Physical Theater Company Fishmarket Theatre Co. Launches Inaugural Season

fishmarket theatre co. is NYC's newest physical theater collective of clowns, potters, and sci-fi enthusiasts making tactile, immersive, and interdisciplinary productions. From creating installation-art Shakespeare to developing plays reclaiming NYC subway stops, fishmarket brings shows outside of traditional venues into spaces where they can converse with geography and community and revel in the playful, imaginative, and fully-embodied.

"Creating art is community organizing," says director and visual artist Nadiya Atkinson, one of fishmarket's founding members. "Our focus is on accessible, imaginative performance that emerges from collaborative storytelling. The rehearsal room should be filled with collective Wikipedia research spirals, folktales, and too many bits. Performance is pulling the audience into our freshly crafted worlds. And our goal is for these worlds to dip their toes in typically disparate artistic mediums."

fishmarket curates an array of offerings, from workshops to immersive art installations, for the artistic community and beyond. A few of their ensemble members compose a playwriting group called "the Three Sardines" that develops new works and the collective invites artists across disciplines to join a bi-weekly workshops to bounce ideas off of each other and cultivate community.

fishmarket's inaugural season includes a site-specific production of MUSEUM by Tina Howe, a new arts festival celebrating "guilty pleasure" literature, and a newly developed play called CRINGE centered on fanfiction as liberative queer space.

MUSEUM by Tina Howe

MUSEUM is a toast to the late, great playwright Tina Howe that follows the escapades of gallery-goers on the last day of a modern art exhibit. This Off-Off Broadway production is staged in a ceramic studio gallery. An immersive, riotous evening, MUSEUM follows the perils of contemporary art with an ensemble of seventeen actors playing forty-two characters.

MUSEUM runs February 22, 23, and 24 at 7:30 pm at Artshack Cafe at 1129 Bedford Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11216.

"Fanfic, Fandom, and Forbidden Pleasure: A Romance Festival"

Some writing genres are relegated to living as frivolous "guilty pleasures." Across the board, most of these works are written by women and queer folk. "Fanfic, Fandom, and Forbidden Pleasure" raises a glass to lady literature, counter-cultural self-publication, fanfiction, smut, and everything in between with play readings, podcast shows, workshops, and a few other surprises.

The event is co-curated with the hit podcast "Pod and Prejudice" and takes place at the Ripped Bodice and other local NYC businesses. An all queer, women and trans-led team, the artists focus on writing that hasn't fit into the cis-male dominated literary canon. The festival provides space for artists and audiences to investigate women-led literary genres as exploration of queerness, identity creation, and non-heteropatriarchal fantasies. The festival's mission is to fill existing gaps in the artistic conversation around canonical literature, socially unrecognized works, and fan-created content.

"Fanfic, Fandom, and Forbidden Pleasure: A Romance Festival" takes place March 7th to 10th and March 21st to 24th. For a full event schedule and tickets head here.

CRINGE by the Three Sardines

CRINGE (#NoBetaWeDieLikeMen) is a sci-fi inspired, clown-created play that delves into the creation of fanfiction as we know it. CRINGE is an unauthorized tribute to intergenerational fandom and liberative queer space, 1960's sci-fi gayety remixed with Y2K internet culture. CRINGE will be developed in NYC at the "Fanfic, Fandom, and Forbidden Pleasure" Romance Festival before making its international premiere at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival in August.

CRINGE plays March 10th at 7:15 pm at the Ripped Bodice and August 12th-22nd at Edinburgh'Fringe's theSpace @ Niddry St.

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