spit&vigor to Stage Workshop Production of NEC SPE / NEC METU

spit&vigor has announced the workshop performance of NEC SPE / NEC METU, written by Sara Fellini (winner - 2014 Planet Connnections Award for Outstanding New Script, nominated - 2015 NYIT Award for Outstanding Full Length Script) and directed by Pat Diamond (Yale School of Drama, Manhattan School of Music).

NEC SPE / NEC METU has three workshop performances at 8PM, Thursday-Saturday, May 4-6 for an extremely limited engagement at West Park Presbyterian Church. Tickets are $10. This will be a workshop performance before their October 10th performance at Theater Row. For advance reservations, email spitnvigor@gmail.com.

Nec Spe / Nec Metu is a collection of two dovetailing monodramas.

In Nec Spe, the great Baroque painter Caravaggio confesses his hideous sins to an imagined or ethereal priest after his own brutal and untimely death, possibly searching for forgiveness. But his swagger and violent personality leave us to question whether he truly wants his sins washed away, or whether he would rather justify his actions in the eyes of God and man.

In Nec Metu, the great Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi recounts her notorious rape and torture in order to reclaim her legacy and illuminate her brilliant life and art. She tells her story with wry wit and humor, offering an alternative and often-neglected perspective on art history and her intimate relationships with some of the world's greatest artists.

From the critically-acclaimed and award-winning company members that brought IN VESTMENTS to West Park Presbyterian Church and THE EXECUTION of MRS. COTTON to IRT Theatre, NEC SPE / NEC METU is a deeply intimate story of two wayfaring ghosts that ache to be remembered on their own terms. Although it is set in post-Renaissance Italy, the play delves into issues that are still intensely relevant today, including class and meritocracy, the value and purpose of art, gender politics, sex and violence, as well as sin and redemption.

The cast features Adam Belvo (2015 Planet Connections Outstanding Lead Actor winner, 2016 NYIT Outstanding Lead Actor nominee) and Sara Fellini (2015 Planet Connections Outstanding Lead Actress nominee). The set constructed is by Ian Petersen.

Pat Diamond directs operas and plays. Past work includes Mozart's Cosí fan tutte, Le nozze di Figaro, Don Giovanni, La finta giardiniera, and Idomeneo; Puccini's Turandot, La bohème; Janácek's Diary of One Who Vanished, and The Cunning Little Vixen; Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night's Dream; Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream; Mayakovsky's Vladimir Mayakovsky: a Tragedy; Verdi's Il trovatore; Calderón's The Great Magician; Susa's Transformations; Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel, and Donizetti's Lucia di Lammermoor. Pat also directed the major American revivals of Wolf-Ferrari's Le donne curiose, and Moniuszko's Halka, and was honored to direct a production of Postcard from Morocco to celebrate the eightieth birthday of composer Dominick Argento. Collaborations with American Playwrights A. Rey Pamatmat, Eric Sanders, Kathryn Walat, and Roberto Aguirre-Sacasa have included productions of, respectively, Thunder Above/ Deeps Below, A Spare Me, and the notorious short plays Oblivia and Bloody Mary as well as the original workshop of The Mystery Plays. Collaborations with composers include Ellen Lindquist on drömseminarium/ dream seminar, an opera based on the poems of 2011 Nobel Laureate Tomas Tranströmer, and current work with Matthew Suttor on the American Premiere of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog at Yale in 2016. Pat has also been a frequent collaborator with Sybarite5, including the site specific installation The Dido Project, mounted in the Time Warner Center in Columbus Circle. His work has been presented regionally in the US, France, and Sweden at companies including 2G, Working Man's Clothes, Kentucky Opera, Sarasota Opera, Madison Opera, Wolf Trap, Aspen Music Festival. Pat has been Director of the Yale Summer Conservatory at Yale University and currently leads the Opera Directing Practicum at Yale School of Drama, as well as teaching Acting at Manhattan School of Music and in AOP's Composer and the Voice Program. He has been on the faculty at the Aspen Music Festival and University of Maryland, and a guest artist at Peabody Institute, University of Michigan, and Rice University.

Adam Belvo is a Brooklyn based actor and theater producer. Recent New York acting work includes John Polidori in Mary's Little Monster, Azra Todd in The Execution of Mrs. Cotton, Danny in Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, Father Nathan Shourd in the NYIT Award winning IN VESTMENTS, K.Bus and Muskie in Aztec Economy's Butcher Holler Here We Come! (NYIT 2016 Outstanding Lead Actor nominee), Jack in Over, Georges in Hazard a Little Death (Planet Connections Festival 2014: Best Actor Award Winner), Jaques in As You Like It, El Spectro in Color TVs in Tijuana, Ryszard in Pontiac Firebird Variations (Ice Factory 2011) and Vanya in Uncle Vanya. Regionally, Adam has toured and performed as K.Bus in Butcher Holler Here We Come (Cincinnati Fringe Festival 2013, New Orleans Fringe Festival 2013, Out-of-the-Loop Festival 2014-Dallas, Revolutions 2016-Albuquerque, NM), he has worked with MTB productions to produce and star in HELPLESS DOORKNOBS (New Orleans Fringe 2012) and as The Stranger in My Aim Is True (New Orleans Fringe 2011). He is Executive Producer of the Brooklyn based theater company spit&vigor (www.spitnvigor.com), which has produced three major plays in the past year; Danny and the Deep Blue Sea, The Execution of Mrs. Cotton, and Mary's Little Monster. He was a collaborating member of Working Man's Clothes Productions and Aztec Economy, and his work has been showcased at The Tank, 3LD, The Ohio Theater, The Davenport Theater, WestPark Presbyterian Church, The Abingdon Theater (Dorothy Strelsin and the June Havoc,) American Place Theater, Under St. Marks, and IRT Theater, among others.

Sara Fellini is an award-winning playwright, actress, and skilled artisan whose work has been featured at The Davenport Theater, The Players Theatre, Paradise Factory, IRT Theater, and various other locations in NYC. She has written and performed her own pieces and has also created roles for new productions in New York City, such as Daisy in The Silver Screen Parade (winner of the 2013 Chain Theater Festival). She has performed musical cabarets at the Laurie Beechman Theater and The Metropolitan Room. Her first play, Hazard a Little Death, was nominated for six awards at the Planet Connections Theater Festivity including Best Production of a New Play and Best Lead Actress (Sara Fellini), and won Best New Script. She performed as Nannerl in the monodrama The Other Mozart written by Sylvia Milo at the Players Theater in New York City, New Orleans Fringe Festival, and Kingston Festival of the Arts, and played Maeve Shourd in a site-specific production of In Vestments, a play of her own writing that went on to win two 2015 NYIT awards and be acclaimed by the New York Times as "wrenching and visually eloquent". This past July she appearing as the titular character in another play of her own writing, The Execution of Mrs. Cotton (called "darkly humorous" and "deliciously ghoulish" by the New York Times) at IRT Theater as part of their 3B Residency. Most recently, she played Mary Shelley in Mary's Little Monster by Thomas Kee at the Mudlark Public Theater in New Orleans and then brought the role to the Davenport Theatre in NYC, where her company received the Davenport space grant. She is the Artistic Director of theater company spit&vigor (www.spitnvigor.com) and designs costumes and props for various theater companies in and around NYC.