R&D Group
Current Press
WORKING FROM A PLACE OF COURAGE Steve Cosson Revisits The Great Immensity
SDC Web
INTERVIEW BY ELIZABETH BENNETT
May 19, 2020
During the culture wars of the 1990s, when Jesse Helms and his fellow senators objected to using government funds to support artworks they found offensive, their complaints weren’t only about decency and morals. The politicians invoked a battle cry over wasteful spending of taxpayer money—and pointed to cultural grants as a leading example of how public funds shouldn’t be spent. In the decades since, NEA funding and cultural grants have been regularly hauled out by conservative politicians to make their case for cuts.
Steve Cosson, Artistic Director of the New York City-based theatre company The Civilians, has had firsthand experience with the scrutiny of politicians and the media over public funding for the arts. In 2010, The Civilians was awarded nearly $700,000 from the National Science Foundation to support the creation of The Great Immensity, a musical written and directed by Cosson, with music and lyrics by Michael Friedman. Read Full Article on SDC Web
Michael Friedman Died in 2017. Now 9 Albums of His Work Are Coming
The New York Times
By Michael Paulson
Oct. 16, 2019
Michael Friedman, a theatrical songwriter who died in 2017 at just 41, left behind a chorus of grieving friends and family. He also left a lot of music.
Now a theater company and a record label with which he long collaborated are planning to release nine albums of his unrecorded music, attempting to cement his distinctive place in the canon....
Read Full Article on NYTimes.com
The Great Work Continues: The 25 Best American Plays Since ‘Angels in America’
The New York Times
By: Ben Brantley and Jesse Green
June 1, 2018
No. 4
Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play
Anne Washburn, 2013
Rebuilding civilization after the apocalypse with what we have in common, like ‘The Simpsons.’
“Heretic Homer.” “Heart of Bartness.” “Lisa the Vegetarian.” “Springfield Files.”
To the characters in Anne Washburn’s mind-whirring play, these aren’t just the titles of old episodes of “The Simpsons” — or the titles as they recall them, anyway. They’re also currency: pop-culture properties to trade in the post-apocalyptic remnants of what was the United States.
Survivors sit around a campfire as the play opens, trying to reconstruct a “Simpsons” episode that sent up the movie “Cape Fear.” A succession of nuclear disasters has obliterated the power grid, killing much of the populace. For those who remain, there’s not a TV to turn on anywhere.
Doesn’t sound like much of a setup for a comedy, does it, though that’s partly what “Mr. Burns, a Post-Electric Play” is. A song of civilization’s abrupt collapse and rickety reassembly, it’s a tale of our current society, too — the precariousness of it, the stories that sustain it, the myths we invent to make sense of our history.
Head Into the Rehearsal Room With the Cast and Creators of Whisper House
Playbill
By: Olivia Clement
March 3, 2020
In this exclusive behind-the-scenes look, Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow open up about their haunted new musical at 59E59.
Later this month, The Civilians return Off-Broadway with the New York City premiere of Whisper House, a musical ghost story from Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow, directed by Artistic Director Steve Cosson.
In this exclusive video, we go behind the scenes of the upcoming premiere at 59E59 Theaters; take a sneak peek of the cast performing “Tale of Solomon Snell,” and see Sheik and Jarrow open up about their collaboration and what inspired the musical.
“Tale of Solomon Snell” is performed by Jeb Brown and Wyatt Cirbus, as The Sheriff and Christopher, respectively, with Molly Hager and Van Hughes, who each play ghosts.
Dana H. Is The Real Thing
Vulture
By: Helen Shaw
February 25, 2020
When playwright Lucas Hnath was away at college in 1997, something terrible happened to his mother, Dana Higginbotham. At the time, Hnath didn’t know, never went home to Orlando, and according to his intense docu-play Dana H., was almost entirely out of touch. Even now, having written—or, more accurately, composed—a play out of his mother’s account of those events, Hnath still seems far, far away. His name is on the poster as the author, but in every obvious way, his craftsman’s hand and imagination have been held at a distance.
According to a note in the program (and a supertitle that appears before the performance), Hnath asked fellow theater-maker Steve Cosson to interview Higginbotham for several days. “What you are about to watch,” the note tells us before the 75-minute performance, “has been cut together from those taped interviews, and the actress playing my mother will lip-sync to Dana’s actual voice.” We hear the real Dana; we watch the actress Deirdre O’Connell as her avatar; we’re allowed to pretend that the credited author, who must have edited and shaped hours of material, has had no part in it. This cordon sanitaire between “writer” and “written” exists because Hnath—whose recent play The Thin Place was built from ghost stories and pseudospiritualism—doesn’t want his audiences asking about the “truth” of what they’re seeing. And look! I’m trying to quarantine the experience too. Even sitting here writing this review, I feel myself keeping the focus on procedure, talking about authorship, trying to keep the temperature of my response near normal. Because the actual show is like a fire behind a door. Every time I put my hand against the memory, it’s hot.
Check Out Exclusive Rehearsal Photos From Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow’s Whisper House Off-Broadway
Playbill
By: Nathan Skethway
February 14, 2020
Rehearsals are underway for The Civilians' upcoming production of Whisper House, a Maine-set musical ghost story from Duncan Sheik and Kyle Jarrow. Whisper House, helmed by Civilians Artistic Director Steve Cosson, will begin performances at 59E59 Theaters March 12 ahead of a March 24 opening.
Billions' Samantha Mathis, recently seen onstage in Make Believe, will lead the company as Lily. Joining Mathis are Jeb Brown (Beautiful, The Path) as The Sheriff, Wyatt Cirbus (Finding Neverland, Fosse/Verdon) as Christopher, Molly Hager (Waitress, It’s Kind of a Funny Story) as the Female Ghost, Van Hughes (Almost Famous, Spring Awakening) as the Male Ghost, and James Yaegashi (Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Runaways) as Yasuhiro.
Set during the height of World War II, Whisper House follows a young boy who is sent to live with his Aunt Lily, and Yasuhiro, who works for her, on the remote coast of Maine. Once there, he begins to hear strange music seeping through the walls. Is his imagination getting the better of him? Or are there ghosts here, warning of real danger?
Scheduled through April 19, the production will feature set design by Alexander Dodge, lighting design by Jeff Croiter, costume design by Linda Cho, sound design by Ken Travis, props design by Danny Stafford, video design by Mark Holthusen, and special effects by Jeremy Chernick. Ryan Bourque is the fight choreographer, and the production stage manager is Geoff Boronda.
The Civilians Welcome 2019-20 R&D Group
Broadway World
By: BWW News Desk
October 15, 2019
The Civilians, under the leadership of Founding Artistic Director Steve Cosson and Managing Director Margaret Moll, announces the members of its 2019-20 R&D Group, comprised of writers, composers, and directors who are creating new works derived from creative inquiry.
Selected from nearly two-hundred applicants, the members of the 2019-20 R&D Group are Gabriel "Gaby" Alter, Michael Alvarez, Matt Barbot, Kathleen Capdesuñer, Rachel Dickstein, Kate Douglas, Darrel Alejandro Holnes, Grace McLean, Whitney Mosery, Crystal Skillman, and Jason Tseng.
Review: In Lucas Hnath’s ‘Dana H.,’ a kidnapping survivor’s truth hides in the shadows
Los Angeles Times
By: Charles McNulty
June 3, 2019
Lucas Hnath, part of a bumper crop of playwrights rethinking the parameters of American drama, has written a play about his mother that is rife with contradictions.
“Dana H.,” which is having its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre while Hnath’s “Hillary and Clinton” is on Broadway and his wildly successful “A Doll’s House, Part 2” is being produced across the nation, is composed from interviews yet is stranger than most fiction. Hnath uses not only his mother’s actual words but also her recorded voice, yet her character remains elusive.
But the most curious incongruity is the one that makes me want to see this fascinating 75-minute play a second time: It’s impossible to sort out fact from falsehood in Dana’s story, yet by the end a truth as profound as it is slippery is revealed.
“Dana H.” tells a story of trauma, terror and the way victimization continues even after the threat of violence has subsided. It dramatizes the inherent challenge in giving testimony to experiences so overwhelming that they undermine the ability to translate memory into coherent narrative.
'Dana H.': Theater Review
The Hollywood Reporter
By: Jordan Riefe
June 3, 2019
The latest world premiere from 'A Doll's House, Part 2' and 'Hillary and Clinton' playwright Lucas Hnath is a gripping one-woman drama about his own mother's real-life ordeal, starring Deirdre O'Connell.
When playwright Lucas Hnath entered New York University in 1997, his evangelical mother in Orlando, Florida, became a hospital chaplain who occasionally worked on the psychiatric ward. There she befriended a neo-Nazi who, in an act of reinvention, sought her advice on joining the clergy. On a call home one day, the playwright, who was raised by his mother alone under difficult circumstances, detected an evasive quality in her voice, as if something was wrong. During a visit months later, she broke down in tears and told him of a harrowing five-month ordeal that became the basis for Dana H. That gripping monologue stars Deirdre O'Connell as Hnath's mother and is now receiving its world premiere at the Kirk Douglas Theatre before moving to Chicago's Goodman Theatre on Sept. 6.
As O'Connell takes a seat centerstage in scenic designer Andrew Boyce's dim pastel motel room, she is accompanied by a technician who connects her ear plugs and microphone. Above the proscenium, a chyron explains that she will be lip-syncing to an edited interview conducted with the playwright’s mother by his colleague Steve Cosson of the documentary theater company the Civilians.
Reenacting the Wild Art Salons of Gay Camp Icon, Paul Swan
Hyperallergic
By: Angelica Frey
May 7, 2019
A new play, Paul Swan is Dead and Gone, imagines the life of the late dancer, artist, and Andy Warhol muse once known as “The Most Beautiful Man in the World.”
“I am the most famous unknown person in New York,” says a portly, berobed Paul Swan in the introduction to Andy Warhol’s 1965 movie Paul Swan. Some seven decades later, the gay camp icon still hasn’t reached household name status, despite once being internationally hailed as “The Most Beautiful Man in the World” and finding success as a dancer, artist, and film star. In addition to playing himself, at age 82, in the Andy Warhol film named after him, Swan starred in Warhol’s Camp and Cecil B. De Mille’s The Ten Commandments, was featured in the Oxford Dictionary of Dance, sculpted a bust of composer Maurice Ravel that was displayed at the Salon des Artistes Français in Paris, and was a muse to writer James Purdy.
Still, Swan’s attempts to become a 20th-century American Renaissance man failed to stand the test of time. What he is most remembered for are the artistic salons he hosted in his studio atop Carnegie Hall, every Saturday from the 1930s through the ’60s, attended by the likes of Marcel Duchamp and Alexander Calder. At these salons, he eventually became a piece of performance art himself, wearing ever-thicker layers of pancake makeup as he aged, embodying the concept of camp.
Review: Paul Swan is Dead and Gone at Torn Page
Exeunt NYC
By: Joey Sims
May 5, 2019
Paul Swan collapses dramatically to the floor. Struggling to get up, his eyes lock with the nearest human – myself, seated in the first row. His hand reaches out. “Help me!” The audience laughs, as do I. A pause, then Swan reiterates: “No, really. Help me.” Hesitantly I reach out a hand to help – a hand that is, of course, quickly shaken off. Swan rises and carries on with the show, throwing silent shade over his shoulder – maybe at my sentiment, or maybe just at my uselessness.
Throwaway moments of audience participation like this are, perhaps, de rigueur in New York theater by this point. Yet, over the 75 minutes I spent with him, my bond with Paul Swan felt uniquely intimate. It helps that The Civilians are presenting Paul Swan is Dead and Gone at a small, elegant room in a Chelsea townhouse. A select few of us (the space seats 30) are sharing an audience with Swan, a queer multi-talented raconteur who performed weekly from the 1930s through the 1960s. Now Swan is back from the dead, for one last soirée.
The Theatre: Paul Swan is Dead and Gone
The New Yorker
By: Michael Schulman
April 29, 2019
The artist, dancer, actor, and eccentric Paul Swan, who died in 1972, led one of those lives which seem to encompass the grand sweep of the twentieth century. His bust of Maurice Ravel was displayed in the Salon des Artistes Français, in Paris, and his screen career spanned Cecil B. DeMille’s 1923 version of “The Ten Commandments” and Andy Warhol’s 1965 film “Camp.” In “Paul Swan Is Dead and Gone” (starting April 25), by Swan’s great-grandniece Claire Kiechel, the theatre company the Civilians, which makes imaginative works with nonfiction material, evokes the evening salons that Swan held for decades in his apartment, above Carnegie Hall. The show, starring Tony Torn, will be performed for thirty people at a time at Torn Page, in a historic Chelsea town house once owned by Torn’s parents, Rip Torn and Geraldine Page.
The Civilians Announce Their 2018 Season
Theatermania
By: Editorial Staff
November 28, 2017
The Civilians have announced their 2018 season.
On tap January 11-February 4 are Steve Cosson's The Undertaking at 59E59 Theaters. First presented at the 2016 Next Wave Festival at Brooklyn Academy of Music, the new mounting stars Dan Domingues and Aysan Celik. Written and directed by Cosson, it is created in collaboration with Jessica Mitrani.
On December 18 at Joe's Pub, the Civilians will look into the country's current political movement with Strong Women Love Trump (and Other Live Stories).
The season concludes with Times Square, with a score by Jill Sobule and Robin Eaton, a book by Jim Lewis, and direction by Cosson. It is produced in residence at NYU's Tisch School of Drama and by special arrangement with Studiocanal, running February 22-March 3.
'Brilliant,’ 41 and Lost to AIDS: The Theater World Asks Why
The New York Times
By: Michael Paulson
October 11, 2017
Michael Friedman couldn’t make it to Minneapolis this summer. Rehearsals were beginning there for his new musical, but he was homebound in Brooklyn, trying to regain strength after a series of H.I.V.-related infections had landed him in the hospital.
So Mr. Friedman, a hyperkinetic and much-admired young songwriter with two theater jobs and a head full of projects, improvised: He would sing the score by phone to the show’s music director, who would then teach the songs to actors portraying high school hockey players and their overeager parents.
When the phone sessions began, it became clear there was a problem. Mr. Friedman didn’t have enough lung capacity. He could only get through four or five songs before needing a rest, or to fetch oxygen.
In his final weeks, hospitalized and unable to talk because he was on a ventilator, he grabbed pen and paper instead. He wrote fully and furiously, lifting the pages to communicate. Notebooks piled up beside his bed. His hands were stained with ink.
Can a Play Change the Planet?
Huffington Post
By: Suzy Evans
04/08/2014
Ever heard of Colorado Island? No, there’s not a floating mass mid-body of water in the middle of the country near Boulder, but Panama boasts a small island, Barro Colorado Island, populated almost entirely by scientists and dedicated to research. Not exactly a vacation destination, but writer/director Steve Cosson visited the isle as a teenager assisting on a project, and when he started exploring his latest play, the place became the jumping off point for the story.
“The way that I tend to work as a writer is to start a process by going out into the world somehow and to develop ideas by having conversations with people and encountering points of view that are new to me. And for this one, I wanted to go some place different. I wanted to get out of the city and get out of the country in a big way,” says Cosson, who is the artistic director of The Civilians. The New York-based theater troupe is dedicated to what it calls “investigative theater” and explores the intersection between art and society. “I thought if I go in there and go into the heart of life and also then have all these captive scientists to talk to that something would happen.”
Thus began the journey to The Great Immensity, which will premiere at the Public Theater in New York on April 11 and is scheduled to run through May 1. According to the press release, the show “is a continent-hopping thriller following a woman, Phyllis, as she pursues someone close to her who disappeared from a tropical island while on an assignment for a nature show. Through her search, Phyllis uncovers a mysterious plot surrounding the upcoming international climate summit in Auckland. As the days count down to the Auckland Summit, Phyllis must decipher the plan and possibly stop it in time.”
THE CIVILIANS’ MUSEUM AS MUSICAL
Interview Magazine
By: Rachel Egan
September 12, 2014
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a venerable New York institution with a global reputation for its immensity. As of 2014, over two million art objects are housed in just as many square feet, split between 17 curatorial departments in two prominent locations (soon to be three). At six years shy of its sesquicentennial anniversary, the Met is still guided by its original charter, opening the doors to its encyclopedic collection for more than six million visitors annually. In becoming a “universal museum,” the Met has spent the first part of the 21st century addressing a unique set of challenges and is tasked with transforming the museum from a static site of art reliquaries into one of active communication.
Propelled by the ambitious and dynamic programming of Limor Tomer, the Met Museum Presents series and Artist in Residence program have been offering more opportunities for contemporary performance art to engage with the permanent collection. In an unprecedented event, The Metropolitan Museum of Art will be partnering with the Civilians, its first theatrical group in residence, to collaborate on a series of several new works throughout the galleries. The Civilians is well known for its innovative and investigative artistic process, relying heavily on interaction and interviews with individuals and communities to create new theatrical work. The company’s work has been presented locally, nationally, and internationally to critical acclaim.
We invited Steve Cosson, Artistic Director and founder of the Civilians, to act as interviewee rather than his usual role as interviewer over a cup of a coffee at the Petrie Court Café in the Met, where he discussed the Civilians’ artistic methodology and upcoming performances at the Met and beyond.
Making a Scene at the Metropolitan Museum
Wall Street Journal
By: Jennifer Maloney
April 29, 2014
The Metropolitan Museum is turning a theater company loose in its collections.
As the museum's first theatrical group in residence, the Civilians, a self-described center for investigative theater, will collaborate next season with Met curators and visitors to create works of theater inspired by objects in the museum's American and Egyptian art collections.
The Tide Is Turning on Climate Change, but Americans Must Take Action Now
The New York Times Opinion Page
By: Steve Cosson
May 8, 2014
Americans care more and more about climate change as its effects become immediate to them.
While researching a play, I visited Churchill, Canada, the “Polar Bear Capital of the World,” on the edge of the Hudson Bay. Because climate change is accelerated the farther north you go, I didn’t meet a single person there who wasn’t aware of climate change as a present crisis. Many residents told me they were going stir crazy because they couldn't spend much time outside until the Bay froze and the bears, who become town residents during the warmer weather, went away.
Climate change is real in Churchill, and it is happening now. The play that it inspired held workshop performances before Hurricane Sandy hit New York. The difference in audience reactions before and after the storm was palpable. Pre-Sandy the tone was "This is an important problem for the future, and in other parts of the world, but not one that is affecting New Yorkers." That changed after the fall of 2012. Since then, audiences have embraced climate change as a pressing issue affecting people worldwide. Now more people stay during question and answer sessions after the show to discuss the situation and ask what they can do.
Many Americans are overwhelmed by the sheer scale and complexity of the problem. And the way many of us deal with this is by shutting down, becoming numb. This is why it's important for us to discuss the issue publicly, whether through theater or forms or by joining activist groups. At a recent post-show question and answer session, Elke Weber, a conservation psychologist, advised people that the two most important things they could do were to stop eating meat and to vote. She also used a great metaphor: "There is no single silver bullet; the solutions are more like silver buckshot." The actions we can take as individuals matter. The action we can take collectively matters even more.
The 99% Onstage: Attention Must Be Paid
The New York Times
By: Ben Brantley
November 3, 2011
WAS that the ghost of Willy Loman I spotted in Zuccotti Park the other day, swapping grievances with the spirits of Joe Hill and Woody Guthrie? Probably not. Willy, the title character of Arthur Miller’s “Death of a Salesman,” went to his grave paying lip service to — and perhaps even still half-believing in — the American dream. Anyway, being part of a public protest would have embarrassed a guy who put his trust in the conquering power of a smile and a shoeshine and who wanted, above all, to be well liked.
But it was hard not to hear the voice of Willy’s widow, Linda, among the motley sign carriers in Zuccotti Park in Lower Manhattan, as they sounded their disparate watchwords. You remember Linda. She’s the one who said of her husband, who seemed to have turned invisible to himself after he lost his job, “Attention must be paid to such a person.” And whatever you say about the lack of formal demands and strategies within the viral movement known as Occupy Wall Street, you can’t deny that its participants are unified by one overriding desire: They want attention paid to them.
When “Death of a Salesman” returns to Broadway next year, in a new production starring Philip Seymour Hoffman, Willy Loman may emerge as even more a man of our time than he seemed to be of his when the play first opened in 1949. And if the current state of New York theater is any indication, he’ll have lots of company on other stages. Willy, after all, remains the American drama’s most poignant example of a man driven to despair when he loses his job and is made — to use a word more in fashion now than then — redundant. As Miller portrays him, Willy out of work is Willy stripped of dignity, weight and even identity.
Social Work
Stage Directions
By: Garrett Eisler
September 8, 2008
A moment from The Civilians’ Paris Commune at the Public Theater
Steve Cosson and The Civilians create non-traditional work that engages with community at every stage.
In asking Artistic Director Steven Cosson where the name of his theatre troupe, The Civilians, comes from, I expected a very civic-minded — or perhaps even military — answer. But no. “It’s from old vaudeville slang,” he admits, “referring to people outside of show business.” The moni-ker reveals much about his OBIE-winning nonprofit company; not only do The Civilians usually operate way outside of showbiz themselves, but, as Cosson adds, they always strive “to look out-side of ourselves” to the community at large.
All six Civilians productions so far (since their founding in 2001) flow from the company’s stated mission to “develop original projects based in the creative investigation of actual experi-ence.” Far from the “based on a true story” formula of film and television docudrama, though, Cosson and his colleagues view every piece as an opportunity to “experiment with process, con-tent and form” — often incorporating interviews with real people, extensive historical research, and always, live music and song. The Ladies (2004) juxtaposed the lives of infamous dictators’ wives (like Eva Peron and Imelda Marcos) with some of their own; for (I Am) Nobody’s Lunch (2004-2006), Civilians actors surveyed average citizens for their reflections and rants on current events and enacted them through songs and sketches; Gone Missing (2003-2007) also incorporated real-life interviews from a diverse sampling, but on more personal themes of loss — from the spiritual (9/11 stories) to the hilariously material (shoes and sock puppets).
Culture report: gatekeepers Causing a scene Can anyone save us from the aging subscribers and rank commercialism that has paralyzed our city’s stages?
TimeOut New York
By: David Cote
April 2, 2008
After years of private bitching and public grumbling about our nonprofit theaters’ toothless seasons, homogeneous production designs and timid, old-man marketing, I’ve finally found a person with the taste and courage to be the ideal artistic director of the 21st century: me.
You heard right; I’ve sat through enough shit (and genius) and I want some power. Give me an annual budget of $5 million, all my downtown contacts and see if I don’t make a splash. I’d program a season of Anne Washburn, Young Jean Lee, Annie Baker and Will Eno. Plus—eventually—younger, unproduced playwrights who landed on my desk. (The more violent and obscene, the better.) Foreign writers, too, in fresh translations. Every first Monday I’d throw a free play reading with an open bar. In the summer, I’d open the doors for a two-month workshop by a favored company—Radiohole, the Debate Society or Nature Theater of Oklahoma—ending in a massive celebration. The advertising would be slick and bold, the tickets cheap, the parties raucous and the shows calculated to enrage, excite and astound. For the first five years, I would not accept any subscriber over the age of 35. I’d have blogs, press conferences, preshow talks and fat souvenir programs. I’d constantly bombard the media with video and op-ed pieces tied to our shows—when I wasn’t hosting a kick-ass party.
The next morning, hungover and broke, I realize that it was all a drunken dream.
Running a daring, high-quality theater in this town is nearly impossible. Whether you head the tiny Vineyard Theatre on East 15th Street (120 seats and an annual budget of $2 million) or the elephantine Roundabout Theatre Company (two Broadway spaces, an Off Broadway house, an Off-Off studio, 44,000 subscribers and $43 million to burn), you’ve got divided loyalties. Are the artists happy? Are the funders happy? Is the board happy? Natalie Portman is interested in Director A? Great, um, let’s find a project. What? Will Smith really wants you to read his friend’s play; it stinks, but the friend writes for HBO. Can you put Jada’s brother in the show? He’ll donate! The subscribers are pissed! The critics hate your guts!
Civilians take unique approach
Variety
By: Sam Thielman
March 28, 2008
NEW YORK -- Steve Cosson likes to be surprised, especially when he's working on a show.
"It's what makes it exciting," says the artistic director of rising Off Broadway theater company the Civilians. "I want to find out what we don't know already, and a great way to do that is to go out into the world and just sit down and listen."
As Cosson describes it, the Civilians' approach to making theater sounds an awful lot like journalism: The entire troupe travels far and wide researching a piece around a given subject, conducting interviews and comparing notes along the way, sometimes for years. It may sound like an arduous process for director Cosson and writer-composer Michael Friedman (Cosson admits that a single show can run "a couple hundred thousand dollars" to research and produce), but it's paid off in spades for the company.
The Civilians have been around since 2001, but it wasn't until last year's "Gone Missing" that the company landed a breakout hit. The trim 80-minute process-driven show was about lost things, from car keys to Atlantis. After being workshopped and vetted everywhere but Atlantis, the show was originally scheduled for a six-week run from mid-June at Off Broadway's Barrow Street Theater. But it opened to such positive word of mouth and enthusiastic reviews that six weeks turned into six months, extending into January.
The company has always depended heavily on grant money to cover travel costs, and since a critical mass of people checked out "Gone Missing," there are now enough grants and donations for the Civilians to stretch a little, including a three-week stint at the Sundance Theater Lab and $150,000 from the Rockefeller Foundation's prestigious NYC Cultural Innovation Fund.
()