GREAT COMET's Rachel Chavkin Helms PRIMER FOR A FAILED SUPERPOWER in Brooklyn

Award-winning Brooklyn ensemble the TEAM will present PRIMER FOR A FAILED SUPERPOWER, a two-night-only concert event featuring a multigenerational band of teenagers, TEAM performers, and Baby Boomers, directed by the TEAM's Artistic Director and Tony Award nominee Rachel Chavkin (Natasha, Pierre & The Great Comet of 1812).

PRIMER will be presented tonight and tomorrow, August 22 and 23, at Roulette (509 Atlantic Avenue - Brooklyn, NY). The concert is open to all ages and advance tickets are available for $10 at primerforafailedsuperpower.org. Audience members are encouraged to pay what they can - no one will be turned away for lack of funds.

Developed by the TEAM across a five-year period, PRIMER explores how American identity and power is performed, protested, and handed down by each generation, through the lens of iconic songs that have celebrated and questioned what it means to be an American throughout the country's past and present. Performed by varying combinations of the three generation band, the songs will be interwoven with video interviews with activists from across the country, including Lauren Burgess, a young woman leading the Black Lives Matter movement on the SMU campus in Dallas; Ron Short, a cultural worker in his 70's who has been organizing and performing in Appalachia for decades; Carmen Perez, Executive Director of The Gathering for Justice and co-chair of the Women's March on Washington; and Jasilyn Charger, one of the indigenous youth founders of the #NoDAPL protest at Standing Rock.

Collaborating composers include Heather Christian (The World is Round, The TEAM's Mission Drift), Justin Ellington (Fetch Clay Make Man), Jack Fuller (GypjaQ), Orion Stephanie Johnstone (I'll Never Love Again), Amy León (Something Melancholy), Martha Redbone and Aaron Whitby (Bone Hill), Stewand Heidi Rodewald (Passing Strange), andYva Las Vegass (I Was Born In A Place Of Sunshine And The Smell Of Ripe Mangoes).

The cast will include TEAM company members Jessica Almasy, Jill Frutkin, Libby King, Ian Lassiter, and Jake Margolin, joined by Bernice "Boom Boom" Brooks, Sawyer Eason, Diana Oh, Ching Valdes-Aran, Living Theatre members Tom Walker and Jerry Goralnick, and teen and Baby Boomer performers from across New York City, and as far away as Long Island, the Hudson Valley, and Dallas, Texas.

The creative team includes music supervisor Orion Stephanie Johnstone, and associate director Zhailon Levingston, with music direction by Nehemiah Luckett, stage design byNick Vaughan, lighting design by Jake Heinrichs, sound design by Matt Hubbs, projection design by Stivo Arnoczy, and costumes by Brenda Abbandandolo.

The TEAM is a Brooklyn-based ensemble of 15 core members and a continually expanding group of associate artists. The company creates all of its work collaboratively, drawing inspiration from the news, under-examined histories, YouTube videos and pop culture, and on-the-ground research (including a month spent living in a foreclosed home in Las Vegas). This research becomes the jumping off point for original writing and staging. The company and its creative process were the subject of a 2013 feature-length documentary, The TEAM Makes a Play, directed by Emmy Award Winner Paulette Douglas.

Since its founding in 2004, the TEAM has created 10 original works, including Anything That Gives Off Light (with the National Theatre of Scotland), RoosevElvis, and Mission Drift(Scotsman Fringe First Award, 2011 Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Prize, 2011 Herald Angel Award). Their work has been seen in New York at The Public Theater, PS122, Vineyard Theatre, Ohio Theatre, The Bushwick Starr, and New York Live Arts; nationally at ArtsEmerson, A.R.T., Walker Art Center, Playmakers Repertory Theatre, and the UMS/University of Michigan; and internationally at the National Theatre, Royal Court Theatre, Barbican, Almeida Theatre, and Battersea Arts Centre in London; the Edinburgh International Festival; Culturgest in Lisbon; the Salzburg Festival; Galway Festival; Perth International Arts Festival; and Hong Kong Arts Festival.

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

For more information, visit www.primerforafailedsuperpower.org or go to www.theteamplays.org.

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