The TEAM's ROOSEVELVIS Performances Begin Tonight at Vineyard Theatre ­

The award-winning Brooklyn-based ensemble the TEAM (Artistic Director Rachel Chavkin, Producing Director Manda Martin) celebrate their 10th anniversary this January, with the return of their acclaimed play, RoosevElvis, co-presented with Vineyard Theatre and Performance Space 122's COIL 2015 Festival; the debut of a brand new work, The Holler Sessions, in Seattle; and the release of two new published works on January 8: an anthology titled Five Plays By The TEAM, and the script for RoosevElvis, both published by Oberon Books.

Founded in 2004 by a group of 6 young artists hungry to make politically infused, sweaty and irreverent work, the TEAM has since grown to 13 core members and a continually expanding group of associate artists. The TEAM is dedicated to creating new work about the experience of living in America today, crashing American history and mythology into modern stories to illuminate the current moment. The company creates all of its work collaboratively, drawing inspiration from the news, under-examined histories, YouTube videos, academic theory, and on-the-ground research (including a month spent living in a foreclosed home in Las Vegas), and then using that research as a jumping off point for original writing and staging. This process was the subject of a 2013 feature-length documentary, The TEAM Makes a Play, directed by Emmy Award Winner Paulette Douglas.

The TEAM will kick off their 10th anniversary year with two different productions on two different coasts - beginning with RoosevElvis, which opens tonight, January 2, 2015 in a co-presentation with Vineyard Theatre and Performance Space 122's COIL 2015 Festival. On a hallucinatory road trip from the Badlands to Graceland, the spirits of Elvis Presley and Theodore Roosevelt battle over the soul of Ann, a painfully shy meat-processing plant worker, and what kind of man or woman Ann should become. Set against the boundless blue skies of the Great Plains and endless American highway, RoosevElvis is a new work about gender, appetite, and the multitudes we contain. RoosevElvis originally premiered at The Bushwick Starr in October 2013, where Time Out New York described it as "more buoyant than theatrical material has any right to be...bouncing it from the merely nutty to the utterly delirious" and Ben Brantley at the New York Times called it the "the [TEAM]'s most intimate work that I've seen, and also its warmest...a spirited and insightful commentary on two archetypes of American masculinity." This production marks its first return to New York. RoosevElvis runs through January 10 at Vineyard Theatre.

The world premiere of The Holler Sessions will take place January 8-11 and 15-18 at On The Boards in Seattle. The Holler Sessions, created and produced by company member Frank Boyd in partnership with the TEAM, is an intimate theatrical performance staged as a live jazz radio show, centered around one man's burning obsession for American jazz. Ray, an explosive Kansas City DJ, broadcasts his love of jazz from his shoddy studio with an infectious passion for this uniquely American art form. Ray's maniacal rants, razor-sharp insights, and mildly scatological humor are interspersed with truly gorgeous music and lots of space for listening. The Holler Sessions serves as a jazz primer for the uninitiated, a powerful reminder for jazz fans, and an irreverent love letter to the best thing America has ever created. Tickets for The Holler Sessions are on-sale now at www.ontheboards.org.

On January 8, the TEAM will release their first published anthology titled Five Plays by the TEAM, containing five plays created, produced and performed by the TEAM, spanning the last ten year's of the company's work: Give Up! Start Over! (in the darkest of times I look to Richard Nixon for hope), A Thousand Natural Shocks, Particularly in the Heartland, Architecting, and Mission Drift. The anthology also includes a timeline of the TEAM's history, exclusive production and rehearsal images, and personal introductions to the plays by members of the company, which provide a look at the formation, evolution, and maturation of a contemporary New York devising ensemble. The collection also includes a foreword by John Tiffany (Once, Blackwatch), who got to know theTEAM's work intimately while serving as the Associate Artistic Director of the National Theatre of Scotland, and who refers to the company in the foreward as "the frisky child of the Wooster Group and Robert Lepage". Released alongside the anthology is the published script for RoosevElvis. Both are published by Oberon Books, and are available for purchase starting January 8 exclusively at the Vineyard Theatre during performances of RoosevElvis, preceding a wider release to bookstores at the end of January.

TheTEAM's current works-in-progress include Primer For A Failed Superpower, which they began in 2011 and for which the TEAM is forming a multi-generational cover band including 10 teenagers and 10 senior citizens, to play songs written from a place of social or political outrage amidst a conversation about changing notions of American power, and Tiny Emperors in the Land of Bicycles, developed with performance artist Taylor Mac, and exploring the values of drive and discipline in the USA and China, initiated with support from the Mellon Foundation through a multi-year residency at PlayMakers Repertory Company in North Carolina.

To date, theTEAM has created and toured 9 works nationally and internationally. The TEAM has performed all over New York (including the Public Theater, PS122, and the Ohio Theatre); nationally (including the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the A.R.T. in Cambridge); and internationally (including London's National Theatre, Barbican Centre, Almeida Theatre, and Battersea Arts Centre; Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre; Lisbon's Culturgest; the Salzburg Festival; the Perth International Arts Festival; the Hong Kong Arts Festival; and several collaborations with the National Theatre of Scotland). Their plays include RoosevElvis, Waiting For You On The Corner Of..., Mission Drift, Architecting, Particularly In The Heartland, A Thousand Natural Shocks, Give Up! Start Over!, and Faster.

The TEAM are four-time winners of the Scotsman Fringe First Award, as well as the winners of the 2011 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize, the 2011 Herald Angel, the 2008 Edinburgh Total Theatre Award, and Best Production Dublin Fringe in 2007. They were nominated for the 2012 Drama League Award for Outstanding Musical, and are recipients of the American Theatre Wing's 2014 National Theatre Company Grant. They were recently cited on "Best of 2013? lists on 3 continents, and in Oklahoma Senator Tom Coburn's 2014 "Wastebook."

The TEAM is Jessica Almasy, Frank Boyd, Rachel Chavkin, Stephanie Douglass, Jill Frutkin, Brian Hastert, Jake Heinrichs, Matt Hubbs, Libby King, Jake Margolin, Dave Polato, Kristen Sieh, and Nick Vaughan. Rachel Chavkin, Artistic Director; Manda Martin, Producing Director; Lucy Jackson, General Manager.