance, somatics, private and ritual performance, critical essay writing and poetry, film making, radio producing, media criticism, and kink politics.
theschoolofmakingthinking.com
90 minutes
Tue June 27 @ 9pm, Sat July 1 @ 1pm, Mon July 3 @ 9pm The Passion of Kellyanne
written & directed by Andi Stover
dramaturgy by Aimee Davis
production design by Sarah Murphy
featuring: Sandra Bauleo, Cary Curran, Carmen Hammons, Lizzy Ana Lincoln, Madeleine Mfuru, Leanne Velednitsky
How does Kellyanne Conway sleep at night? What is she thinking when she gazes into the mirror, affixing her perma-grin and girding herself to face the eye of the media maelstrom she pushed into the White House through sheer determination and an uncanny understanding of the American electorate? The Passion of Kellyanne drives into the pine barrens of New Jersey to peek into the soul of the blueberry packing, Jesus loving little girl who would become.....?
45 minutes
Wed June 7 @ 10pm, Sun June 11 @ 7:40pm, Sat June 17 @ 3pm This Is A Protest of What Happened
This Is A Protest of What Happened is a time capsule filled with the present moment, constructed out of anxiety, identity politics, and social media. Co-creators Dara Malina and Alexis Roblan combine snippets of text written between October 2016 to present with physicality, voice, image, movement and tableau to express and expunge the anxiety, panic, and isolation of the current moment; then weave it all together with the giddy dread and cultural comfort food of the new President's favorite musical, Andrew Lloyd Webber's Phantom of the Opera. The result is at once a reactionary primal scream and an attempt to make new meaning in a post-logic world.
daramalina.com, alexisroblan.com
60 minutes
Sat June 24 @ 7pm, Sun June 25 @ 3pm This is Normal
Written by Matthew Freeman Narrated by David DelGrosso.
This is Normal is an opportunity for silent observation of real people in a real place in real time. It is a no-media environment and it's BYOC (Bring Your Own Context.) This is normal is curated and directed by Matthew Freeman (That Which Isn't, The Listeners) and narrated by David DelGrosso.
http://www.theateraccident.org/this-is-normal
60 minutes
Thu June 15 @ 9pm, Sat June 24 @ 2pm, Wed June 28 @ 7pm Ti Adoro, Herr Trump!
Written and performed by Amanda LaPergola and Andrianna Smela
Directed by Emily Edwards
Sing along to the totalitarian hits of the 1930s and 40s! Two ageless sopranos -as talented as they are nationalistic- celebrate the long-awaited return of Fascism by belting out the best musical propaganda ever enforced upon a populace! You'll have such a great time, you won't even care that everything is horrible! Ciao, schatzi!
60 minutes
Sun June 11 @ 2pm, Sat June 17 @ 6pm, Mon June 26 @ 7pm U.S.O.ver The Reignbow
Featuring Allison Brzezinski, Fein and Dandee, Kim Gainer, Hotsy Totsy, Meta Phys-Ed, Cristina Pitter, Patrick Scheid, and Zachary Trebino
In the style of the classic USO shows, U.S.O.ver is a cabaret to entertain the troops - the ones left fighting for fusion rather than fission. Join us as we raise some morale along with our beer.. U.S.O.ver is agitprop cum variety show with a collection of vignettes as fun, nasty, and utterly devastating as the changing political landscape. As a performance-protest, U.S.O.ver satirically indicts our current reality with a gaudy, star-spangled carnival of song, dance, and shtick-it-to-the-twump.
patrickscheid.com/usover
60 minutes
Sun June 11 @ 4pm, Mon June 19 @ 7pm, Wed June 28 @ 10pm
Uncle Rooster
Countdown to Zero
Informed by the Bush torture doctrine, Uncle Rooster is both parable play and fantastic spectacle, warning of the reality of torture and community erosion as seen through the lens of a children's fable. The tale takes place in the town of Lulu's Burg with a cast of characters such as Uncle Rabbit, Uncle Rooster, Leon The Mule, Faith The Dog, Winny The Fox, and Mrs. Fennel The Chicken. The small town is beset with the real world dilemmas of what is the price of freedom and security and what happens to a community when laws are broken and individuals are held above the law. Directed by Brian Freeland.
countdowntozero.org
105 minutes
Sat June 17 @ 12pm, Thu June 22 @ 9pm, Tue June 27 @ 7pm
This Is Not Normal: An Arts & Activism Festival will play at The Brick (579 Metropolitan Ave at Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn) June 6 - July 8 on a festival schedule. Tickets ($20) may be purchased online at www.bricktheater.com or by calling 866-811-4111. The Brick is located at 579 Metropolitan Avenue (between Union Avenue and Lorimer Street) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the L & G subway lines (L: Lorimer stop; G: Metropolitan stop). For more detailed directions & further information, visit http://www.bricktheater.com. The Brick and its non-profit company, The Brick Theater, Inc. were founded in September of 2002 by Robert Honeywell and Michael Gardner. Formerly an auto-body shop, a storage space and a yoga center, this brick- walled garage was completely refurbished into a state-of-the-art theater complex, with a large sprung floor and professional lighting and sound package. Winner of THE 2009 CAFFE CINO FELLOWSHIP AWARD, The Brick is Williamsburg, Brooklyn's destination for subversive theatrical experiences. Home to the critically acclaimed premieres of Bouffon Glass Menajoree (NY IT Award Winner-Outstanding Play), Samuel & Alasdair: A Personal History of the Robot War (NY IT Award Winner-Outstanding Play), Greed: A Musical Love $tory (NY IT Award Nominee-Outstanding Musical), Red Cloud Rising, Theatre of the Arcade and Suspicious Package (NY IT Award Nominee-Outstanding Play), The Brick has hosted some of downtown theater's most innovative artists, including Target Margin Theater, New Georges, Jason Grote, Annie Baker, Young Jean Lee, The Debate Society, The Mad Ones and Thomas Bradshaw.
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