THE TENANT
Download Press Release (Adobe PDF)
For immediate release, please
Contact: Richard Kornberg & Associates (212) 944-9444
Richard Kornberg richard@kornbergpr.com
Don Summa don@kornbergpr.com
Danielle McGarry danielle@kornbergpr.com
WOODSHED COLLECTIVE PRESENTS
THE TENANT
TO BE
PERFORMED FREE TO THE PUBLIC
PERFORMANCES
BEGIN WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 10
OPENING
SCHEDULED FOR WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 24
COMPANY
PRESENTED ACCLAIMED PRODUCTIONS OF TWELVE
OPHELIAS
IN
BROOKLYN’S MCCARREN PARK POOL AND
THE CONFIDENCE MAN
ABOARD
THE LILAC AT PIER 40
The world premiere of The Tenant, which will be performed free
of charge at West-Park Presbyterian
Church on the northeast corner of 86th Street and Amsterdam Avenue (entrance on
86th Street), begins performances Wednesday, August 10 at 8pm, and opens Wednesday, August 24 at 8pm. Conceived and produced by Woodshed Collective (Teddy Bergman, Gabriel Hainer Evansohn, Stephen Squibb, Artistic Directors), The
Tenant is written by Bekah Brunstetter, Sarah Burgess,
Paul Cohen, Dylan Dawson, Steven Levenson, and Tommy Smith with production
dramaturgy by Stephen Squibb. The
Tenant is directed by Teddy Bergman and Stephen Brackett and plays through Saturday, September 17th.
Set in Paris and inspired by the novella that was famously
adapted into a film by Roman Polanski, The Tenantis a thrilling,
haunting and grotesquely hilarious investigation into the relationship between
who we are and where we live. When Monsieur Trelkovsky rents a room
recently vacated by a woman who fell from her window, he soon finds his world
changing in bizarre ways. Haunted by images of the previous tenant’s apparent
suicide and terrorized by his new neighbors, Trelkovsky begins a slow descent
into paranoia and delirium.
Staged and installed by Woodshed Collective over five
building stories in the historic West Park Presbyterian Church parish house, The
Tenant features an original script by a team of New York's brightest
up-and-coming playwrights— Bekah Brunstetter (Atlantic Theater Co.’s Oohrah!),
Sarah Burgess (Naked Angels), Paul Cohen (Woodshed Collective’s The
Confidence Man), Dylan Dawson (Naked Angels, Ars Nova, 52nd Street Project), Steven Levenson (Roundabout’s The Language of Trees, HERE’s Seven Minutes in Heaven), and Tommy Smith (P73, Williamstown).
Each playwright has written the story of a separate denizen of this Parisian
tenement, and collaborated with Woodshed Collective to create a living
building. The Tenant features original scoring by Tony and Grammy award winner Duncan Sheik (Spring Awakening)
and David Van Tieghem.
The Tenant explores the bubbling conflict between an uncanny mix of colorful characters to
create a symphonic piece of powerful theater. Building off this original,
commissioned script and layering in the power of film, architecture, video, and
light, the show is a shifting, mirrored landscape designed to delight and
unnerve while drawing our attention to those aspects of ourselves we hide just
below the surface.
The cast of The Tenant is Rob Askins, Juliette
Cohen, Dan Cozzens, Michael Patrick Crane, Aaron Dias, Evan Enderle, Erin
Felgar, Mary Jane Gibson, Stephen Graybill, Judith Greentree, Vanina
Kondova, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Maren Langdon, Roger Lirtsman, Malcom Madera, Maria
McConville, Melissa Miller, Michael Piazza, Lynne Rosenberg, Caitlin McDonough
Thayer, Ian Unterman, Molly Ward, and Travis York.
Production design for The Tenant is by Gabriel Hainer
Evansohn; costume design is by Jessica Pabst; lighting design is by Carl Faber;
sound design is by Brandon Wolcott with original scoring contributed by Duncan Sheik
and David Van Tieghem; video
design is by Josh Higgason, Alex Koch, Dave Tennet, and Kate Freer.
About Woodshed Collective
Woodshed Collective (Teddy Bergman, Gabriel Hainer Evansohn,
Carl Faber, Emily Fishbaine, Jocelyn Kuritsky, Jessica Pabst, and Stephen
Squibb) creates installation
theater presented free of charge to the public. The company realizes
handcrafted, visceral worlds in diverse locations for audiences to explore,
athleticizing their senses, emotions, and minds. Inspiring spectators to claim
a presence that helps author the experience itself, our productions aim to
create a genuine sense of wonder.
Woodshed’s productions
of Twelve Ophelias, performed in
Brooklyn’s McCarren Park Pool, and The
Confidence Man, performed aboard a decommissioned steam ship in the Hudson
River, were hailed by critics:
Twelve Ophelias
“A
spirited production.” – Village
Voice
“Svich has a lovely way with old stories—her looping,
just-shy-of-purple poetry lets her remake the Greeks and Shakespeare with
panache. And thematically,
director Teddy Bergen's choice of the waterless, cracked McCarren Park Pool
basin works: We're in a dry hole thirsty for language.” – TimeOut NY
“Truly,
genuinely, wonderfully theatrical.” – nytheatre.com
"A
deconstructed masterstroke.” – New
York Press
The Confidence Man
***** Time Out New York
“It's
a wonder this tiny company is able to mount such a huge entertainment. And it's
heartening that they've pulled it off.” – Variety
“…a work of dazzling genius, a spellbinding feat of
collective creativity.”
- Gothamist.
Woodshed Collective is the most recent evolution of what
began as a method of production. Founded at Vassar College in the spring of
2002 as the Woodshed Theater Ensemble, the company initially sought to
deemphasize the traditional, hierarchical model of theatrical production.
Growing out of an educational background that emphasized critical
thinking and dialogue, the members of the Ensemble developed productions of
known plays through collaborative, extended discussion and non-traditional
rehearsal techniques.
When the company relocated to New York City, it soon became
clear that the method needed to be re-imagined. What had made sense in an
academic environment—producing canonical or established texts in new
ways—now limited potential. New York inspired the company not only to
produce in inventive ways, but to produce new texts in new ways; and, in
a city bursting with new voices the company was anxious to collaborate
with the wealth of exciting artists working within the greater theatrical
community. Additionally, New York prompted a rethinking of the relationship
between audience and performance. The goal became to create fully realized
theatrical worlds for our audiences to explore from the ground up.
Over a period of four years Woodshed Collective has evolved
from staging a proscenium production of Federico Garcia Lorca’s Blood
Wedding, in an established downtown theater, to conceiving, adapting, and
producing a massive, multi-layered installation of Herman Melville’s The
Confidence Man on a decommissioned steamship in the Hudson River. The
energy formerly spent on developing ideas for an already existing text moved into
developing the text and production simultaneously.
About West-Park Presbyterian Church
West-Park Presbyterian Church, located on the
corner of 86th and Amsterdam, has a long history of having intimate ties with
the arts and culture. Having hosted a number of theatrical companies in
the past, West-Park is is pleased to welcome the Woodshed Collective as
artists-in-residence for the months of August and September. West-Park
also has a long history of deep engagement with social issues. A founding
church in the More Light movement, which fought to end the ban on ordaining
LGBTQ people within the Presbyterian Church, West-Park has a long-standing
commitment to social justice. West-Park’s vision for the future is made
manifest in the Center @ West-Park, a community-based project for social and
spiritual transformation. The Center will be a home for people of many
faiths and those who simply share a passion for and commitment to
exploring and bettering the world. West-Park also celebrated its 100th anniversary this year in
a year-long series of events called 100+. The celebration, which has
included a concert series, theatrical productions, and more, will culminate
this December in a gala event to celebrate West-Park’s rich history and its
commitment to the future.
The
Tenant performs at West-Park
Presbyterian Church on the following preview schedule: Monday through Saturday
8pm, with no performances on Friday, August 19 and an added performance on
Sunday, August 21. Beginning
Friday, August 26, the performance schedule is Wednesday through Friday at 8pm
and Saturday at 7pm and 10:30pm. (There is no performance on Thursday, August 25.) Tickets are free and may be reserved at www.woodshedcollective.com. For more information about The
Tenant and Woodshed
Collective, visit www.woodshedcollective.com. You may find more information at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1TSXF_0YIDE.
# # # # #