Photo Flash: Sneak Peek at The Brick's Spring 2016 Artists-in-Residence

Artists accepted into The Brick Resident Artist Program have demonstrated the highest level of excellence and invention in the New York theater scene. These are the artists you have only just begun to hear of; presented alongside pedigreed artists who have already won your hearts. They will change your expectation of Off-Off Broadway and they will reinvent the experimental and non-traditional theater world as you know it.

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The new season includes the following works and artists (scroll down for a sneak peek at their work!):

MYTH KEEPER: A TRUE STORY

Written by Katharine Scarborough

Directed by Kai-Hsiang Tu

December 29, 2015 - January 9, 2016

A play based on true events about a misanthropic, entertaining, brilliant man who thrives in chaos. Myth Keeper: A True Story explores the mythology of a southern family through confessional story-telling, neo-fairy tales, and twenty years of family letters, including playwright Katharine Scarborough's 77-year old father's jailhouse correspondence.

THE EXPONENTIAL FESTIVAL

January 14 - 17, 2016

The Exponential Festival in conjunction with Vital Joint at The Silent Barn, The Brick, The Bushwick Starr and Cloud City is honored to announce our inaugural year. A multi-week festival in January that seeks to promote theatrical performances created in New York, presented across Brooklyn. It celebrates the increasing growth and importance of Brooklyn venues and local artists, working together to keep theatre kicking. Participating artists/companies include 3 Sticks, Banana Bag and Bodice, Eliza Bent, Bread Arts Collective, Darian Duchan, Dr. Glassheart, Jeff Seal and Title:Point Productions. Works at The Brick include Toilet Fire, Dr. Glassheart & Black Sheep.

TOILET FIRE

Written and performed by Eliza Bent

Directed by Kevin Laibson

Friday, January 15 @ 4pm

Saturday, January 16 @ 8pm

Toilet Fire is Eliza Bent's ceremony and celebration of the one thing that unites us all: our need to go. Using the structure of an ancient religious ritual to talk about matters of digestion, philosophy, and faith, Toilet Fire, performed by Bent and Alaina Ferris, explodes with song, audience participation, and unexpected textual twists. By the end of this tour-de-toots, the trappings of a religious service fall away andToilet Fire reverts to a more traditional solo show structure with the real Eliza Bent talking and ultimately asking: How can we best relieve suffering? Not for the weak of pun.

Visit elizabent.wordpress.com/toilet-fire.

DR. GLASSHEART

Written and directed by Jason Trachtenburg

Thursday, January 14 @ 8pm

Saturday, January 16 @ 11pm

Dr. Glassheart is a modern day medical musical written and directed by Jason Trachtenburg, who is best known as "The Dad" from the Off-Broadway, Off-West End, and Edinburgh Fringe Festival award winning musical-comedy show "The Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players."

Featuring a fully orchestrated big band score, this new musical humorously covers such topics as the medical establishment, urban development, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, the metric system, Puerto Rican Statehood, office romance, office break-ups, and political scandal. The cast includes down-town luminaries Mike Amato, Miz Stefani, Andrew Hoepfner, and Joe Crow Ryan. 10 original songs. 3 laughs a minute. An ensemble finale, and a post-show press conference. Who's your Doctor? Dr. Glassheart.

Visit drglassheart.com for more.

BLACK SHEEP

Written and Performed by Darian Dauchan

Directed by Nicole A. Watson.

Friday, January 15@ 8pm

Sunday, January 17 @ 4pm

Black Sheep re-imagines the "black experience" through the perspective of a host of characters from cops, to drag queens, to Afro-punk teenagers as they battle the "community" they supposedly come from while fighting their own isolation in search of an identity that lives outside the box of tribalism. Both humorous and thought provoking, Black Sheep invites the audience to expand their perception by glimpsing into the lives of the minorities amongst the minorities. A theatrical exploration on those who despite their skin don't fit in with their own kin.

Visit dariandauchan.com for more.

THEBAN PLAYS

Directed by Asa Horvitz

January 18 - 31, 2016

Theban Plays is a contemporary performance based on Sophocles' Oedipus Cycle. The performance focuses on the themes embodied by three characters in the ancient dramas -Oedipus, Jocasta, and Antigone. Created through a long-term process of video improvisation, Theban Plays seeks to find the place where the themes of Sophocles' drama resonate in the lives of the ensemble and those around us living in New York City in 2015. The performers create a unique theatrical world using live webcast, sound installation, and Super 8mm films, while directly engaging the audience in conversation.

Visit asahorvitz.com for more.

DUE TO EVENTS

Human Head Performance Group

Written and Directed by Jean Ann Douglass and Eric John Meyer

February 1 - 28, 2016

DUE TO EVENTS finds our Hero under house arrest, with her Cat, occasionally her Lawyer, and a mysterious Voiceover that may know more than he's letting on. From the creative team that brought you The Truck Project, DUE TO EVENTS brings their unusual aesthetic to the most unlikely of places, a theater.

Visit humanheadperformancegroup.com for more.

RHINBECCA, NY

Created and performed by Theater Reconstruction Ensemble

Conceived and directed by John Kurzynowski

March 4 - 19, 2016

At the intersection of suspense and the absurd lies Rhinbecca, NY. Population: 367. Not including the mayor. Which makes 368. You may have noticed the mayor's house. Up on the hill. You can always point to it. You can see it from miles away. The mayor's head is a bald dome with a half skirt of white hair. He's blue collar in the community, top of the food chain. And he is missing.

Enter Don. Don is a stranger from out. He may or may not remember who he is or how he's arrived in town. And his sudden appearance may or may not be directly related to the mystery of the missing mayor. But his absurdly suspenseful quest to uncover the truth hidden beneath this theatrical facade, loosely inspired by the greatest works of playwright Eugene Ionesco and filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock, may very well leave us all completely transformed.

Visit reconstructionensemble.org for more.

THE GOLFER

Gemini CollisionWorks

Written by Brian Parks

Directed by Ian W. Hill

March 21 - April 10, 2016

U.S. Premiere

Flynn, an office worker, has one weekly escape from his dreary life - golf. However, a stray lightning bolt to his driver transforms his routine into a surreal, breathless journey through an alternative, absurd underworld. Here he is confronted by figures from his life, history, and fiction - Charlemagne, the Tooth Fairy, his dead father, Abe Lincoln - as he struggles to understand the rules of his new world, while being pursued, seduced, threatened, and ultimately judged by these icons.

Brian Parks has had plays produced in NYC, across the U.S., and in London, Edinburgh, Ireland, Adelaide, Heidelberg, Berlin, Frankfurt, Cologne, and Oberzeiring, Austria. His other plays include Americana Absurdum,Goner, The Invitation, Imperial Fizz, American Poodle (Splayfoot), Out of the Way, and The House. "There is no American writer more thoughtful - in an explosive and surreally comic kind of way - than Brian Parks." - Joyce McMillan, The Scotsman.

Visit facebook.com/groups/32799964037 for more.

WON'T BE A GHOST

Tight Braid Group

Written and Directed by Frances Weiss Rabkin

Composed by Leslie Allison

Produced by Sophie Traub

April 11 - 24, 2016

An experimental Greek tragedy and a meditation on the outsider body in a struggle with the State. The play braids together the stories of US soldier turned whistleblower Chelsea Manning, a gay Jewish Weimar-era sexologist Magnus Hirschfeld, and martyr lore to explore timeless issues of transparency, utopias, and the struggle for truth.

Visit tightbraidgroup.org for more

POINT OF ORIGIN

Rat King Theatre

Written by Tessa Allen and Krystalla Pearce

April 25 - May 1, 2016

Louhi is a shape-shifting hag witch who travels from the wintery fairy-tale forests of Finland to soggy Portland, Oregon. Michael is a Greek islander and a slimy con artist who is always on the run and one day finds himself in stinking hot Darwin, Australia. Tessa and Krystalla are two women in New York - far, far away from the homes of their families and ancestors.

Point of Origin is one story, three stories, and countless stories all at the same time. It shares these stories with the audience not only through words but also through song, dance and food. With all our senses heightened, we wonder upon our inherited and created origins and identities.

STRAYS/SONS

Two noir one act plays, STRAYS/SONS, performed back to back.

STRAYS

Written by Kim Katzberg

Directed by Raquel Cion

May 5 - 14, 2016

A zoned-out-suicide-prevention-hotline operator and an exotic-dancer-turned-pet-detective embarks on a ridiculous caper in this campy, noir mash-up of Law & Order and Charles Busch, featuring Nora Woolley, Kim Katzberg and plenty of pets.

SONS

Written and performed by Nora Woolley

Directed by Raquel Cion

May 5 - 14, 2016

An idealistic West Coast mother endeavors to locate her Daedalian art student son when he goes missing in Brooklyn. Meanwhile the mother of a young boy faces the NYC private school admissions process and fights for his privileged future. Both womens' assumptions about identity, ambition, and NYC are challenged as they learn the true nature of acceptance.

Visit kimkatzberg.com and norawoolley.com for more.

PERMANENT CATERPILLAR

The Drunkard's Wife

Written and directed by Normandy Sherwood

May 16 - June 4, 2016

One summer night in a small town sometime in the 20th century, a teenaged girl named Charity loses herself in a cave. Or is it a night club? A mysterious torch singer croons as Charity becomes a permanent caterpillar, lost in her own voraciousness. Permanent Caterpillar is musical body horror play about monstrous physical transformations, murdering, being a teenaged girl, and unnerving songs from a 1930s radio.

The Drunkard's Wife is a no-wave mountain music band/ theater troupe whose works have been seen at the New Ohio Theatre (Feather Gatherers), Uncanny Valley/chashama (Tiny Hornets) and many other places.

"Her brain is a woodland creature on psychedelics, constantly playing on reality and possibility."-- Tatiana Ryckman on Normandy Sherwood's Permanent Caterpillar.

Visit normandyraven.wordpress.com for more.

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All performances at The Brick (579 Metropolitan Ave at Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn). Tickets may be purchased online at www.bricktheater.com or by calling 866-811-4111. The Brick is located at 579 Metropolitan Avenue (between Union Avenue and Lorimer Street) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn on the L & G subway lines (L: Lorimer stop; G: Metropolitan stop).

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