The Archive Residency is a vital incubator for New York City's most electrifying independent theater companies. This two-year residency offers companies an artistic home for the development and presentation of a new work. Each residency culminates with a world premiere production. Now in its fifth year, the Archive Residency is a collaboration between New Ohio Theatre and IRT Theater (likeminded neighbors in the historic Archive Building in the West Village).
The first company completing their residency this spring is Built for Collapse, presenting the world premiere of DANGER SIGNALS, with text by Nina Segal, directed by Sanaz Ghajar, and composed by Jen Goma, running April 27 - May 19, 2018. Previews began April 27 for an April 29 opening.
Shows take place at New Ohio Theatre, located at 154 Christopher Street between Greenwich and Washington Streets in New York City. Tickets for Danger Signals are $15 (through 5/1), $20 (5/3-5/8) and $25 (5/10-5/19). Purchase at
http://NewohioTheatre.org or by calling 212-352-3101. For info visit
http://NewohioTheatre.org, Like them on Facebook at
https://www.Facebook.com/NewOhioTheatre, and follow on Twitter (
https://twitter.com/NewOhioTheatre) and Instagram (
https://www.instagram.com/newohiotheatre) at @NewOhioTheatre.
Built for Collapse's DANGER SIGNALS runs April 27 - May 19. Performances are Tuesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8pm, and Sundays at 7pm (no show on Sunday, May 6).
DANGER SIGNALS is a unique collaboration between the award-winning New York based theater company Built for Collapse, led by Iranian-American director Sanaz Ghajar, acclaimed British playwright Nina Segal (making her U.S. debut), and pop musician Jen Goma. A searing exploration of traumatic brain injuries, the medical history of lobotomies, and western culture's insatiable desire to control and colonize, DANGER SIGNALS is an explosive new work that questions the cost of ambition. Running time is approximately 70 minutes.
The cast includes
Jessica Almasy (of the TEAM),
Robert M. Johanson (of Nature Theater of Oklahoma) and Eva Jaunzemis (of Witness Relocation).
The production team includes
Ben Hobbs (Choreography),
Joe Cantalupo (Lighting Design), Karen Boyer (Costume Design), Dave Tennent (Projection Design), Emily Reilly (Dramaturgy),
Jessica Schmidt (Producer), Jessica Dukatt (Production Stage Manager) and Jen Gushue (Production Manager).
In 2014, while in the very early stages of developing DANGER SIGNALS, Sanaz Ghajar was in a car accident in which a drunk driver hit her vehicle. She ended up in a coma. The collision caused traumatic internal bleeding in her brain and major damage to her frontal lobes (the part of the brain responsible for executive functions like planning, judgement, attention span, inhibition). Ghajar took a little over two years to recover. About the recovery Ghajar says, "The accident was a schism and my brain - which collapsed and then slowly rebuilt itself - was different. The formation and reformation of pathways led to the creation of a multitude of things that were new, other, stronger, weaker and more complicated." Unclear about how to finish making the show Ghajar invited Nina Segal to collaborate on, "something between a play and a devised piece of theater." Now four years on, about the show Ghajar says, "it's about those moments in a person's life when everything changes all at once. That moment of being spliced, split in two. There is the who you once were and the who you are now, and you'll never be able to get back to the before. These can be moments of trauma or moments of transcendence or, indeed, both - and this core theme is, I hope, something everyone can connect to."
This powerhouse triad of female artists each bring a unique sensibility to the work. Ghajar's company has been described by Time Out NY as, "an ambitiously subversive troupe." Goma has been described by NPR as "a musical shapeshifter. A singer with nuanced sensitivity and stirring power." Segal's work has been praised by critics for her command of language, Lyn Gardner (writing for The Guardian) described her most recent piece, Big Guns, as "both accusatory and sorrowful" saying "at times there are echoes of Tim Etchells and Forced Entertainment...it has the poetic force of some of
Debbie Tucker Green's plays." A finalist for the Yale Drama Series Prize and current resident at the
Bush Theatre in London, Danger Signals marks Segal's U.S. debut.
Built for Collapse is an award-winning theater company committed to building multidisciplinary work that challenges theatrical form. They develop each project through a highly physical approach to writing, rehearsal and performance that places specific importance on audience feedback and diverse source material including images, videos, pop culture, and found text. At times an erotic opera, at times a freakish and violent circus, Built for Collapse has been described as a "creative new approach to theatre." For info visit
http://built4collapse.org.
About the Archive Residency: The first year includes a one-month stay in IRT's 3B Development Series, and a one-week presentation in New Ohio's OBIE Award-winning Ice Factory summer festival. Archive Residency's two first-year resident companies, One-Eighth Theater and The Drunkard's Wife, will be presenting first-look showings in the 2018 Ice Factory Festival, June 27 - August 11. The second year includes additional time at IRT, and culminates with a fully realized, four-week run in the New Ohio's main season. Each fall, two more independent companies are invited into the Archive Residency, bringing the program to full strength with four companies in residence, each cycling through the two-year development process. Archive Residency alumni include The Assembly, Blessed Unrest, Collaboration Town,
The Mad Ones, Our Voices Theater, Piehole, Rady&Bloom and Vampire Cowboys. Membership into the Archive Residency is currently by invitation only.
New Ohio Theatre is a two-time OBIE Award-winning theatre under the leadership of
Robert Lyons, Artistic Director, and Marc Stuart Weitz, Producing Director. The New Ohio serves New York's most adventurous theatre audiences by developing and presenting bold work from today's vast independent theatre community. They believe the best of this community, the small artist-driven ensembles and the daring producing companies who operate without a permanent theatrical home, are actively expanding the boundaries of where American theatre is right now and where it's going. From their home in the West Village's historic Archive Building, the New Ohio provides a high-profile platform for downtown's most mature, ridiculous, engaged, irreverent, gut-wrenching, frivolous, sophisticated, foolish and profound theatrical endeavors. The theatre is accessible from the #1 train to Christopher St. or A, B, C, D, E, F or M train to West 4th St. For info visit
http://NewohioTheatre.org.
IRT Theater is a grassroots laboratory for independent theater and performance in New York City, providing space and support to a new generation of artists. Tucked away in the old Archive Building in Greenwich Village, IRT's mission is to build a community of emerging and established artists by creating a home for the development and presentation of new work. Some of the artists they have supported include
Young Jean Lee,
Reggie Watts,
Mike Daisey and many others. For info visit
http://irttheater.org.
Photos by Charlie Dennis/Cheney Morgan
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