Wed
June 8th - 22nd
Theaterlab 357 W 36th St. 3rd floor,
& A.R.T. New York, Brooklyn - 138 South Oxford Street
,
Phone: 718-230-3330
2023 Finding Series
The 12th annual FINDINGS Series will run from June 8th -22nd and will take place at various locations throughout New York.
All of these works-in-progress readings are free and will require a reservation. To RSVP, please fill out the RSVP form.
The Civilians’ R&D Group is comprised of writers, composers, and directors who meet throughout a season to develop original pieces of theater through the creative investigation of a pre-selected topic of their choosing. The creative processes may include interviews, community engagement, research, and other experimental methods of inquiry. Led by R&D Program Director Phoebe Corde, the Group shares and discusses their methodologies and the resulting work.
“If dating were an assortment of Halloween candy, Black women and Asian men would be the Tootsie Rolls and candy corn—the last to be eaten, if even at all.” We are the rejects. The unwanteds. The hypersexualized and the desexualized. The cheap thrills and the cheapskates. Blasia will explore racial disparities in dating and the potential of Black-Asian love, celebrate the beauty and power of Black women and Asian men, sing the blues of our perpetual aloneness, and envision the potential of, as Issa Rae writes, “Black women and Asian men join[ing] forces in love, marriage, and procreation.”
A Re-Enactment of the (Imagined) Trial of Daisy the Cow, who (Allegedly) Caused the Great Chicago Fire is a theatrical presentation of a completely fabricated trial where it is debated whether or not Mrs. O’Leary’s cow, Daisy, is guilty of causing the Great Chicago Fire of 1871 and thereby killing 300 people, as the “legend” says she is. The trial itself will be a deep interrogation of our legal and criminal justice systems and what truth, justice, and accountability actually means.
It is the 1920s-30s in Stalin’s Soviet Union. A crystallographer from Tbilisi studies clay minerals. A mathematician from Moscow educates the next generation. A Jewish poet writes in the face of censorship. When the lives of these three women intertwine, their forbidden love has unforeseen impacts. And all the while, the rocks are shifting… Inspired by the stories of three real Soviet women and featuring traditional folk songs, URSA MAJOR is a love story of resilience, perspective, and the heritage of our lives on Earth. Commissioned by The Ensemble Studio Theatre / Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Science & Technology Project.
Did Yoko Ono really break up The Beatles? Was Gloria Abe Chapman somehow responsible for John Lennon’s murder? Why do all these egotistical white guys have Asian wives? That’s weird, right? These are the questions that keep Ruby Okamoto up at night—literally. She wants answers, and she’s gonna find them. Even if she has to summon every Asian woman she’s ever met in a lawless, insomniatic fever dream.
Yoko’s Husband’s Killer’s Japanese Wife, Gloria is a musical about the invisible connections between human beings of a shared identity. Spurred by Ruby’s sleeplessness, a group of Asian American women from all different backgrounds find themselves in a fantastical dreamscape where their hopes, fears, insecurities, and questions manifest as real-life rockstars and movie monsters. They push and pull each other through the enchanting, treacherous territory of their collective subconscious in hopes of understanding their own hard-to-define-but-definitely-there connection to other Asians in America.
An artist enters a nursing home, tasked with devising a work for the home’s residents. As their project progresses, destabilizing truths are revealed. This meta-theatrical interview-based musical will explore memory, usefulness, and fantasy as palliative care.
Diwali, the festival of lights, started with a dice game; the Partition of India and the arbitrary drawing of a line was a game of chance; medieval politics was intertwined with games of Pachisi as depicted by the paintings in the Ajanta caves (480 CE) – what are the ripple effects of these gambles? Inshallah explores how games of chance have influenced historical and mythological events from the Mahabharata to the Mughal era and the Partition in South Asia.