R&D Groups
Current 2018-2019
The Civilians’ R&D Group meets biweekly for nine months, during which time each artist or team of artists develops a new piece of theater through a creative investigation of a topic chosen by each artist. The creative process may include interviewing, community engagement, research, or other experimental methods of inquiry. Led by R&D Program Director Megan McClain, the group shares and discusses their methodologies and the resulting work. The process will culminate in the FINDINGS Series in May 2019, when the groups present their works-in-progress to the public.
HANG ON: A Subway History-Concert
At the turn of the 20th century, one of the most ambitious and controversial public works projects ever undertaken was completed in New York. The day's most innovative scientists and engineers, the country's wealthiest financiers, and an enormous labor force, largely made up of immigrant workers, toiled above and below ground, and the New York City Subway was born.In 2018, the subway is in disarray, the bureaucratic blame game rages on, the once-innovative technology is shamefully outdated, and everyone is late. Through research, interviews, and music-based community outreach, composer/performer Jacob Brandt looks to explore the origins of rapid transit, what it tells us about our current transit crisis in New York, and if there's a light at the end of the tunnel.
Jacob Brandt
Jacob Brandt (Composer/Writer) is a New York-based theatre-maker and musician. His actor-musician musical, 1969: THE SECOND MAN, which explores Buzz Aldrin's life in context of the moon landing, premiered this fall at New York Theatre Workshop as part of their Next Door series. He has been a featured composer at NYMF, and his work as a composer/performer has been developed at Ars Nova, Chinatown Soup, Fresh Ground Pepper, the Exponential Festival, The Tank, and the Motor Company. As an actor, he has performed regionally at Weston Playhouse, Williamstown Theatre Festival, The Huntington, Company One, New Repertory Theatre, Speakeasy Stage Company, and Wheelock Family Theatre. As a director, he has developed and presented work at JACK, Frigid Festival, Dixon Place, The Flea, and more with playwrights Dan Giles, Will Arbery, Sofya Weitz, Phoebe Kreutz, and others. He is a graduate of Harvard College, where he studied acting and playwriting.
Writer/Composer
Microcosmos
A lyrical rock odyssey into the workings of the human brain by composer David Kornfeld and lyricist / bookwriter Rebecca Hart. Based partly on our own neuro-atypical lives (epilepsy and Tourette's), we will be asking questions about creativity, sanity, and what we consider "normal."
Rebecca Hart
Rebecca Hart (Book) and David Kornfeld (Composer) UNTITLED Project Description: A lyrical rock odyssey into the workings of the human brain by composer David Kornfeld and lyricist / bookwriter Rebecca Hart. Based partly on our own neuro-atypical lives (epilepsy and Tourette's), we will be asking questions about creativity, sanity, and what we consider "normal." Bios: Rebecca Hart once accidentally won a comedy competition in Dublin, Ireland while appearing as musical guest (true story). She has been acting since her first stage appearance at the age of nine months and writing for only a slightly shorter time. Acting credits include SWEAT ( Public Theater Mobile Unit, dir. Kate Whoriskey), (NOT) WATER (New Georges @3LD); the short film JO (Play Mountain Productions-Woodstock Film Fest), and MIDSUMMER; a Play With Songs (Hartford Theaterworks - CT Critics Circle Best Actress Nomination), five productions at the Actors Theatre of Louisville including O GURU GURU GURU and Anne Washburn's A DEVIL AT NOON (dir. Steve Cosson) at the Humana Festival...and of course THE GREAT IMMENSITY w/the Civilians at Kansas City Rep and The Public Theater. Composer/lyricist credits include GLORIA (Woolly Mammoth), Hard Spark's THE CABARET AT THE END OF THE WORLD (2017 NY Innovative Theatre Award, Best Original Music w/Melody Bates), RIMBAUD IN NY and LET ME ASCERTAIN YOU: HOLY MATRIMONY (The Civilians @ BAM and Joe's Pub), URIEL ACOSTA (Target Margin), and HOW TO BREAK (NY Hip Hop Theatre Festival and Spkrbox Festival, Oslo Norway). She recently earned her MFA from NYU's The Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program and her graduate thesis musical IRON JOHN: An American Ghost Story (book & lyrics by Hart, music by composer Jacinth Greywoode) will have a Collaborative Development Production at NYU this December. Her new album, The Magician's Daughter, was produced by acclaimed cellist/songwriter Ben Sollee in Kentucky and by Ben Arons in NYC, and is available now. She is a regular at the Rockwood Music Hall NYC and will also play an upcoming concert at the Irish Arts Center on December 7. She is a part time tarot card reader, a very newly-certified yoga teacher, and a proud Associate Artist with the Civilians.
Book
David Kornfeld
David Kornfeld (Composer/Writer) is a composer, lyricist, and coffee enthusiast residing in New York. He grew up frolicking in California's wine country, received his BA in composition from Carleton College and his MFA from the Graduate Musical Theatre Writing Program at NYU Tisch. A co-founder of Underscore Theatre Company and the Chicago Musical Theatre Festival, he has collaborated with numerous companies in Chicago, New York, London, and other fine theatrical cities. His recent musicals include HAYMARKET (Iris Theatre, Underscore Theatre; 2017 Jeff Nomination, Best New Musical), PR0NE: A HARDCORE, AMATEUR MUSICAL (Underscore), GROUNDS: A FRESH-BREWED MUSICAL (Actor's Training Center, Midwest Fringe Circuit), and 57th NATIONAL MATHLETE SUM-IT, (Commissioned by CPA Theatricals; CMTF 2016, NYMF 2017, Published by TRW). He co-founded the Hip Young Gunslingers Big Band and organ quartet Jazzsquatch in Chicago, performs regularly with singer-songwriter Rebecca Hart in NYC, and is working on an album of children͛s music. www.davidkornfeld.com
Composer
Untitled Kim Loo Sisters Musical
Alice, Maggie, Jenée, and Bubbles Louie attended the same dance classes as the Andrews Sisters and mastered singing, dancing vaudeville routines that brought them from Minneapolis to Broadway to Hollywood and around the world on the USO circuit during World War II. The Kim Loo Sisters eventually shared top billing with Frank Sinatra, Jackie Gleason, and Ann Miller, but few today know their names. This musical juxtaposes the glamour of the 1930s with the darker realities for artists of color at a time when Chinese Exclusion, Internment Camps, and anti-miscegenation laws stood between Asian Americans and success. Commissioned by History Theatre in St. Paul, MN, our yet-to-be-titled KIM LOO SISTERS MUSICAL addresses this troubled history, and re-imagine a world in which these spectacular musicians were given an equal shot.
Jessica Huang
Jessica Huang (Writer) is a playwright and producer from Minneapolis. Her work includes THE PAPER DREAMS OF HARRY CHIN (History Theatre, 2017 Kilroy's List) and PURPLE CLOUD (Theater Mu). Jessica is working on a commission with Mixed Blood Theatre, TRANSMISSIONS IN ADVANCE OF THE SECOND GREAT DYING, about grief and global warming that spans 262 million years, and a commission with Timeline Theatre that adapts the book THE BIRTH OF THE PILL for the stage, telling the story of the birth control revolution – and its connection to the Eugenics movement. She was a 2018 MacDowell Fellow, 2017 and 2018 Playwrights' Center Jerome Fellow and 2012 Playwrights' Center Many Voice Fellow. With a Jerome Travel/Study grant, she will travel to China to research family history and build international connections. Jessica cofounded and co-directs Other Tiger Productions, which has a mission to pursue multidisciplinary collaborations and intentional inclusivity and re-examination of traditional theater practices. She attends the Playwrights Program at Juilliard. More: Jessica-Huang.com
Writer
Ashley Hanson
Ashley Hanson (Composer) is a social practitioner, theater artist, storyteller, and lover of rural places. She is the co-founder of PlaceBase Productions, a theater company that creates original, site-specific musicals celebrating small town life and the founder of the Department of Public Transformation, a national arts collective that highlights, connects, and supports rural-based artists and change-makers. She is the Director of the first Small Town CAIR (City Artist in Residence) program and The YES! House, creative community gathering space in Granite Falls, MN. She was recently named a 2018 Obama Foundation Fellow for her work with rural communities. She is also a singer-songwriter, whose work explores untold stories.
Composer
Trapt
On March 27, 2017 Sound Cloud rapper Tay K 47, under house arrest for his role in a capital murder case, grew frustrated with the restrictions of his situation. He chose to cut off his ankle bracelet, tweet to his followers: FUCK DIS HOUSE ARREST SHIT FUCK 12 THEY GN HAVE 2 CATCH ME ON HOOD, and then proceeded to go on a cross country violence and mayhem-infused jaunt. Tay K documented his misadventures in a track called THE RACE. When U.S. Marshalls finally caught up with him in New Jersey that June, THE RACE had cracked the Billboard Top 10, securing Tay K's hip hop infamy. At the time of his arrest Tay K, a.k.a. Taylor Travon McIntyre, was 17 years-old, essentially a child. TRAPT, will be a theatrical investigation into the life of a gingerbread man-esque character not unlike Tay K. What drives promising young Black men toward this type of self-destruction, and why does America love it so much?
Stacey Rose
Stacey hails from Elizabeth, NJ and Charlotte, NC respectively. She's an alum of the MFA program in Dramatic Writing at NYU Tisch School of the Arts. Her work has been presented at: The Fire This Time Festival (SLAVESPERIENCE), The Brooklyn Generator (AS IS: CONVERSATIONS WITH BIG BLACK WOMEN IN CONFINED SPACES), The Bushwick Starr Reading Series (IGNITING THE ALABASTER YOU!), Mosaic Theatre (THE BLACK JEW THING co-written with Alexis Spiegel), The Amoralists Theatre Company (BONES, BONEZ, BONE$), Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre (MUVA DEATH), National Black Theatre (THE BALLAD O' NIGG-O-LEE) and Pillsbury House Theater (SVEN, OLE & THE ARMAGEDDON MYTH). Stacey was a 2015-16 Dramatist Guild Fellow, a 2017-18 Playwrights' Center Many Voices Fellow, a 2018 Sundance Theatre Lab Fellow. She is a 2018-2021 Playwrights' Center Core Writer, and member of The Goodman Theater's Playwrights Unit. Stacey's work celebrates and explores Blackness, Black identity, Black history, body politics, and the dilemma of life as the "other."
Writer
Candis C. Jones
Candis C. Jones (Director) Select credits include: NAME CALLING (The Kennedy Center, Dance Place), THE HOMECOMING QUEEN workshop (New Harmony Project), NEW SHOES (Drama League Directorfest), MORING IN AMERICA (Primary Stages), BLACK GIRL MAGIC (National Black Theatre), TEMBO! (Zanzibar International Film Festival), DAUGTERS OF THE BAYOU (Weeksville Heritage Center). Assistant Director: OEDIPUS EL REY (The Public Theater), FUCKING A (Signature Theater), THE BUBBLY BLACK GIRL SHEDS HER CHAMELEON SKIN (NY City Center), THE DEATH OF THE LAST BLACK MAN (Signature Theatre). Upcoming workshops and residences: The Movement/NYU Festival of Voices and playwrights Stacey Rose and Ali Bennet. Drama League Alumni and 2016 Lilly Award Winner for Emerging Directors.
Director
Untitled
This project will investigate the lives, work, and struggles of jornaleros (AKA day laborers) in Jackson Heights, Queens.
Christopher Moncayo-Torres
Christopher Moncayo-Torres (Writer) is an Ecuadorian-American playwright and live storyteller, born and bred in Queens, NY. He first practiced creative writing at John Jay College of Criminal Justice while pretending to study for his forensic psychology degree. He's an alumnus of Playwrights Horizons' Perspectives on Playwriting Core Workshop, a current member of Mission to (dit)Mars 2018-2020 Propulsion Lab. Plays include WE COME HERE (Astoria Performing Arts Center / New York Innovative Theater Award nomination for Original Short Script), HABLAS Y TE SALVAS (developed at Astoria Performing Arts Center) and A SUNNYSIDE MIXTAPE (Working Title Theatre Co.) performed under the 7
train in Sunnyside, Queens. Solo shows include CLIFFORD AND THE BIG RED DAD (American AF Festival) and THE APPLE Y EL ARBOL (The Tank). He's developed work at INTAR Theatre's Steep Salon. He volunteers at The 52nd Street Project. He is the co-founder and Managing Director of Fail Better NYC. www.failbetter.nyc
Writer
Drive
DRIVE will be a drama (set in a future not far down the road) about a community of truck drivers whose lives are forced to shift gears when they lose their jobs to self-driving vehicles. DRIVE will investigate our collective fears surrounding an AI future, and the possibilities when individuals, particularly in a country where we're so defined by our work, are forced to reevaluate what drives them.
Deborah Yarchun
Deborah Yarchun (Writer) is a NYC-based playwright. Her honors include two Jerome Fellowships at The Playwrightss' Center, The Kennedy Center's Jean Kennedy Smith Playwriting Award, the Richard Maibaum Award, an EST/Sloan Commission, and a 2017-2018 Dramatists Guild Foundation Fellowship. Deborah's plays include TECTONIC MÉLANGE (Ensemble Studio Theatre's First Light Festival, TheatreSquared's Arkansas New Play Festival), BOMBER'S MOON (Williams Street Rep's 2018-2019 mainstage season), THE ALEPH COMPLEX (New Harmony Project), THE MAN IN THE SUKKAH (Jewish Play's Project's OPEN Festival, JETFest), GREAT WHITE (2016 Relentless Award Honorable Mention, Great Plains Theatre Conference), A PICKLE (Minnesota Fringe Festival Best of Fringe), FREEZEFRAME (Young Playwrights Festival), PAINTED DESERT (The Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Festival, Theatre Masters), and THE STARFIRE DANCE (Fusion Theatre). She was a 2017 Playwright-in-Residence at the William Inge Center for the Arts. Deborah earned her MFA from the University of Iowa where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow. DeborahYarchun.com.
Writer
Directors
Ilana Becker
Ilana Becker (Director) is a theatre director and producer specializing in new play and musical development, community-driven projects, and arts education. She is a member of The WP Theater Producers Lab, The Civilians' R&D Group, Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, DirectorsLabChicago, Fresh Ground Pepper's PlayGroup, a Playwrights Horizons Robert Moss Directing Fellow, and an Emerging Leader of NY Arts Fellow. She is Artistic Director of Argument Sessions, a series of immersive theatrical events weaving SCOTUS transcripts with collaboratively developed original material. Ilana returns to New York after a year at Company of Fools/Sun Valley Center for the Arts, where she directed LIFE SUCKS, BRIGHT HALF LIFE, and STRIKING 12, and developed PAL by Tasha Gordon-Solmon and a commissioned short musical for young audiences by Maggie-Kate Coleman and Erato A. Kremmyda. Upcoming: THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA by Greg Kotis (The Tank) www.ilanabecker.com
Director
Hunter Bird
Hunter Bird (Director) is Brooklyn-based maker of new plays and musicals. 2018/19 Projects: XY with Oliver Houser (NAMT 2018, 17/18 DGF Fellows, Director & Developer), ELSEWHERE (Immersive Workshop), THE CAKE (Manhattan Theatre Club), THE GIRL WITH THE ALKALINE EYES (Theatre Row) and EXTINCT (Immersive Corporate Production). Directed and developed new work at Ars Nova, Roundabout Theatre Company, The McKittrick Hotel, Signature Theatre with Columbia University, The Getty Villa, 59E59, Lincoln Center Education, Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and Musical Theatre Factory. New upcoming work with Nikko Benson, Andrea Daly, Kate Douglas, Marcy Heisler & Zina Goldrich, Oliver Houser, Chas LiBretto, Madeline Myers, Angela Sclafani, and Zack Zadek. Associate and assistant director work for Lynne Meadow, Des McAnuff, Pam MacKinnon, Doug Hughes, Graciela Daniele, Eve Ensler, and the National Theatre of Scotland. Artistic Producer of The Chase Brock Experience, Line Producer of ANT Fest 2018 at Ars Nova. www.hunter-bird.com
Director
SRĐA VASILJEVIĆ
SRĐA VASILJEVIĆ (Director) is a Bosnian-American director and the resident director of Theatre for One. His work includes theatrical productions, concerts, and experiential events and has been seen on and off Broadway, regionally and floating in international waters on Disney Cruise Lines. He has developed new work with companies such as New Dramatists, The Flea and La MaMa and worked on the directorial teams of DeafWest's SPRING AWAKENING (Broadway), THE LARAMIE PROJECT CYCLE (BAM) and THE NEW YORK SPECTACULAR (Radio City Music Hall). Recent Projects include GRADIVA WHO WALKED THROUGH HELL AND BACK (Mad. Sq. Art & T41), INDEPENDENCE (Alchemical Theatre Lab), DUST CAN'T KILL ME (NYMF & LPR) and WHEN I STARTED DATING MEN (Dixon Place). Srđa is the visual director behind Garth.'s debut EP, "Human Nature" and the director of the album's title music video. Member of the ENCORES! Off-Center Artists' Board and Lincoln Center Directors' Lab. www.sr-da.com
Director
Dina Vovsi
Dina Vovsi (Director) Upcoming: UNTITLED BRIGHTON BEACH PLAY (Working Theater 5 Boroughs 1 City Commission), IPHIGENIA AND OTHER DAUGHTERS (LIU Post), FIRST BY FAITH: THE LIFE OF MARY MCLEOD BETHUNE (United Solo), and the ensemble-created UNTITLED PARLOR PLAY, OR, FOR HOME AMUSEMENT (2017-18 Access Residency). Assistant directing: Broadway, off-Broadway, and regionally, with Roundabout, Playwrights Horizons, Hudson Valley Shakespeare Festival, Spoleto Festival USA, and more. Dina is a Resident Director at The Flea, and has been a Robert Moss Directing Fellow at Playwrights Horizons, the recipient of an SDC Foundation Observership, a member of the Lincoln Center Directors͛ Lab, and an O'Neill National Directors Fellowship Finalist. www.dinavovsi.com
Director
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