Theatre Row Announces the Inaugural Kitchen Sink Residency Cohort

Theatre Row has announced the recipients of the first-ever Kitchen Sink Residency, its most ambitious initiative yet, designed to nurture smaller, emerging performing arts companies. The 2019-2021 cohort will consist of five diverse projects from five unique companies: The Assembly, Broken Box Mime Theater, LubDub Theatre Company, Noor Theatre, and Superhero Clubhouse.

The Kitchen Sink Residency provides cohort companies a two-year commitment of space and support, as well as a sustained artistic home base, as they create and present a new, never-before-produced work.

In the 2019-2021 cycle of the Kitchen Sink Residency, companies were selected by Theatre Row & Building for the Arts leadership, under the direction of Sarah Hughes, Theatre Row's Director of Artistic Programming, and Stephanie Rolland, Theatre Row's Director of Theatre Operations, as well as by the Artistic Advisory Committee, led by Board Member Andy Hamingson. All styles, forms, and genres of live performance were considered, with the goal of creating a Kitchen Sink cohort that is diverse in as many ways as possible.

The Kitchen Sink Residency is unique in its extended development timeline. It is designed to provide consistent support during the artistic process, from first draft to full production, with well-spaced opportunities to show work as it grows. Theatre Row will provide rehearsal time, stipends, and producing and marketing assistance throughout both years of the two-year Residency. Year One culminates in the five-week Kitchen Sink Festival (July-Aug 2020), which will feature each Kitchen Sink company in its own four-performance workshop at Theatre Row. Year Two culminates in a three-week World Premiere production (Spring/Summer 2021) at Theatre Row for each company, resulting in 15 weeks of exciting new works at Theatre Row.

2019-2021 Kitchen Sink Residents

Broken Box Mime Theater's Capacity

Created and performed by The BKBX Company
Artistic Director Becky Baumwoll

Capacity explores the human body's capacity as a vessel for communication through a dozen short-form pieces investigating physical and theoretical "volume," how spaces take on characteristics, and the human capacity for change.

LubDub Theatre Company's On the Lawn

Co-Conceived and Co-Directed by
Caitlin Nasema Cassidy and Geoff Kanick
Dramaturgy by Robert Duffley
Choreography by Mayte Natalio

Spend a day in America's backyard. From the "outdoor carpets" of early modern Europe to the contemporary eco-politics of "freedom lawns" and #droughtshaming, On the Lawn traces the roots of this most peculiar invention through installation art, music, and movement.

Noor Theatre's First Down

Written by SEVAN

North Carolina native George Berri has become a national sports sensation, beloved hometown hero, and one of the NFL's best players. But he's about to create a perfect storm of personal, professional and political conflict as he wrestles with the decision to come out as an Arab-Muslim during the Superbowl by praying to Allah after scoring a touchdown.

Superhero Clubhouse's Mammelephant

Written by Lanxing Fu
Music by Treya Lam and Serena Ebony Miller
Sound Design by Eva Von Schweinitz
Co-Created by Sergio Botero, William Cook, Lanxing Fu, Treya Lam, Serena Ebony Miller, Jeremy Pickard, and Eva Von Schweinitz

A time-warping musical play exploring otherness and displacement in the era of climate change,Mammelephant is told through the eyes of the world's first mammoth-elephant hybrid and generations of female ancestors as they tumble through the history of humanity's changing relationship to nature. Inspired by Pleistocene Park, a real-life geoengineering experiment to prevent the Arctic permafrost from thawing by recreating an Ice Age ecosystem, the play follows the "mammelephant" as she tries to make a hopeful future for herself in a place where everything - knowledge, identity, even the ground beneath her feet - is unstable.

The Assembly's In Corpo

Music, Story and Lyrics by Nate Weida
Book, Story and Lyrics by Ben Beckley
Directed by Jess Chayes
Scenic Design by Nic Benacerraf
Dramaturgy by Stephen Aubrey
Costume Design by Kate Fry
Sound Design by Asa Wember

Drawing freely from works by Franz Kafka and Herman Melville, with an innovative electro-pop, folk/funk score, In Corpo is a new musical created by The Assembly about a dystopian corporate workplace in the near-future. When a stranger arrives at Sector 13-G, Corpo Corporation's iron-clad, off-center authoritarianism begins to rupture.

Finalists for the Residency were also announced. These companies are: A Canary Torsi, Anonymous Ensemble, The Anthropologists, The Drunkard's Wife, Houses on the Moon, and Lisa Clair Group.

As a biennial program, invitations to apply for the next round of the Kitchen Sink Residency will be released in Spring/Summer 2021.

Theatre Row's high-quality, centrally located spaces and its established history as a home for non-profits make it uniquely positioned as an incubator for these artists. In making a comprehensive commitment to support emerging artists by providing a home base in the heart of the Theater District, the Kitchen Sink Residency seeks to make Off-Broadway more accessible for the development of dynamic and diverse new works, while also amplifying the voices of under-represented artists so that they can expand their producing capacity and cultivate their audiences.

Theatre Row also serves as the home for a diverse group of Companies-in-Residence, including The Chase Brock Experience, Epic Theatre Ensemble, Keen Company, Ma-Yi Theater Company, Mint Theater Company, New Light Theater Project, New York City Children's Theater, Pan Asian Repertory Theatre, Theater Breaking Through Barriers, and United Solo Theatre Festival.

Theatre Row offers theatre and rehearsal studio rentals, office space, ticketing and box office, as well as tech support to actors, producers, dancers, and musicians. Theatre Row encourages its varied mix of nonprofit theatre companies to share ideas and resources as they work in its intimate spaces. Each year, Theatre Row serves 100 companies, 3,000 artists, and over 160,000 patrons.

Photo by Bjorn Bollinder

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