MAINSTAGE
January 13 & 14, 2023
Based on The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem
Co-created by Jonathan Levin, Josh Luxenberg, and Joshua William Gelb
Written by Josh Luxenberg
Directed by Jonathan Levin
Performed by Jonathan Levin & Joshua William Gelb
Sat. June 13 @ 5pm
Sun. June 14 @ 1pm
Tickets: $12 suggested | $18 subsidized ticket | $40 supporter's ticket
General admission
Sinking Ship and Theater in Quarantine present
The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy
Space traveler Egon Tichy likes his quiet time.
But when his ship gets hit by a chunk of interstellar detritus, he’s sent careening into a minefield of time vortexes. This slapstick science-fiction adventure propels Sinking Ship and Theater in Quarantine into their most technically ambitious production to date, improbably trapping performer Joshua William Gelb amidst an exponentially expanding cast of one.
Tichy, In Person
In June 2020, Sinking Ship teamed up with Theater in Quarantine to create The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy—a digital theater performance that pushed the boundaries of the new medium, broadcasting live from a a closet in the East Village. Deemed a Critic’s Pick by Jesse Green in the New York Times, The 7th Voyage proved to be a massive hit, with over 10,000 views across platforms since the original stream.
Now, SSP and TIQ are reimagining the The 7th Voyage as an in-person experience. Audiences will watch two shows simultaneously: on a screen above the stage, the finished digital live stream, and on the stage below, the behind-the-scenes performance fully revealed.
A Workshop Performance
A workshop is a chance for the artists to try out something new in front of an audience, prior to the official premiere. This is a fully-produced performance, with all the elements in place. By attending, you’re helping the production team understand how the show works—and get a sneak peak before the full production.
Sliding Scale Tickets
This is a workshop showing, so the tickets are cheap at $18. If you can't swing that, we'll cover the difference. Subsidized tix are only $12. Of course, $18 tickets don't cover the cost of creating the show, so if you have the means and would like to support us and this project, there's a $40 ticket available as well. All tickets grant you the same access. Pick what works for you. —Sinking Ship & TiQ
Graphic design by Josh Luxenberg
Adapted with permission from the estate of Stanislaw Lem
“Virtuostic! Some of the new medium’s most imaginative work.”
“A truly impossible, impressive piece of quarantine theater... Work like ‘The 7th Voyage’ makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination.”
About Sinking Ship
The creative collaboration between Jonathan Levin and Josh Luxenberg, Sinking Ship creates original physical, visual theater that asks “What does it mean to be a human in this world?” The work, like the answer to that simple question, is complex, absurd, existential, ephemeral, surreal, surprising, funny, poetic, and strange, grounded in emotional storytelling, the tactile familiarity of objects, and futile humor of being alive.
Founded in 2008, Sinking Ship’s original works include Cassandra, an Agony, a modern telling of the myth of Cassandra (commissioned by the Getty Museum in L.A.), The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy, an original live streaming performance based on the story by Stanislaw Lem (Theater in Quarantine; New York Times Critic’s Pick); A Hunger Artist, based on the story by Franz Kafka (premiere at Connelly Theater, 2017, co-produced by The Tank’s Flint & Tinder series, nominated for Drama Desk Awards for Outstanding Solo Performance and for Outstanding Puppet Design; UK premiere at Edinburgh Fringe, 2017, WINNER - Summhall's Lustrum Award for Excellence; tours in the US and Europe), Powerhouse, about the idiosyncratic composer Raymond Scott (workshop at FringeNYC, 2010; premiere at New Ohio Theatre, 2014, O’Neill Playwrights Conference Finalist, 2012; New York Times Critic’s Pick), there will come soft rains, a triptych of science fiction stories (FringeNYC, extended at Barrow Street Theater, 2008), ModrnTim.es (work-in-progress, Dixon Place’s Little Theater), Section B, a site-specific séance in several tries; Ocean (work-in-progress, Mabou Mines Resident Artist Program, 2016), and Flatland (work-in-progress, EST/Sloan Foundation Commission, 2010). www.sinkingshipproductions.com
About Theater in Quarantine
Theater in Quarantine is an Obie and Drama League Award-winning digital performance laboratory that merges the live and digital, embracing 21st century solutions to the question “what is ‘theatrical?’” Established in response to the Covid shutdown, TiQ was instrumental in keeping the spirit of theatrical experimentation alive, live-streaming dozens of visually distinctive, original works to its YouTube channel from an actual closet in Manhattan’s East Village measuring only 8 sq feet. We ask how it’s possible for a digital encounter to feel both intimate and immediate, courting limitation to fathom how this utilitarian container, so uncomfortably small, can become a stage for the imagination.
TiQ has created over two dozen evenings of live digital theater, comprising over 50 individual new works, becoming one of the leading practitioners of digital theater.
Theater in Quarantine has been highlighted in feature stories in the New York Times, on NPR, and in the New Yorker, and has been celebrated as the best and most cutting-edge work in a brand new medium. www.joshuawilliamgelb.com
MAINSTAGE
January 19 - March 3, 2024
Job
A new play by Max Wolf Friedlich
Directed by Michael Herwitz
Starring Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon
Produced by Hannah Getts & Alex Levy
Tickets: $42-$132 (incl. $5 fee)
Runtime: 80 minutes
Recommended age: 17+
“YOU HAVE TO SEE IT. 80 minutes of pretty much pure tension. A slick, cleverly crafted drop-tower ride.”
Jane, an employee at the big tech company (you know the one), has been placed on leave after becoming the subject of a viral video. She arrives in the office of a crisis therapist—Loyd— determined to be reinstated to the job that gives her life meaning. A psychological thriller, Job zooms in on two careerists of different generations, genders and political paradigms to examine what it means to be a citizen of the internet and our obligation to help the people who need it most.
About the Artists
Peter Friedman has been in the original New York productions of works by Wendy Wasserstein, Simon Gray, C.P. Taylor, Charles Fuller, Annie Baker, Amy Herzog, Max Posner, Greg Pierce, Jennifer Haley, Deborah Zoe Laufer, The Debate Society, Rachel Bonds, Lauren Yee, Will Eno, Michael Mitnick, Kim Rosenstock, Will Connolly, Gunnar Madsen, Joy Gregory, John Lang, Susan Stroman, David Thompson, John Kander, Terrence McNally, Lynn Ahrens, and Stephen Flaherty. He’s performed in NYC revivals of plays by Paddy Chayefsky, Reginald Rose, Donald Margulies, Chekhov, and Shakespeare. Film: The Savages, Safe, Single White Female. TV: “Brooklyn Bridge,” “High Maintenance,” “The Muppet Show,” “The Affair,” “The Path,” “Succession.”
Sydney Lemmon's Off-Broadway debut. Broadway: Beau Willimon’s The Parisian Woman. Film: TÁR, Firestarter, Velvet Buzzsaw. Television: “Helstrom,” “Succession,” “Fear the Walking Dead” (Saturn Award Nomination). She can next be seen alongside Halle Berry in the forthcoming feature film The Mothership. Sydney is a graduate of Boston University, LAMDA and the Yale School of Drama.
“In Max Wolf Friedlich’s tight, clever play, Sydney Lemmon searingly captures the frenetic essence of a person overwhelmed by a seemingly indifferent internet. Peter Friedman imbues his counterarguments with genuine passion. Nimbly directed by Michael Herwitz, it’s refreshing to see characters who are not afraid of their intellect or feel the need to condescend by slowing down their high-speed streams of life-or-death consciousness.”
“TAUT, VERBALLY LACERATING AND EXHILARATING. An edge-of-your-seat watch made even better by the performances of Peter Friedman and Sydney Lemmon. Every inflection and glance is charged with intrigue in Michael Herwitz’s staging.”
UPSTAIRS
January 25 - February 10, 2023
US PREMIERE
Written by Ruby Thomas
Produced & Directed by Jack Serio
Featuring David Cromer, Tasha Lawrence, Lily McInerny, Uly Schlesinger, and Calvin Leon Smith
Running Time: 80 minutes
Tickets: $37.54 - $79.54 (including fees)
General admission
The Animal Kingdom
Sam is struggling. Sam’s family don’t understand. But then they barely understand themselves. Now, trapped in a stuffy inpatient clinic undergoing family therapy, they must find new ways to communicate with each other.
The U.S. premiere of Ruby Thomas' The Animal Kingdom, directed by Jack Serio, is an observation of family dynamics told with wit and compassion that peels back the emotional layers of group therapy.
“★★★★ A thrilling portrait of a family in collapse.”
About the Artists
Ruby Thomas (Playwright) is an actor and writer. Her previous work for theater includes Either, The Animal Kingdom, and Linck & Mülhahn (a finalist for the George Devine Award 2022 and the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize 2023) at Hampstead Theatre. In 2020 she wrote and performed a piece for the Royal Court’s Living Newspaper. She was on attachment at Hampstead Theatre with the Channel 4 Playwrights’ Scheme 2020 and received a Jerwood Commission from the Royal Court in 2021. She was also part of the invitation Writers’ Group at the Royal Court (2018/19) and Soho Theatre Writers’ Lab (2016/17). She is developing plays for Hampstead, the Royal Court, and Annapurna and a musical for Birmingham Rep. For television, she is developing original projects with Mam Tor, Origin, and Fearless Minds and writing an episode of A Good Girl’s Guide to Murder produced by Moonage for the BBC.
Jack Serio (Director) most recently directed the critically acclaimed production of Uncle Vanya staged in a Flatiron loft. Before that, he directed the U.S. premiere of Rita Kalnejais’ This Beautiful Future at The Cherry Lane Theater. A New York Times Critic’s Pick, the production transferred off-Broadway after a twice-extended, sold-out run at Theaterlab. His production of On Set With Theda Bara written by Joey Merlo and starring David Greenspan returns this winter, co-produced by Transport Group and Lucille Lortel Theatre at The Brick in Williamsburg. His work has been seen at Playwrights Horizons, Ars Nova, Clubbed Thumb, 59e59, Cherry Lane, Theaterlab, The Brick, Theater for the New City, and The Pearl Theater Company. He is the Development Associate for Aasif Mandvi’s Fat Mama Productions, a member of the 2019 Lincoln Center Directors Lab and the 2019-2021 SDC Foundation Observership Class. BFA: NYU. www.jackfserio.com
MAINSTAGE
April 8 - May 4, 2024
Page 73 presents
Stargazers
Written by Majkin Holmquist
Directed by Collette Robert
Tickets on sale February 8, 2024
With a haunted family farm as its central character, Holmquist’s eerie and funny play excavates the buried histories land contains, and illuminates the tensions of a polarized society constantly reshaping itself atop it.
About the Artists
Majkin Holmquist is a playwright originally from the Smoky Valley region in central Kansas where she was co-founder of The Next Stage Theatre Company. She is the 2023 Page 73 Playwriting Fellow. Her play Tent Revival received a digital production through Paula Vogel’s Bard at the Gate series in partnership with the McCarter Theatre Center in 2023. Other plays include two headed calf, Every Anne Frank, Quickmatch, Dog Pack Play, and Skinflint. Credits include The Quonsets (co-written with Alex Lubischer, Yale Cabaret), Broken Melodies (WVIT Women in Theatre Festival), and Styx Songs (contributing writer, Yale Cabaret). Her work has been developed at New York Stage and Film, Woodshed Collective, Bay Street Theatre, Page 73, Ucross, and Roundabout Theatre Company. She is currently a member of Midnight Oil Collective, Page 73’s Interstate 73 Writers Group, and is a Lecturer in Playwriting at the David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. She holds a BA in Secondary English Education from Bethany College and an MFA in Playwriting from the Yale School of Drama.
Colette Robert is a director and playwright from Los Angeles, based in New York. She directed the world premieres of STEW by Zora Howard at Page 73 (Pulitzer Prize Finalist) and Behind the Sheet by Charly Evon Simpson at Ensemble Studio Theatre, where she is a member. She recently directed the first New York revival of Crumbs from the Table of Joy by Lynn Nottage with Keen Company. Regional credits include City Theatre Company, Penumbra Theatre, and Williamstown Theatre Festival. Colette is an alumnus of The Drama League's Beatrice Terry Residency, Lincoln Center Directors Lab, and The Public Theater’s Van Lier Directing Fellowship. Her play The Harriet Holland Social Club Presents the 84th Annual Star-burst Cotillion in the Grand Ballroom of the Renaissance Hotel, which she also directed, premiered last spring, produced by The Movement Theatre Company and New Georges. She is an adjunct lecturer at NYU and the 2023 SDCF Denham Fellow.
Photos by Daniel J Vasquez.
Director Colette Robert
Playwright Majkin Holmquist
About Page 73
Page 73 is a Tony and Obie Award-winning theater company that exclusively produces playwrights’ Off-Broadway debuts. Page 73 developed and, with Playwrights Horizons, produced the world premiere of Michael R. Jackson’s A Strange Loop, whose awards included the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for Drama and 2022 Tony Award for Best Musical. Page 73’s two dozen celebrated world and New York premieres include Zora Howard’s STEW (Finalist for the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for Drama); Quiara Alegría Hudes’s Elliot, A Soldier’s Fugue, (Finalist for the 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Drama); Mia Chung’s Catch as Catch Can, Clare Barron’s You Got Older, Leah Nanako Winkler’s Kentucky, Heidi Schreck’s Creature, George Brant’s Grounded, and John J. Caswell, Jr.’s Man Cave.
Page 73 additionally offers career guidance, financial assistance, and development opportunities through annual playwright development programs including a fellowship, writers group, workshops, writing retreats, and residencies.
In 2020, the organization was honored with an institutional Obie Award “for providing extraordinary support for early career playwrights.”
Read more at www.page73.org