Tanya Marquardt's STRAY To Receive World Premiere At The Tank

The Tank (Meghan Finn and Rosalind Grush, Artistic Directors) in association with Theatre Conspiracy will present the World Premiere of Stray by Tanya Marquardt (Nocturne (an incomplete and inaccurate account of the love affair between George Sand and Frederic Chopin) at Dixon Place), directed by Mallory Catlett (2014 Obie Award for This Was The End with Restless NYC; member of The Collapsable Hole) at The Tank (312 West 36th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues), July 18-28. Performances will be Wednesday, July 18, Thursday, July 19, Friday, July 20, and Saturday, July 21 at 8pm and Wednesday, July 25, Thursday, July 26, Friday, July 27, and Saturday, July 28 at 8pm & 10pm. Tickets ($15) are available for advance purchase at www.thetanknyc.org.

Stray is a meta-memoir based on creator Tanya Marquardt's experience as a sixteen-year-old runaway and BDSM model, and a New York transplant writing about this earlier stage of her life. A punk show with references to Patti Smith, Robert Mapplethorpe and David Wojnarowitz, the show begins on November 1, 1992, the day Tanya runs away from home, and each song careens you through the chaotic years that follow - life with Tanya's father, a traveling vacuum cleaner salesman, her first attraction to a girl and witnessing her self-cutting, being an underage virgin in a BDSM bar, a writing teacher's praise, which saved her from suicide, and, how art sustained her throughout, poetically describing the pleasure of writing, "a left hand scuffing across the page like a club foot, or a piece of bread smeared in delicious sauce." The show will tour to Vancouver and Toronto after its run at The Tank, and is being published as Stray: Memoir of a Runaway by Little A in September 2018.

Stray will be performed by Tanya Marquardt, Tim Carlson (2017 Edinburgh Fringe First Award for Foreign Radical; Top Secret International at the 2017 Under the Radar Festival), Jon Wood (Kraft Singles for Everybody with Ivan Coyote), and Ed Goodine (resident drummer at the Libra Room on Vancouver's Commercial Drive), with Lyrics by Tim Carlson, Scenography by Ilena Lee Cramer (Tanya Marquardt's Jessie award winning Lounge), and Dramaturgy by Brian Rogers (co-founder and artistic director of The Chocolate Factory Theater).

Tanya Marquardt (Playwright) is a memoirist, playwright, and performer based in Vancouver, BC and Brooklyn, NY. Her first book Stray: Memoir of a Runaway will be published by Little A in September 2018, and the performance version will tour to Toronto after its presentation at The Tank. Her first play Nocturne (an incomplete and inaccurate account of the love affair between George Sand and Frederic Chopin) toured throughout Canada and was produced in 2012 at New York's Dixon Place. Her play Transmission was published in Canadian Theatre Review. She has worked with Jerome Bel, Mallory Catlett, Mabou Mines, Theatre Conspiracy, Leaky Heaven Circus and radix theatre, and her work has been presented at the PuSh International Performing Arts Festival, VIDF, Dancing on the Edge, PIVOT Festival, Brooklyn Arts Exchange, and The Collapsable Hole, among others. As a 2010 Hertog Fellow, Tanya worked as an assistant to writer Francine Prose and her play Some Must Watch While Some Must Sleep, a play about being a sleeptalker, was the subject of an NPRs Invisibila podcast. Tanya received her BFA in Theatre at Simon Fraser University, a Certificate of Dance at MainDance, and an MFA in Creative NonFiction at Hunter College.

Mallory Catlett (Director) is a creator and director of performance across disciplines from opera and music theater to plays and installation art. She is the Artistic Director of Restless NYC, whose This Was The End (2014), a remix of Chekhov's Uncle Vanya won an Obie and a Bessie award. She works with visual artists on installation - Nene Humphrey's Circling the Center(2016) and Dread Scott's Decision (2012). She is a collaborator with writer Aaron Landsman (Squares, Perfect City, Running Away & City Council Meeting). Her work in new opera includes: Mika Karlsson's THE ECHO DRIFT (Prototype Festival 2018), Stefan Weissman's THE SCARLET IBIS (Prototype Festival 2015), and Aaron Siegel's BROTHER, BROTHER (Experiments in Opera 2014). She is a member of the multi-disciplinary artist led performance venue The Collapsable Hole. In NYC her work has premiered at 3LD, HERE, Ontological-Hysteric, PS122, Abrons, Chocolate Factory; featured at COIL, Prelude, Prototype and BAM's Next Wave; and been developed at Baryshnikov Arts, McDowell, Performing Garage, HERE, Mabou Mines, and Yaddo; and toured internationally to Canada, France, UK, Ireland & Australia. In 2016 she received a Creative Capital Award for her newest project with Restless, M/F FUTURE and she is a 2015 the Foundation for Contemporary Art Artist Grantee.

The Tank is a non-profit arts presenter serving emerging artists engaged in the pursuit of new ideas and forms of expression. We serve over 1,000 artists every year in over 400 performances, and work across all disciplines, including theater, comedy, dance, film, music, public affairs, and storytelling. Our goal is to foster an environment of inclusiveness and remove the burden of cost from the creation of new work for artists launching their careers and experimenting within their art form. The heart of our services is providing free performance space in our 98 seat proscenium and 56 seat blackbox that we operate in Manhattan, and we also offer a suite of other services such as free rehearsal space, promotional support, artist fees, and much more. We keep ticket prices affordable and view our work as democratic, opening up both the creation and attendance of the arts to all.

Stray is a fully produced coproduction with The Tank. Past Tank produced-work includes Drama Desk-nominated productions Ada/Ava (2016), youarenowhere (2016), The Paper Hat Game(2017), the ephemera trilogy (2017, and The Hunger Artist (2018), as well as New York Times Critics' Pick The Offending Gesture by Mac Wellman, directed by Meghan Finn (2016). Since its founding in 2003, artists who have come through The Tank include Alex Timbers, Amy Herzog, Lucy Alibar, Mike Daisey, Reggie Watts, Kyle Abraham, Andrew Bujalski, We Are Scientists, and tens of thousands of others. www.thetanknyc.org

Theatre Conspiracy gratefully acknowledges the support of The Canada Council for the Arts, British Columbia Arts Council, and City of Vancouver of Cultural Affairs.