Photos: First Look At the Cast of Nic Adams' NECK DOWN

See photos of the cast of Nic Adams’ (Corona Cam Show, Icarus in the L.E.S.) latest play, NECK DOWN. This world-premiere production will be directed by Princess Grace Award-winner Marissa Joyce Stamps (Being Up in Here...) and will open on January 9, 2025 at We Are Here Brooklyn Studios. Performances will conclude on January 12, 2025.

It’s the morning before an ancient coin auction in NYC and early-career artist Ciel is stuck working yet another menial temp assignment. An old money collector arrives early to inspect the legal tender upon which he plans to bid. So begins a daydream about lottery winnings, caskets, sex fantasies, delulus of grandeur, and Big Oil Banks. The physical characters onstage duet with the voices in their heads, mounting a tragicomic class stand-off and a toast to the relentless spirit of artists living on the brink of precarity.

NECK DOWN will feature Cristina Pitter* (BONDiNG on Netflix, Behind the Sheet) as C's Inner Voice, Essence Lotus as Ciel, Angela Chew as H's Inner Voice, Alton Alburo as Howie, Jack Dahill as E's Inner Voice, and Riley Wood* as Ebenezer.

The creative team for NECK DOWN will include producer Melissa Mickens, lighting designer Andre Segar, sound designer Eden Segbefia, scenic designer Ettie Pin, costume designer Karen Boyer, and stage manager Sarah Samonte.

Tickets are available here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-exponential-festival-presents-rainbows-end-tickets-1052701607847?aff=oddtdtcreator

As part of the play’s commitment to economic justice, five radically low-cost tickets will be released for every performance of NECK DOWN weekly in a series the producers call Ticket Tuesdays. Follow the play @neckdown_play on Instagram for the latest, including a new series: playwright Nic Adams in conversation with AP Studio Files podcast host Miller Pyke. On his inspiration for writing the play, Adams said, 

"I worked this odd temp assignment in 2022 at this ancient coin auction. It was a lot-viewing appointment and my job was to make sure these coin collectors didn’t steal any coins. My bosses were like, 'Don’t speak unless spoken to'...one of those jobs. To get the boxes with the coins in them we had to fill out these detailed forms…it was very technical. Us attendants weren’t allowed to go get the boxes, someone else had to get the boxes…it was very tightly controlled. Plus, this was right after COVID so people are still wearing masks, sort of. I found the types of people that came to this coin auction fascinating. They were mostly old white men, pretty conservative and soft-spoken…a few of them were really loud and weirdly jolly. I thought, 'What weird subculture did I just step into?' And because I had to be quiet for basically the whole shift, I just began writing the play in my head. I was earning $11 an hour, after my agent's cut, looking at a person with a coin that they might spend like $50K on, but you couldn't go to the bodega and buy a cup of coffee with it, all of which felt very symbolic and rich with metaphor and that’s what set me off on the play."

Photo Credit Lee Rayment