Primary Stages ESPA Launches Student Performance Series At Jimmy's

Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA) will be launching DETENTION, a monthly performance series allowing students to collaborate and showcase their craft in front of a supportive audience.

Each month a professional theater artist on the ESPA faculty will advise the students through specific dramatic structures, themes and communally-created restrictions, challenging participants to produce and perform completely innovative works in a collaborative environment. In cooperation with Jimmy's No. 43 in the East Village, DETENTION aims to amplify the creative stakes while preserving ESPA's constructive arts education.

The launch of DETENTION will feature work by current ESPA writing students Larkin Clark, Siobhan Gilbert, Laurel Haines, Judith Leora and Jona Tarlin, and directed by students Matt Dickson, Rose Ginsberg, Carly Hoogendyk, Alex Mallory and Jenn Womack. All plays will be cast with ESPA acting students.

Faculty member Lisa Rothe will serve as the first advisor. Upcoming advisors and dates feature Michelle Bossy on March 4, Carl Forsman on April 1, Daniel Talbott on May 6, Jackson Gay on June 3 and Hal Brooks on July 1.

SEVENTH STREET SMALL STAGE at Jimmy's No. 43

43 East Seventh Street

(6 to Astor Place, R/W to 8TH Street, F Tain To 2ND Ave)
RSVP: litassist@primarystages.org
The inaugural presentation features the following ten-minute plays selected by guest advisor Lisa Rothe and ESPA Director Tessa LaNeve:

SHERRY, MAYBE by Larkin Clark, directed by Alex Mallory

The last thing that explosively pregnant and extremely cranky Ellen needs is the crass advances of a quirky barfly.

THE INTERVIEW by Siobhan Gilbert, directed by Rose Ginsberg

A routine job interview takes a peculiar and enthusiastic turn for the musical, leaving the applicant scrambling to hide his tambourine.

BODY FARM by Laurel Haines, directed by Carly Hoogendyk

Aided by the mischievous acts of her co-worker, Xanadu searches for hope among rotting corpses and fugitive hyenas.

LIZARD BRAIN by Judith Leora, directed by Jenn Womack

The lives of three hopeful strangers are forever altered by a seemingly innocuous red beret.

I CAN HAS PLAY by Jona Tarlin, directed by Matt Dickson

Sex will get you everywhere and fame is only a blog entry away... or so 13-year old Amanda thought.

Lisa Rothe is a director and is also on the staff of the Lark Play Development Center as the Director of Offsite Programs and Partnerships, where she deals with providing expanded opportunities for playwrights “off campus” and strategic multi-lateral partnerships aimed at advancing new work to production nationally and globally. She has workshopped, developed and directed many new plays. Future: Just Like I Pictured It (community based theatre piece with the Foundry Theatre and N.I.C.E.); Workshop of Bethany by Laura Marks (Naked Angels); Studio Retreat of 100 Planes by Lila Rose Kaplan (Lark); workshop of Nectar by Katie Baldwin Eng (New Georges); workshop of Ada, a new chamber opera by Kim Sherman and Margaret Vandenburg (First Light Festival @ EST). Recent credits: Eyepiece by Rinde Eckert (Hancher, U of Iowa); My Ohio by Dana Yeaton and Andy Mitton (Vermont Stage Company) Interpreting William by James Still (Indiana Repertory); Looking for the Pony by Andrea Lepcio (Synchronicity Performance Group @ Seven Stages in Atlanta); Penelope by Ellen McLaughlin and composer Sarah Kirkland Snider (Getty Villa); Ah, Wilderness! (Chautauqua Theatre); Couldn’t Say by Christopher Wall (MITF - Best Director Award): many productions at NYU Graduate Acting, Juilliard and Yale School of Drama, as well as workshops with the Belarus Free Theatre, New York Theatre Workshop, and productions for NYMF and SPF. Most recently, Lisa received an EST/Sloan Foundation grant with composer Kim Sherman and librettist Margaret Vandenburg for work on Ada, a new chamber opera. Women’s Project Director’s Lab alum; Drama League alum, Fox Fellow. MFA: NYU Graduate Acting.

The Primary Stages Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA) organically developed from a collection of in-house playwriting classes at Primary Stages to a formalized multidisciplinary institution with fully formed departments in acting, writing, and directing. Since its 2007 inception, the School has housed over one-thousand students and a faculty of award-winning professional artists. The School has refined actors who have been seen on and off-Broadway, developed writers whose work has won awards and received workshops and productions, and ultimately crafted emerging artists on their road to professional success. With the naming of the School in 2010, ESPA emerged as a leading educational institution, offering an extensive array of opportunities for students to collaborate and showcase themselves on the New York stage.

Primary Stages is an Off-Broadway theater company dedicated to inspiring, supporting and sharing the art of playwriting. We operate on the belief that the future of American theater relies on nurturing individual playwrights and giving them the artistic support needed to create new work. Primary Stages produces new plays at 59E59 Theaters, where we have been the Resident Theater Company since its inauguration in 2004. We support the development of playwrights and their new works through commissions, workshops, and readings and supports playwrights through our two flagship programs - The Dorothy Strelsin New American Writers Group and the Marvin and Anne Einhorn School of Performing Arts (ESPA). Since our founding in 1984, we have produced more than 100 new works, many of them world premieres, and engaged more than 2,000 theater artists. Through all our activities, Primary Stages advocates for our artists, helping them make important, and often transformative, connections within the theater community.