Kimmel Center & Joe's Pub Partner To Present 6th Annual Philadelphia Theater Residency

The Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts and Joe's Pub team up again for the Kimmel Center Theater Residency. Under the guidance of Jay Wahl, Producing Artistic Director of the Kimmel Center, Shanta Thake, Senior Director of Artistic Programs for The Public Theater, and Alex Knowlton, Director of Joe's Pub, the Theater Residency program serves as an host for artists and their collaborators to create and develop music and theater projects. The residency will be held in the Kimmel Center's SEI Innovation Studio from June 18 29 with Public Readings, FREE and open to the public, on June 28 and 29. Readings will be followed by Q&A sessions with the artists.

This year's residents include artists from New York, Philadelphia, South Africa, and the program's first fully-international collaboration from Africa's only Spanish-speaking country, Equatorial Guinea: award-winning singer and multi-instrumentalist from Equatorial Guinea Nelida Karr, backed by her husband, guitarist, and vocalist Elvis-Bob Ohia Bechir. Artists include multi-talented teaching artist, actor, writer, social justice advocate, and sound designer Anthony Martinez-Briggs with ILL DOOTS band members Elle Morris, Andrew Nittoli and Jordan McRee; Pew Fellow and multi award-winning performing artist Jennifer Kidwell; New York-based interdisciplinary performer Helga Davis working with writer, director, filmmaker, and composer Michael Joseph McQuilken; visually imaginative New York-based theater director Ellie Heyman collaborating with storyteller, composer, pianist, and singer Dane Terry; and South African jazz vocalist and Fulbright Scholar Vuyo Sotashe, with jazz musician Chris Pattishall and jazz guitarist Gabe Schnider. The artists will be mentored by OBIE winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Dael Orlandersmith.

Over the two-week Theater Residency, teams focus on creating as much work as they can, without editing or criticizing what they've created. Artists are challenged through a process of self-exploration to step outside their comfort zones in development of new work, with guidance from Orlandersmith, Wahl, Knowlton, their collaborators, and each other. Each team mines the depths of long-form multidisciplinary narrative, discovering how text, voice, music, and body are woven together into musical and theatrical storytelling. The residency culminates in excerpt readings FREE, BYOB, and open to the public in the Kimmel Center's SEI Innovation Studio.

Our ongoing collaboration with the Kimmel Center has provided a wonderful opportunity for our community of artists to deepen artistic relationships and develop new work, said Alex Knowlton, Director of Joe's Pub. We are honored to co-host this annual residency and introduce artists to each other's processes, aesthetics and ways of working to stoke the embers of artistic inquiry and innovation.

Our Cultural Campus is beyond proud to again serve as an incubator for new theatrical works developed during our annual Theater Residency, said Anne Ewers, President & CEO of the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts. In partnership with our colleagues at Joe's Pub, we then produce the world premieres of the intimate, creative works that result. These pieces run the gamut of subject matter, appealing to varied ages and musical genres, from Martha Graham Cracker's Lashed But Not Leashed to Johnny Showcase in The Johnny Shortcake Show, and most recently Molly Pope in Polly Mope.

Over the past six years, five of which have involved partnership with Joe's Pub, the Kimmel Center has produced completed works from the following Theater Residency alumni: Jamie Leonhart's Estuary; Ethan Lipton's The Outer Space, which then played at The Public Theater in New York City; Dito Van Reigersberg's Martha Graham Cracker production of Lashed But Not Leashed; David Sweeny's Johnny Showcase alter-ego in The Johnny Shortcake Show; Courtnee Roze's The Culture; Martha Stuckey's Due to the Sensitive Nature; Daniel Alexander Jones' BLACK LIGHT; Deb Margolin's 8 Stops, which then played at the Cherry Lane Theater in New York City; Mary Tuonomen's Hello Sadness!; and, Molly Pope's Polly Mope.

Theater Residency Public Readings

SEI Innovation Studio

June 28 & 29, 2019, 7:30 pm each night

FREE

This is a designated BYO performance, a new feature at most performances in the SEI Innovation Studio. Acceptable forms of BYO are 6-pack of beer and/or 750ml bottles of wine only; no liquor or open containers are permitted. Limit of one (1) 750ml bottle of wine OR one (1) six-pack of beer per two patrons. Corkscrews and rolling coolers are not permitted. Ice, cups and corking service available at venue at no cost. All BYO patrons are subject to lawful ID checks and bag checks at the manager's discretion.

Upcoming Resident Artists in 2019:

Nelida Karr & Elvis-Bob Ohia Bechiro

Anthony Martinez-Briggs with Elle Morris, Andrew Nittoli and Jordan McRee from ILL DOOTS

Jennifer Kidwell with TBD collaborators

Helga Davis & Michael Joseph McQuilken

Ellie Heyman & Dane Terry

Vuyo Sotashe with Chris Pattishall & Gabe Schnider

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