We love theater and checking out new shows, so we were thrilled to hear about New Victory LabWorks Artists, the New Victory Theater‘s awesome roster of projects from theater, musical theater, aerial acrobatics, physical theater, magic, music and Vietnamese water puppetry! How amazing is that?!
Designed to foster the creation of new works, New Victory LabWorks offers resources and opportunities for professional exchange among a broad spectrum of artists living and working in New York City.
Managed by the New Victory Artistic Programming staff, New Victory LabWorks has grown to include a diverse spectrum of nearly 500 New York City-based arts professionals, including artists, practitioners, educators, presenters and producers.
The New Victory LabWorks also offers a program for artists of all disciplines who desire an experience tailored to their specific needs and individual creative processes. Artists, selected by application, receive a stipend, coveted rehearsal space in the New 42nd Street Studios and the possibility of holding open rehearsals for industry professionals and New Victory Member families. Facilitated by New Victory staff, these experiences provide the invaluable response of peers and target audiences.
The 2016-17 New Victory LabWorks Artists includes:
Only Child Aerial Theatre, led by Nicki Miller (The World is Round) and Kendall Rileigh (Golda’s Balcony), will use aerial and ground acrobatics, live music, projection and shadow work to celebrate how imagination and play connect the young and the old in Story Hour.
Tim Kubart and Mario “The Magician” Marchese, the 2016 Grammy® Award winner of Best Children’s Album, teams up with the subject of the indie documentary Building Magic, to create a combination of handmade magic and homemade music that celebrates creativity and imagination in Makers and Shakers.
Andrew Gerle (Meet John Doe) pens a musical adaptation of The Great Blueness by Arnold Lobel (author of the beloved Frog and Toad series), about a town where everything is gray until the local Wizard accidentally discovers a magical new world of color.
Blessed Unrest (NY Innovative Theatre Award for Sustained Excellence), led by Artistic Director Jessica Burr (LPTW Lucille Lortel Award), adapts The Snow Queen, using physical theater to build the peculiar lands and wild creatures encountered by the courageous heroine as she journeys to rescue her friend.
Spellbound Theatre (Wink, 2014-15 LabWorks Artist and two-time Henson Foundation Family Grant recipients), New York’s only theater company creating work exclusively for ages 0-5, explores how the human body works through humor, music, puppetry and digital media in The World Inside Me.
Kathleen Doyle, a two-time Fulbright Grant recipient and costume and puppet designer, shares the ancient art of Vietnamese water puppetry in an untitled new work.
Puppet Kitchen Productions (The Very Hungry Caterpillar Show, John Tartaglia’s Imaginocean) employs puppetry and clowning to tell the story of two best friends who disappear into the art they were tasked to hang. Pictures at an Exhibition is inspired by the real life story behind Mussorgsky’s piano suite of the same name.
Louisa Thompson Pregerson, a two-time Obie Award-winning designer, creates a new work inspired by her recent project Washeteria, a site-specific work set in a fantastical laundromat. Washeteria had its world premiere at Soho Rep with the generous support of the Children’s Theatre Foundation of America.
Maaa Theater, co-founded by theater director Mohammad Aghebati (Hamlet, Prince of Grief) and filmmaker Mehrnoush Alia (Scheherazade), stages The Little Black Fish, one of Iran’s most celebrated stories for kids, about a young fish who leaves his home stream for new waters and goes on an eye-opening adventure.
The Village of Vale, 2015 Kevin Spacey Foundation Artist of Choice Winner, uses live music, storytelling, puppetry and visual arts to animate a series of dark folk tales all set in a mysterious village.
Drew Petersen, associate artistic director of Trusty Sidekick Theater Company and drama teacher at the Blue School, brings to life the unlikely friendship between Nera, an abstract art-obsessed Brooklyn 5th grader with synaesthesia, and Chester, a middle-light class boxer with more passion for the sport than skill in The Prizefighter of P.S. 217.
Zachary Fine (Walled In, Manifest Destiny) takes a closer look at Dennis, a character that appears only once in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, in So Please You or The Tragical Comical Tale of Dennis, The Almost Silent Shakespearean Actor.
Chad Beckim, finalist for the 2015-16 Jerome Fellowship and Kevin Spacey Foundation, explores the mental, physical and emotional landscapes that American trans youth and their families must navigate in Little Man.
For more info, please visit: https://www.newvictory.org/
