PARTY IN THE USA to Begin 7/19 at Incubator Arts Project

Joshua William Gelb and David McGee present PARTY IN THE USA, directed by Joshua William Gelb and written by David McGee, at the Incubator Arts Project, running July 19 through the 28th. The cast features: Featuring: John Gasper, Eric Clem, Laura Moss, Wil Petre, and Caleb Hammond.

The creative team includes Choreographer Katie Rose McLaughlin O'Neil; Set Designer Patrick Rizzotti; Video Designer Bart Cortright; Sound Designer Anthony Mattana; Lighting Designer Josh Smith; and Producer Taylor Edelhart.

Joshua William Gelb returns to the Incubator with a madcap comedy by playwright Dave McGee about dropping acid, baking strudel, and saving the world from financial ruin. Based, in part, on Gelb's experiences temping at Deutsche Bank in the fall of 2008, this surreal picaresque follows Jeff, a jobless, disaffected 20-something, as he is temporarily employed by a financial giant to maybe cover up evidence documenting their involvement in the imminent mortgage crisis. Fueled by little more than psychedelic drugs and the recently released brand of Bud-Light Lime, Jeff and his friends fall screaming into the maw of the Great Recession, traveling from the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel to a German anarchist squat on Kaiserwilhelmstrasse to the steps of the US Capitol. Strudel is baked and devoured. Russian folktales are enacted. Economic strategies are debated. Time is non-linear. More strudel is baked. Taking the audience into the mind of a full-blown acid trip, Party in the USA is a sensory overload, a frantic race to The Edge of the fiscal cliff. And yes, the show is sponsored by Bud Light Lime.

Joshua William Gelb (Director) is a director, performer and librettist whose recent physical-theater projects include Blind Alley Guy: Notes for an Unfinished Play by Eugene O'Neill (Incubator Arts Project), Love My Band (Little Theater), Dukus (Target Margin Lab) and Sometimes in Prague (Ice Factory). With Room5001 Theater, Gelb conceived and directed the notoriously revisionist all-male Man of La Mancha with musician Justin Levine; he also adapted and directed a re-envisioning of America's supposed first musical, The Black Crook. Gelb is a John Wells Directing Fellow and graduate of Carnegie Mellon's MFA directing program, as well as a member of the 2012 Lincoln Center Directors Lab. He continues to temp regularly.

David McGee (Playwright) has written Thanksgiving! A! Pageant! (Ars Nova 2012); A Preposterously Brief History of Everything in the Universe (CalArts New Works Festival 2011); What's the Matter With Pandas? (staged reading at NYTW's Usual Suspects Studio 2010); Mare Cognitum (Theatre of the Expendable 2009); and, you know, other stuff too. His writing has been published by n+1 in the book "Trouble is the Banks: Letters to Wall Street" and cited by Against Equality (Queer Challenges to the Politics of Inclusion).

For a detailed performance calendar, visit: https://web.ovationtix.com/trs/pr/919840. Tickets can be purchased in advance at incubatorarts.org or by calling TheaterMania at 212-352-3101. Incubator Arts Project (located inside St. Mark's Church) • 131 East 10th Street (at 2nd Ave.) • L to First or Third Ave; R, W to Broadway/8th St.; 6 to Astor Place; N,Q, 4, 5 to Union Sq.

Incubator Arts Project cultivates and presents a multi-generational community of artists who challenge the conventions of live performance by producing original work at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery. IAP programs provide access to a fully equipped venue along with personalized career support and strategic investment of resources individually tailored to the needs of each artist.

By providing production opportunities for emerging to mid-career artists, Incubator Arts Project functions as a training ground where formative repertoire is conceived and new work can be constructed as each participant's artistic voice develops a distinct style. In addition to offering artists exclusive access to a theater, technical assistance and administrative support, staff provides professional mentoring and advisement to assist in the process of making well-considered choices in support of artists' long-term stability and success during all stages of their careers.

Core programs include the New Performance Series, Other Forces, Music and Short Form. Incubator Arts Project is fiscally managed by Performing Artservices Inc., a New York based non-profit arts organization, and is artistically led by a team of curators who collectively make programmatic, artistic and organizational decisions.

Since 2006, Incubator Arts Project has presented award-winning work by artists including: Hoi Polloi, Julia Jarcho, Banana Bag & Bodice, Bluemouth Inc., Debate Society, Daniel Fish, Half-Straddle, Karinne Keithley, Object Collection, Vampire Cowboys, and Witness Relocation. Incubator artists have seen their work tour nationally and internationally and go on to Off-Broadway runs.

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