Julia Jarcho's NOMADS Set for Incubator Arts Project, 5/30-6/15

NOMADS, written by Julia Jarcho and directed by Alice Reagan, will perform May 30-June 15, 2014 at 8pm, Saturday June 6 at 2pm & 8pm; Sunday June 15 at 5pm & 8pm.

2013 Obie Award-winning playwright Julia Jarcho and director Alice Reagan return to the Incubator Arts Project this May/June for the world premiere of Nomads.

An original story, Nomads explores themes and moods inspired in part by the modernist writer Jane Bowles. The play follows the strange adventures of Joan and Jean, two American ladies in the late 1930s. It all begins after Joan, a comfortable spinster and grande dame, gets a phone call one morning. She learns that someone very close to her has died; only she can't for the life of her remember this person. Meanwhile, Joan's friend Jean, a promising artist struggling with alcoholism and writer's block, books passage to Central America. She hopes to find something really different; but the jungle turns out to be weirdly familiar. By turns mysterious and mischievous, playful and perverse, Nomads is a play about how hard it is to see other people.

Jarcho's previous play at the Incubator, Grimly Handsome, garnered the Best New American Play Obie. Jarcho has directed her own work for the past seven years, so Nomads is a rare return to collaboration with a director. Reagan, who recently premiered the well-received I Came to Look for You on Tuesday by Chiori Miyagawa at La MaMa, E.T.C., worked with the Incubator on her 2009 production of the Susan Glaspell play The Verge. She and Jarcho last partnered in 2006 on A Small Hole (NYCFringe).

Nomads also brings together an exciting cast of downtown stars: Jenny Seastone Stern* (Grimly Handsome, North Atlantic), Ben Williams* (Grimly Handsome; Arguendo; GATZ), Kate Benson* (The Good Person of Szechwan; Crime or Emergency; The Confidence Man) and Rebecca Lingafelter* (The Verge, The Ring Cycle).

Produced by Regina Vorria; Set Design by Carolyn Mraz; Costume Design by Ásta Bennie Hostetter; Sound Design by Cooper Gardner; Composed by Chad Raines; Production Stage Manager Liz Nielsen; Production Manager Ann Marie Dorr.

*All actors appearing courtesy of AEA.

Julia Jarcho is a playwright and director from New York City. Her play Grimly Handsome (Incubator Arts Project) won a 2013 Obie Award for Best New American Play. Other plays include Dreamless Land (New York City Players, 2011), American Treasure (13P, 2009 and Bay Area Playwrights Festival, 2009), The Highwayman (NTUSA performance space, 2004; published in The Best American Short Plays of 2005-2006), A Small Hole (Performance Lab 115, dir. Alice Reagan, 2006), and Nursery (Young Playwrights Festival, 2001). She won a Berrilla Kerr award in 2002. Her plays have been supported by the MAP fund and by the Manhattan Community Arts Fund, a program of the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. She has been a resident playwright at the Playwrights Foundation in San Francisco, a board member of Young Playwrights Inc., a resident writer at the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference, and a member of the award-winning playwrights' collective 13P. She is an Assistant Professor in the English department at NYU, where she teaches courses on modern drama. juliajarcho.com

Alice Reagan most recently directed I Came to Look for You on Tuesday by Chiori Miyagawa at La MaMa, E.T.C. and Blown Youth by Dipika Guha in a co-production with New Georges/Barnard College. She has made plays at the Ontological-Hysteric Incubator, The Chocolate Factory, HERE Arts Center, the Culture Project, the Women's Project, and Target Margin Theater. She directed A Small Hole by Julia Jarcho at FringeNYC in 2006 (Fringe First Award for Scenic Design). Alice has workshopped and directed readings of new plays at Soho Rep, Partial Comfort Productions, Women's Project, New Georges, Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, New Dramatists, Lark Play Development Center, hotINK, New Voices Play Festival, Columbia University, and NYU/Public Theater. She is a New Georges Associate Artist, Resident Artist with Performance Lab 115, and was Artistic Associate at Target Margin. Other affiliations: Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab, Women's Project Directors Lab, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, League of Professional Theatre Women, Stage Directors and Choreographers Society. She is the recipient of two Foundation of Contemporary Arts Grants, the Princess Grace Award (Fabergé Theater Award) and Princess Grace Special Project Grant, and was a Drama League Directing Fellow. alicereagan.com

Tickets can be purchased in advance at incubatorarts.org or by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101.