Nancy Manocherian's The Cell Theatre Announces New Artists-in-Residence
This upcoming season, the cell has committed to 28 new projects with over 53 resident artists for the 2025/2026 cycle.
By: A.A. Cristi Jun. 20, 2025
Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre has announced a brand new cohort of resident artists who will be presenting a plethora of developmental readings, workshops, and fully staged productions as part of their 2025-26 season. For more information on the 2025-26 resident artists and their work please visit www.thecelltheatre.org/residents.
This upcoming season, the cell has committed to 28 new projects with over 53 resident artists for the 2025/2026 cycle. The cell's Artist-in-Residence Program is for playwrights, composers, theatrical designers, choreographers, and interdisciplinary artists who are developing new and experimental work. Grantees receive a stipend up to $5000 and a 1 - 5 week space grant at the cell, a multi-purpose art venue in the heart of Chelsea. The staff at the cell offers each AIR a suite of services including creative development, dramaturgy, casting assistance, technical support, administrative services, 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsorship, marketing, ticketing, videography, and photographic documentation.
The 2025/2026 cohort includes: Gelsey Bell, é boylan, Patti Bradshaw, Josh Brown, Dan Caffrey, Camille Cooper, Dan Daly, Kallan Dana, Alexa Derman, Steph Del Rosso, Anne DeMelo, Matt Dickson, Stephen M. Eckert, Zachariah Ezer, Dan Giles, Daniela Garcia-Arce, Samuel Golland, Mackenna Goodrich, Annaporva Green, Dante Green, Gabby Gubitosi, Lauren Holmes, Daniel Holzman, Mya Ison, Jesse Itskowitz, Kedian Keohan, Kenneth Keng, Noah Latty, Lee LeBreton, Zoe Lesser, Ying Ying Li, Joonas Lemetyinen, Sam Mueller, Honor Molloy, Robert Norman, Greg T. Nanni, Caitlin Ryan O'Connell, Jessica O'Hara-Baker, Alexandra Palocz, Liz Peterson, Drew Praskovich, Maleek Rae, Utkarsh Rajawat, Joe Rivera, Dominique Rider, Betsy Rosen, Francesca Sabel, Stephen Santa, Brian Joél Sanchez, Griffin Stanton-Ameisen, Will Steinberger, Dina Vovsi, and Christopher Williams
"This residency cycle, we were thrilled by the immense talent that came our way," said Founding Artistic Director Nancy Manocherian. "After a rigorous review and interview process, we've selected a cohort of artists whose work speaks to the current moment. We're always seeking bold concepts and fresh ideas-this group is no exception."
The Body of Mangoes (Deliver Us From Evil)
A new dance piece by Daniela Garcia-Arce & Gabby Gubitosi
The Body of Mangoes (Deliver Us to Evil) investigates the influence of colonization on Mexican and Filipino cultures through contemporary dance, utilizing prayer, rituals, vocalizing, eating, and music. Workshop Presentation | July 2025
Arborlogues: A Botanical Recital Performed for One Tree
Created by Dan Daly with text by Lee LeBreton
Arborlogues: A Botanical Recital Performed for One Tree is a one-person play where you are the performer and a single tree is your audience. Performed in the backyard of the cell, the 15-minute play takes place within a specially built red curtain theater. After receiving the bound script from the stage manager, you are left alone with your audience. The script leads you through a series of stories, prompts, and actions related to this tree, this location, and yourself.
Ticketed Event | August 2025
Ceremonies for Alligator Bait (Or Guttah)
Written by Maleek Rae
Fusing spoken word, poetry and rap, this new play takes audiences between present day and 1970's Detroit. "Ceremonies for Alligator Bait (or guttah)" follows the transformative journey of a young gender queer child named Person, who struggles to transcend the confines of a world that thrives on limitation. Guided by their grandmother, Wolf, the high priest of the gutter, Person finds themself at the crossroads of their heritage and aspirations. As family turmoil and societal challenges intertwine, a sacred ceremony unfolds, catalyzing the birth of a new self named Diamond, who seeks to navigate the complexities of belonging in the absence of a stable home. This guttah ceremony serves as a powerful ritual that invites all to reflect on the essence of home, encouraging them to reimagine, redefine, and ultimately create spaces of belonging. Through a vibrant chorus of aunts, uncles, neighbors, and ancestral spirits, the play weaves a rich tapestry of memories and wisdom, as the ancestral legacy is passed from Wolf to Person and ultimately to Diamond, illuminating the enduring quest for self-discovery and community.
Workshop Presentation | September 2025
ADJUNCTS
Written by Steph Del Rosso, Directed by Caitlyn Ryan O'Connell
Claudine and Sam are burnt-out, underpaid teachers at a private arts college in New York who become fast friends when they decide to organize their co-workers. But internal divides and manipulative tactics from management threaten to destroy their path to lasting change. A dark comedy about solidarity, academia, and the gig economy.
Reading | October 2025
But Today I Am Fine
Written by Ying Ying Li, Directed by Jessica O'Hara-Baker
A coming-of-age story of motherhood, told in a series of vignettes which are in turns poignant and unserious, but always a little bit... dark.
Workshop | October 2025
Snowbirds
Written by Lauren Holmes, Directed by Will Steinberger
Recent retirees Tom and Joan have hit the road in their new RV, ready to experience the next phase of their lives. When cash gets tight, they pick up work in a warehouse. What happens when our working lives never end? Reading | September 2025
Transgressions
Written by Kallan Dana, Directed by Zoe Lesser
Willow's mother disappears again and again and again and again and again and again.
Reading | October 2025
OLIVES
Written by Daniel Holzman, Directed by Francesca Sabel
Miriam is afraid there isn't going to be a future. David is afraid of everything. Then the bodybuilder arrives. Reading | October 2025
The Body Filters
Created and Written by Greg T. Nanni and Griffin Stanton-Ameisen, Directed by Brenna Geffers
The Body Filters is a futuristic dystopian tale about two workers who filter dead carcasses away from their camp's limited water source. The bodies are caused by the big floods that plague this world, drowning people who are now trying to move from island to island in a world where water levels have risen five feet. One day, a live stranger washes up on the shore. The Body Filters save them, but then they face a dilemma: whether or not to secretly help this person stay alive, or to report them to their camp, which usually ends in one outcome: death. The Body Filters is theatre that uses both scripted and dramatically improvised material, asking audiences to answer curated questions before each show, resulting in an opportunity for the audience to share their own fears of a future world fully impacted by climate change. Ticketed Performance | November 2025
So Sublime
Written by Alexa Derman
A new play about the uneasy erotics of feeling in fiction.
Reading | December 2025
Impressive, Sincerely
Written by Robert Norman, Directed by Liz Peterson
A struggling American novelist accepts an invitation to a small German town where their work is uniquely celebrated. After a series of misunderstandings with the local book club, it becomes obvious that the translated book they've all read bears little resemblance to the original. Reading | December 2025
LIGHT + HOUSE : A Play in Three Channels
Written by é boylan, Directed by Dante Green
Light + House is a love story about love stories, exploring what happens when our dreams express dreams of their own. Ticketed Performance | January 2026
My Husband is Good at Dying
Written by Drew Praskovich, Directed by Stephen Santa
My Husband is Good at Dying is an audio driven psychological thriller about a Foley Artist working in Los Angeles who must craft the perfect soundscape for the death scene of her late husband's final film. Jean, processes the loss of Boston, her A-lister husband whose career was launched thanks to his signature ability to die on screen. However, Jean becomes obsessed with finding the most realistic sound possible to capture death on screen. As her obsession grows, Jean turns to darker, more violent measures to get closer to perfection.
Workshop | January 2026
Crawlspace
Written by Mya Ison, Directed by Noah Latty
Crawlspace centers Jaime, a Black queer writer navigating her early 20s and her long-term relationship. Jaime is beginning to come into herself as an artist while she is nannying the 11-year-old daughter of a writer she deeply admires. Things go awry as Jaime begins to make life-altering decisions that affect her selfhood, relationship, and career, all while we peek into her subconscious through dream sequences and magical realism. Reading | February 2026
Haydn Dialogues
Curated & Performed by The Cramer Quartet
Haydn: Dialogues presents audiences with a unique opportunity to hear Haydn quartets performed on period instruments alongside a modern-day response in the shape of a new work by a living composer. Concert Series | February 2026 - Throughout the Year
Provenance
An immersive experience by Alexandra Palocz
Provenance is a tactile-audio narrative experience about feeling in the dark, making meaning out of the world around us, and what it means to belong. In the darkness, you awaken anew and explore your surroundings through touch. As you fit the pieces you find together, a story unfolds around a girl, a mysterious artifact stolen by birds, and a quest to discover its true home. You follow the voice of the girl as she sets out into the unknown, discovering her world together and engaging with questions that emerge through her journey. Ticketed Event | February 2026
Address the Body!
Written by Zachariah Ezer, Directed by Dominique Rider
The two Black members of The Presidential Committee on Slavery and Its Afterlife uncover a conspiracy at the heart of America's most prestigious university. Workshop | February 2026
Some People Need to Die
Written by Joe Rivera, Directed by Jesse Itskowitz
SPNTD (Part I) Two forensic cleaners become pawns in the business of death during an overnight disposal of a kodokushi, or "lonely death" , in May 2020.
TRENCHES (Part II) A contractor hires two day laborers for City Burials during a pandemic, in October 2020.
UNTITLED (Part III) One woman's dying wish for a Natural Burial spirals into a dark transaction when a charismatic entrepreneur of Natural Organic Reduction takes more than just her remains, in March 2021. Workshop | March 2026
Dublin Noir
Written by Honor Molloy, Directed by Britt Berke
August 1939. Europe's boiling up to war. But Ireland's having none of it. On a day trip to Drogheda, Dubliner Tadgh Steele is captured by a dairy farmer named Murphy and locked in a cowshed. Is Tadgh a poet as he claims or - as Murphy suspects - a Nazi spy? Makes no difference to Murphy's slop girl Dolly, who falls in love with the handsome stranger and casts him as the hero of a "fil-um in her head." There's only one way off the farm.
Reading | March 2026
Someplace Fun
Composed by Josh Brown, Directed by Stephen M. Eckert
A communal mediation on the process of letting go, following one woman as she slowly decouples herself from the world and her loved ones, one moment at a time.
Workshop | April 2026
Walking Iris
Co-created by Patti Bradshaw and Christopher Williams
Inspired by the botanical wonder of the walking iris (Neomarica gracilis), a host of winged immortals depicted on ancient Greek and Cretan artifacts, as well as the mysterious "Ladies in Blue" fresco found in the Minoan palace of Knossos, Walking Iris is an evening-length puppet/dance work co-created by Patti Bradshaw and Christopher Williams featuring sculptural costumes, objects, and puppets by Wendy Froud, Williams, Bradshaw, and Andrew Jordan set to a soundscape combining live effects by John Dyer with music by Atrium Musicae. The piece as a whole aims to present a meditation on the world of the unseen, the seemingly fleeting nature of time, and the natural cycles of plant life, seasons, and cultures that, like everything, come into being, abide for a time, dissolve, and begin again.
Workshop | June 2026
Sickbed
Written & Performed by Gelsey Bell, Directed by Anne DeMelo
sickbed is an aural experience that tells the 4.5-billion-year story of Earth's history using the phenomenological scale of the listener's body in a sickbed. Events such as the creation of the moon, the emergence of life, the journey of plants and then animals onto terra firma, and previous mass extinction events are layered onto a meditation for and of the human engagement with chronic pain and disability.
Workshop | June 2026
Line Up
Written by Kenneth Keng, Directed by Annaporva Green, Puppetry by Camille Cooper
A squad of mothers joins their colonizer's army for the chance to win citizenship for their families. Workshop | June 2026
The Tusk Hunters
Written by Dan Caffrey, Directed by Dina Vovsi, puppet captain Betsy Rosen
Two men in the Alaskan tundra search for woolly mammoth tusks as an alternative to elephant ivory. But their most recent discovery causes their employer to pivot from the ivory trade to a more technologically innovative venture as a means of combating climate change. Inspired by the real-life founding of Colossal Biosciences, The Tusk Hunters explores the morality of de-extinction and the toll that scientifically revolutionary ideas take on those who execute them. Workshop | July 2026
Out East
Written by Sam Mueller, Directed by Mackenna Goodrich
Set in an East Hampton estate, this new comedy explores a group of domestic workers forced to quarantine with the owners' mistress during the height of the pandemic. Reading | October 2026
POWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWPOWBANG
Written by Utkarsh Rajawat, Directed by Kedian Keohan
A gun-slinging western, Papa Roach, and sissy porn collide in a two-person duel that leaps through genres to determine the root of all evil.
Workshop | September 2026
The Charioteer
Written by Dan Giles, Directed by Matt Dickson
Shortly after Charly visits her estranged brother at college, he vanishes off the grid to live in a radical environmentalist commune. Ten years later, he needs her help. But first, she needs answers. The Charioteer is two-hander about the inevitability and difficulty of change.
Ticketed Performance | October/November 2026
Nancy Manocherian's the cell theatre (Artistic Director Kira Simring) is a not-for-profit dedicated to the incubation and presentation of new work across all artistic disciplines that mine the mind, pierce the heart and awaken the soul. Founded in 2006 as a "21st century salon", the cell has provided a developmental home in the heart of Chelsea for the performing arts, food artists, cyborg theatre artists, musicians, installation artists, choreographers and more. Central to the organization is the Residency Program, which grants space and funds to artists on a project-by-project basis, allowing for tailored support and creative freedom. Past performances include, Where We Meet, Arctic Explorations, The Tiger's Bride, cryptochrome, I'm Gonna Marry You Tobey Maguire, multiple productions with The Why Collective, The Final Veil, Elizabeth Swados' Nightclub Cantata, What Keeps You Going?, Fruma-Sarah (Waiting in the Wings) starring Jackie Hoffman (Time Out NY Critics' Pick), Persou, Found, The Evolution of Mann, Bastard Jones (Time Out NY Critics' Pick; Drama Desk Award Nominated), Crackskull Row (New York Times Critics' Pick), Hey Jude, Peter/Wendy, The McGowan Trilogy, Horse Girls, Hard Times: An American Musical (New York Times Critics' Pick; developed into the Tony Award Nominated Paradise Square) and Dinner and Delusion. Work developed at the cell has been seen on Broadway, Irish Repertory Theatre, Southwark Playhouse, MCC, Rattlestick Playwrights' Theatre, Joe's Pub, New World Stages, Cherry Lane Theatre, Berkeley Repertory Theatre, Portland Stage, Toyohashi Arts Theatre, Kino Theater, The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, The Tank, Carnegie Stage, Carnegie Museum of Art, and Art Basel Miami. www.thecelltheatre.org
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