A(U)NTS! By Zoë Geltman Begins At The Brick In May
Performances take place May 8–25, at The Brick.
The Brick will present A(U)NTS! by writer and performer Zoë Geltman, directed by Julia Sirna-Frest. Performances take place May 8–25, at The Brick (579 Metropolitan Ave, Brooklyn).
How should women be? A play that explores and investigates this question and imagines a new reality of female autonomy, love, self-reliance & sticky glamor.
Annie, Renee and Sherylann are aunts. They work in a dentist's office in Williamsburg and are all rapidly approaching middle age. They make their coffees, drink from their intense water bottles, and bemoan the misery of babysitting, and the shame of being a rapidly aging woman all alone. But what's that, Sherylann, you actually want kids? And Renee, you're freezing your eggs?! GAH! Fwowf! All of a sudden, their worlds crack open. And through that crack, a line of liberated ants marches in. Gleefully, disgustingly and biologically serious, A(U)NTS! explores how the largely childless, largely female, rigorously organized societies of tiny insects known as ants can model a different life for human women.
“My individual experience of being a woman, of living inside a female body, has been disorienting, joyful, disgusting, embarrassing, and empowering, and these are the kinds of experiences I end up creating onstage,” says Geltman.
“This play questions those trappings we've all been told we need to survive—as women, as women of a certain age, as embodied women—and explores the possibility for alternative modes of living and being. I've often felt the impossibility of getting outside ‘the system,' even when making a non-traditional choice: it seems I'm always in relation to patriarchy, to misogyny, to capitalism, in some way. This play is a way for me to try to imagine into being completely outside of that—if just for a strange moment of transforming into an ant and cradling my friends' heads in a pool.”
The additional creative team for A(U)NTS! includes Costume Designer Ásta Bennie Hostetter, set designer Jiaying Zhang, creature and puppet designer Mark Fox, sound designer Carsen Joenk, and lighting designer Megan Lang. Stage managed by Sarah Samonte, and line produced by Sarah Jones.
12 performances of A(U)NTS! take place Thu-Sat + Mon at 8pm, from May 8-25 at The Brick Theater, located at 579 Metropolitan Ave. in Brooklyn. Press is welcome as of May 9 and May 10 is the official opening night. $25–$50 tickets can be purchased here.
About the Artists:
Zoë Geltman (Writer and Performer) is a writer and performer. Her plays include A(U)NTS! (2024 Himan Brown Award winner at Brooklyn College; 2024 National Playwrights Conference semi- finalist); PUFFY HAIR (Vancouver Fringe Festival, The Tank, Big Art Group's SFX Festival, The PIT); Lolly, Lolly, Lolly (2020 National Playwrights Conference semi-finalist); This Dump Is A Dump (Bushwick Starr Reading Series); and SEA FRAUD (The Brick). She is a 2026 Brooklyn College Playwriting MFA candidate, where she is a Rona Jaffe Fellow. Select performing credits include A Woman Among Women (The Bushwick Starr), Kara and Emma and Barbara and Miranda (The Tank/New Georges), Remember This Trick (Target Margin), Spindle Shuttle Needle (Clubbed Thumb), The World My Mama Raised (Clubbed Thumb), PIONEERS #goforth (JACK), Evelyn (The Bushwick Starr), and The Return (CPM Gallery). www.zoegeltman.com.
Julia Sirna-Frest (Director) is a performer, director and musician. She is a founding member of the Obie-award-winning Half Straddle. Music projects include rock duo Permanent Moves (Debut Album Don't Forget Us: A Chekhovian Song Cycle streaming everywhere!) and co-front woman of Doll Parts, Brooklyn's premiere Dolly Parton cover band. Favorite performance credits include Lunch Bunch (Playco, Clubbed Thumb); [Porto] (WP Theater, The Bushwick Starr); Seder (Hartford Stage); A Tunnel Year (The Chocolate Factory); The Offending Gesture (Mac Wellman); Comfort Dogs: Live from the Pink House (JACK). She has directed the majority of Zoë Geltman's work, including PUFFY HAIR (Vancouver Fringe, The Tank), SEA FRAUD (The Brick), and Lolly, Lolly, Lolly (New Georges). She is an alum of the 2022-2024 WP Lab and 2025 Director's Lab at Mercury Store, as well as an affiliated artist with New Georges. www.juliasirnafrest.com
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