Axis Company Announces 20th Anniversary Season

Axis Company today announces its 20th Anniversary Season, which kicks off a bold new work: the world premiere of Strangers in the World, written and directed by Axis Artistic Director Randy Sharp (March 13-April 6). The company celebrates two decades of making raw, unblinking theater in its intimate West Village space with a lineup that exemplifies Axis's body of work-its artistry in exploring dark moments in America's past, and its mastery at staging moving first-person narratives.

The season-opening Strangers in the World, set in 1623-three-quarters of a century before the events depicted in The Crucible-stretches further back in history than Axis has ever gone, and taps into the combination of suffocating piety and existential dread that laid the groundwork for America. In the play, a small group of Puritans who arrive in the "New World" and, unable to venture far inland, build a poorly constructed village on the rocky shore. After two years, a ship arrives with more colonists and supplies, but the captain goes mad and sets the ship on fire, sinking it just beyond the harbor. A survivor from the burned vessel tells the settlers that others are coming to save them. Eight years pass, and at last they decide that tomorrow they will head somewhere south on a journey of certain hardship. Then, a visitor from another world arrives on the shoreline. The play depicts what happens when the values and morals of Puritans are set against the grinding agony of starvation, the constant death of their children, and the horror of murder. How can they choose between bonds of home, a godless southern city and the silent sweet promise of nothing?

Randy Sharp says, "Strangers in the World is about a failed attempt at creating paradise. For the Puritans, that paradise was questionable and had problems of its own-but they failed. The weather crushed them and the physical privation took their morals. And they're now a very tiny isolated outpost of this attempted and failed Eden. Axis aims to enwrap audiences in the feeling of being in the places and times it depicts, without taking a literal approach to space. We're not going to build a fake Puritan village-rather, through lighting and sound and movement, we're going to show you what it felt like to be in the village."

The cast of Strangers in the World includes Spencer Aste, Brian Barnhart, Andrew Dawson, Britt Genelin, Phil Gillen, Emily Kratter, Jon McCormick, and Katie Rose Summerfield. The creative team is Randy Sharp (Director), Chad Yarborough (Set Designer), Karl Ruckdeschel (Costume Designer), David Zeffren (Lighting Designer), Paul Carbonara (Composer, Sound Designer), Lynn Mancinelli (Props Designer), Jess Gersz (Assistant Costume Designer), and Amy Harper (Assistant Lighting Designer). Erik Savage is the Production Stage Manager, and Laurie Kilmartin is the Assistant Stage Manager.

As news stories about the acceleration of climate change and its human toll break daily, Axis returns to another era of environmental and economic strife catalyzed by unrestrained human greed, with a remount of Axis's "atmospheric, expertly structured" (The New York Times), Drama Desk-nominated Dust Bowl drama Last Man Club (June 2019), first presented in 2013. From 1930-1939, the Great American Desert of the Texas and Oklahoma plains- destroyed by the expansion of wheat farming, which plowed beneath the bluestem and buffalo grass holding the dirt in place-blew up into the air in dust storms that packed enough static electricity to power the city of New York. Many refused to leave their dust-covered farms, even after all the animals died and they were eating bitter roots to survive.

Last Man Club is about one of the families who stayed. With no one else around for a hundred miles, Major's family lives in a one room dugout as he tries to reconcile himself to the fact that his own kin has taken the money and run. Out of the biggest storm in the history of the Dust Bowl-200 miles wide, 15,000 feet high-come two desperate men promising a way out.

Hilton Als of the New Yorker has described the work of performer, poet, storyteller Edgar Oliver's work as "so beautiful-so enthralling in its undisguised but never tedious self-absorption, in its command of the spoken word, and in its demand for love." Oliver collaborated with Randy Sharp on the entirety of his beloved New York Trilogy of evocative monologues (East 10th Street, In the Park, Attorney Street), and performed all three installments within Axis' walls. In Victor (October 2019), Oliver's lush, by turns humorous and haunted storytelling style will come to life through a form it has, perhaps, always been begging for: musical theater. Oliver will perform alongside a full cast.

Axis will conclude 2019 with the 18th annual production of its show for families, Seven in One Blow, or The Brave Little Kid, an interactive play with music, adapted from the classic fairy tale by The Brothers Grimm and directed by Randy Sharp (December 2019). In Seven In One Blow, or The Brave Little Kid, a child living in the city kills seven flies with a single swat and makes a belt emblazoned with "SEVEN IN ONE BLOW" to commemorate the event. As he is traveling about, most people think his belt refers to seven people and assign the Kid all kinds of difficult tasks based on this faulty presumption. Along the way a few interesting things are learned: an Ogre finds that you don't always have to show how strong you are... sometimes it's okay just to be quiet about it; a girl realizes that when you tease people you are hurting someone who may be just like you; and a scary monster understands that because she is loved, she may not be so scary after all. In the end, the Kid ultimately discovers that a parents' love and care has no bounds.

Strangers in the World Performance Dates and Ticketing Information

The production begins performances Wednesday, March 13 and runs through Sunday, April 6 (with performances March 13-16, 20-23, 27-30, and April 3-6 at 8pm). Critics are welcome Friday, March 15, and Saturday, March 16, for an official opening on Sunday, March 17.

Tickets are $30 for adults, $20 for seniors/students, and $10 for artists and people under 30, and can be purchased online at www.axiscompany.org or by calling 212.352.3101. All performances are FREE (with advance reservations) for veterans and active U.S. service members and their families.

Axis Theatre is located at One Sheridan Square in Manhattan's West Village, just off 7th Avenue (accessible from the 1/9 train at Christopher Street or the A/B/C/D/E/F/M at West 4th Street)