Ars Nova Announces Lineup for 13th Annual ANT Fest

Ars Nova has announced the lineup for its 13th Annual ANT Fest featuring 12 shows premiering on the streaming platform Ars Nova Supra. Running June 14-26, 2021, this festival of all new talent, all the time, showcases new work from New York's most adventurous emerging artists. Tickets go on sale today! A complete lineup follows and can be found at https://arsnovanyc.com/antfest.

Founding Artistic Director Jason Eagan commented, "What better way to end a theater season full of unexpected twists and turns than with a first time ever, digital version of our annual All New Talent festival. Here comes another wave of artists ready to take New York City by storm. We're eager to witness the ambitious inventiveness of this year's participants, as we close out our first season on Ars Nova Supra with their exhilarating, origi-for-digi ideas!"

Now in its thirteenth year, ANT Fest offers a wide range of early career artists a point of entry onto the Ars Nova stage and into the greater New York City arts community. Each ANT Fest application receives three evaluations by First Round Committee Readers, whose aggregated evaluations determine a pool of finalists. All first-round readers are listed below.

In response to the pandemic suspension of ANT Fest 2020, Ars Nova invited the pool of 2020 finalists to submit a digital project proposal for ANT Fest 2021. Those proposals were then evaluated by a four-person panel consisting of Nia Farrell, Jenny Koons, Michelle J. Rodriguez, and Eric Shethar, who collaboratively curated this year's ANT Fest lineup.

Since its inception, ANT Fest has increasingly provided a crucial first step toward an extended artistic relationship with Ars Nova. Rags Parkland Sings The Songs Of The Future began as a one-man song cycle, created and performed by Andrew R. Butler, in ANT Fest 2010. Following subsequent concerts and workshops, the 2018 Ars Nova world premiere went on to win the 2019 Lortel award for "Outstanding Musical." The "in-all-ways sensational" (New York Times) Underground Railroad Game, created and performed by Jennifer Kidwell and Scott R. Sheppard, was discovered in ANT Fest 2014. Following its 2016 premiere, the Ars Nova production went on to win an OBIE for Best New American Play and was heralded as "one of the 25 best new American plays in the past 25 years" by The New York Times.

All shows begin at 7PM EST and run 60 minutes or less. All single tickets are $10. Ars Nova Supra subscriptions are available for $15 per month; subscribers receive access to all 12 ANT Fest performances at one low price, plus exclusive on-demand access to the Ars Nova Supra library, where they can catch any shows they may have missed.

Please visit https://arsnovanyc.com/antfest for more information.

ANT Fest 2021 Lineup

June 14

pov: u run Joe Biden's tiktok
Written by May Treuhaft-Ali & Nicholas Polonio
Directed by Nicholas Polonio
Follow four Gen Z influencers hired by the Biden campaign to create content for his official TikTok account. With the soul of the country at stake, generations collide and messages blur as they give it their all to win the 2020 election the best way they know how - virally.

June 15

Paletas de Coco
Created & Performed by Franky D. Gonzalez
Directed by Jeff Liu
Four Christmas Eves, three generations and one man's reckoning with forgiveness. Paletas de Coco explores the meaning of fatherhood in all of its complexities, through its many ups and downs, with coconut popsicles, Santería, buffet robbing, childbirth and so much else in between.

June 16

NIGHTSWIMMING
Written & Performed by Queen-Tiye Akamefula
Directed & Produced by Caroline Flynn
A young girl fills her sleepless nights creating herself anew in built-out worlds of fantasy. In this experimental split-screen short, one girl's many personalities realize they might not be as real as they think, and fight to save everything they've made as it crumbles around them.

June 17

Your Changing Body
Written by Ana Verde
Directed by Ana Verde & James Wyrwicz
In 2005, Ana Verde's mom told her about her period via a PowerPoint presentation, and now, she'll regale you with that same gift. Part biology lesson, part ode to growing up in the 2000s, Your Changing Body is a short non-fiction film about exorcising shame and (still) trying to come to terms with the fact that one's body is always changing.

June 18

he rip his shirt off completely
Created & Performed by Collin Kelly
A nonsensical yoga teacher; an earnest artist; a self-righteous multi-level marketer; an overblown philosopher. In this outlandish rumination on YouTubers and the culture that makes them, Collin Kelly spins a web of performance, stories and dance to critique superficiality and overused opinions while simultaneously celebrating an unabashed humanity.

June 19

America
Created, Directed & Performed by Paul Lofferon, Sam Rayner, Emily Wheatman & Olivia Zerphy
Award-winning international physical theater company Voloz Collective brings you AMERICA, weaving juggling and object theater with magical realism in a fantastical physical comedy. Based on the 2019 theft of Maurizio Cattelan's golden toilet (titled "America") from Britain's Blenheim Palace, this eccentric devised work probes the boundary between theater and cinema to imagine who could have stolen the lavish lavatory and why.

June 21

"my dick is david duke" or The Sad Fat Negress Can't Get a Date
Created & Performed by Amara Janae Brady
Directed by Caitlyn Johnson
Why the f*ck are you so ashamed to love Black women - especially the fat ones? While we know the systemic culprits are anti-Blackness and fatphobia, this irreverent variety show offers an opportunity to skewer these 'norms' while centering fat Black women in all of their splendor, love and humanity.

June 22

SORRY/NOT SORRY
Created by Nora Sørena Casey & Nana Dakin
You say you're sorry, but what good is that? What do we do with an apology - or without it? Some options include: dance, scream, fight, write a letter, pass a bill, build a sculpture, make a wish and eat an egg. Join us on a kaleidoscopic blend of dance, visual art, memoir, critical theory and more as we explore (and attempt to get to the bottom of) what it truly means to apologize.

June 23

Bread Crumbs
Written & Performed by Jasmine Joshua
Directed by Eddie DeHais
What even IS nonbinary anyway? A computer program? A tropical drink? A word that caused you to have an existential crisis when you finally realized: oh my god, I think I might be one of those, but I'm married and have two kids already and what am I supposed to do now? I have SO many bras! Join drag artist Harvey Gent (Jasmine Joshua) in a hilarious and wholly autobiographical queer spectacle, featuring pregnancy, trekking across tidepools in your underwear and peeing one's pants in front of Very Important People.

June 24

Meebula: A Drag and Sonic Memoir
Created & Performed by Untitled Queen & Jess Ramsay
Sound artist/DJ Jess Ramsay and drag artist Untitled Queen premiere Meebula: A Drag and Sonic Memoir, an immersive video art performance album combining original poetry, sound, captioning, alt text, song, video and drag, spinning a yarn as if atop a Brooklyn roof at dawn to honor 13 years of friendship. Part travelogue and part love letter, Meebula invites us to revel in all of the glory and magic that can be found in queer platonic friendship.

June 25

my mouth is a queer time machine

Created by Lyam B. Gabel & Evan Spigelman

Directed by Lyam B. Gabel
A celebration of trans* histories and futures. Featuring audio from interviews with trans* and gender-nonconforming individuals, performers will trace forward in time through movement and lipsync to chart the dynamic and fluid history of queerness. At the intersection of what has been and what can be, of the present and the past and everything in between, my mouth is a queer time machine writes and stretches through the past to imagine and reach for the future.

June 26

A Boy's Room
Created & Performed by Roderick Woodruff
Directed by Brandi Nicole McLeain
Young Ricky gives the divas a run for their money and turns the performance of a lifetime in this glittery pop concert for the ages - fighting inner demons and generational trauma on the way - all within the four walls of his bedroom. It's Black AF, it's Queer AF and, crucially, it's Beyoncé AF.

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