Out of the Woods...

After a 6 year hiatus I have returned to French Woods Festival of the Performing Arts, where I've spent the last 2 months directing and teaching an incredible array of student performers. What a privelage to work with such talented kids. Cheers to the casts and crews of HMS Pinafore, Spelling Bee, Amadeus and Finian's Rainbow (which opens tonight!). It's been a real nostalgia trip to return to my old stomping ground after so many years. Now on to Cambridge, NY to join Jon Levin and Josh Luxenberg at the Freight Residency to work on Sinking Ship's adaptation of Kafka's Hunger Artist. After that I'm back in New York starting rehearsals for Woodshed Collective's Empire Travel Agency!

We must go into the wild of Alaska and slay a Bear

In this action adventure tragi-comic bromance, two men decide they must go to Alaska and kill a bear despite their complete lack of preparation, gun training or survival skills. Bear suits and Walmart gun buying excursions drive you to ask: how far is too far?

Dan O'Neil's Bear Slayer will be making its world premiere at Ars Nova's Ant Fest on June 12th for one night only! I'll be straddling the stage and the directing chair on this one, playing a character not so loosely based on myself alongside a character not so loosely based on Dan. With us will be Madeleine Bundy and R.N. Healey. Design by Josh Smith and Gavin Price. Choreography by the incomparable Katie Rose McLaughlin. Tickets here. Don't miss it!

Little Lord's Bambifucker/Kaffeehaus opens this week!

For the next few weeks I'll be wearing tighty-whities and heels at The Brick in this absolutely bonkers new adaptation of Felix Salten's novel (fuck Disney) Bambi, which I bet you didn't know was banned by the Nazis for being an obvious allegory of the Austrian Jewish experience. Also Salten ghostwrote some seriously demented hard-core pornography on the side. I'll be playing Bambi, Salten, and sometimes an aging prostitute named Josephine. Don't miss this trip to the old Viennese coffee house scene. Seating is limited. Get your tickets and bambi-bucks while they still last. So many tags: #anxiousdeer #oedipalissues #zionismiscomplicated #artishard #areyoucircumsized ---- Also check out this preview in Heeb Magazine!

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Kaitlyn Gilliland reminisces about NUTCRACKER(s)

A fantastic post from our own Kaitlyn Gilliland detailing her experiences dancing The Nutcracker and how they relate to our recent collaboration.

My debut as the Sugarplum Fairy with The New York City Ballet fell on the afternoon of Christmas Eve. Many of the corps ladies, myself included, had already paraded through the Land of Sweets several dozen times that December, once to the maddeningly off-tempo scream of the theater’s fire alarm for the entirety of the Waltz of the Flowers. (I kept close track of Nutcracker near-disasters that year, willing my first go at the great pas de deux not to be among the most memorable.) Much to my relief, my first performance was uneventful.

Culturebot responds to A NUTCRACKER

From Julia Katz: A really cool response to our production of A Nutcracker at the Knockdown Center. Check out more at Culturebot.

As someone who grew up as a dancer, A Nutcracker had immediate resonance for me. Even at a young age, I’ve questioned my changing relationship with my own body and wistfully looked back to high school dance photos, balanced on pointe shoes in a majestic costume. This story seemed to explore the overwhelming force of nostalgia, and the psychological tendency to relate one’s experiences back to an archetypical narrative. So while my background made me feel especially connected to A Nutcracker, its emotional reach is accessible to anyone wistful.

Lulu in A Nutcracker

'Tis the season for Nutcrackers

I know. You're already wondering what the hell this Jewish theater director is doing working on a Nutcracker ballet. Sometimes I wonder myself... But I've always had a weird little relationship with the Christmas season. My mother used to hang dreidel-shaped stockings over the fireplace accompanied by stories of Maccabee suicide brigades descending the chimney to fill them. Mall Santa's were frequently visited, to my father's chagrin. And almost annually, while my parents helped out at the local synagogue, I was left in the custodian's office to watch PBS, which is where an 8 year old Josh first saw Mark Morris' influential and delightfully irreverent Hard Nut. It's almost impossible to grow up in this country without being exposed in some way to the Nutcracker. In the coffee-shop where I'm drafting this very email, I've already heard the Dance of the Sugarplum Fairy three times (thanks, Pandora). This is funny, of course, because I can't even begin to tell you what in God's name the ballet is actually about. Is it a coming of age tale? A tale of coerced sexual awakening (don't tell me Drosselmeyer isn't a bit of a creep)? Why is everyone battling rats? And someone please explain to me the point of Act 2 beyond the conventions of Russian 19th century ballet. Is it all a dream? Or is it all a melancholy metaphor for Clara's death? -- These are the essential questions we've neglected to answer enitrely by tossing aside what Tchaikovsky himself considered a rather idiotic scenario. Instead, we've taken some of the principle themes and imagery, and newly arranged the iconic score, in order to tell the life-story of a dancer named Clara. From childhood to old age, each chapter of Clara's life is simultaneously depicted by world-class dancers in a playful yet poignant immersive dance-theatre performance. We are determined to make this production an annual holiday tradition, and we hope you'll join us for this first incarnation at the cavernous Knockdown Center, December 12th, 13th & 14th. I really, really hope you can join us. Of course, if you can't make it to one of the performances and you still feel moved by the ol' spirit of the season there's always the opportunity to give via our crowd funding platform Hatch Fund. With a little less than two weeks left in our campaign we are on the verge of crossing the threshold of our target goal and reaching for our more ambitious stretch goal! Yes, we truly need your help, and yes, those $25 contributions make a difference. And if you don't know about Hatch Fund, you should check it out, because they're pretty awesome. They curate their projects and also don't take a percentage (hence the surcharge). Also we've been a staff pick for the past week, so that's pretty cool too. With dreams of sugarplums,

A Nutcracker

Marathon Play to be featured in Prelude Fest October 9th.

On October 9th at 6:30PM JV Squad will be donning our signature tracksuits to present at excerpt of Marathon Play, an explorative fragment of a longer, endurance/performance project that literally places a marathon runner onstage in front of an audience, traversing 26.2 miles in a theatricalized spectacle of athleticism and perseverance. Created and performed by Liza Birkenmeier, Joshua William Gelb, Tegan Ritz McDuffie, Katie Rose McLaughlin, and Dan O’Neil.

MOTHER! @ The New Georges Jam

After years of scheming, Katie Brook and I are finally bringing MOTHER! to the stage. This competitive-sport adaptation of Marsha Norman's 1983 Pulitzer Prize winning play Night, Mother will close the New George's Jam on Toast on Saturday night (May 31st), 9:30PM at Dixon Place. The brave performers joining us include Alex Spieth, Dan O'Neil, Jessie Shelton, Ben Viertel, Sarah Krohn, and Susan Bernfield, among others. And yes, that's my head submerged in a bucket of water.

Party in the USA is going to the Edinburgh Fringe!

We're taking the party to Scotland! Following last summer's sold-out run at the Incubator Arts Project, Party in the USA will be appearing at the Underbelly's Topside Theater at this summer's Edinburgh Fringe Festival, the largest arts festival in the world. We're even starting a theater company to do it, and we're calling it JV Squad. This is a mamouth endeavor and we're still raising funds, so if you want to donate, just go to our Fractured Atlas page. I'd also encourage you to like us on facebook and follow us on twitter. And definitely make a Party in the USA cover video to help us get Miley Cyrus' attention. For all I know, one tweet from Miley could potentially sell out our entire run.

Victory at the Flea #serials

So excited to advance to the next round of serials with Donaldo Prescod, Charlotte Simpson and the rest of the Silent Masterpieces gang. Next episode begins December 5th!

Cleo Grey, Madeleine Bundy, Sean McIntyre, and Alex Gould

Cleo Grey, Madeleine Bundy, Sean McIntyre, and Alex Gould