CYCLE 7 AUDREY RESIDENCIES

WELCOME 2020 AUDREY RESIDENTS!

Announcing Cycle 7, the new group of Audrey residents at New Georges!

Named for Audrey Bernfield, Susan’s mom, an innovative mentor and of course a great supporter of our company, the year-long residencies that make up our core play development program are project-based and collaboration-focused. Residency consists of up to 3 weeks of space in The Room to spend working on a new-play project over the course of the year in a process of their own devising, a monthly meal and conversation with the full resident community, and additional resources we muster as needs emerge.

Big thanks to prior residents Leigh Fondakowski and Kate Scelsa, who joined Susan, Jaynie, Deadria and Sonya in one long, inspiring day of conversations with potential residents. Here are the people and projects they chose:

Playwright Kate Benson and director Jessica Almasy will make Where Are We Going? a road trip play in 2 parts. We are all in it together. Get in the van and get going.

Playwright Lisa Clair will explore her obsession with modern monstrosity, taking on the ancient Jewish Golem myth to offer a distinctly feminine view on a traditionally masculine monster. Jumping off Cynthia Ozick’s fictional ‘Puttermesser Papers,’ Lisa will ask: What does it mean to be a citizen artist of New York? What is the creative potential of our own bodies? What needs to be birthed right now, at this moment, in this city?

Playwright/performer Julia Izumi will try to translate the untranslatable in Akira Kurosawa Explains His Movies and Yogurt (with Live & Active Cultures!). She’ll use the mixed mediums of video, clowning, personal storytelling, and way too much yogurt to challenge the myth of universality, investigate cultural imperialism, and encourage “healthy” consuming.

Playwright RN Healey and director Shannon Sindelar will use amplified mood, dashes of absurdism, and puppetry to develop Wyoming Play, which is set in the stark cattle towns of the west and blends romance with true crime tropes to examine queerness and violence through the lens of Americana.

Writer/director Sanaz Ghajar started a project about her mother, then got tired of talking about her mother, then started again, telling the story of an Iranian-American girl confronting contradictions in two cultures. A comedy (is it a solo show?!) about displacement, divorce, strawberry jam, and all the women she fails to manifest as she perches at various bars in Bushwick, drinking whiskey and reading about revolution.

Playwright Tori Keenan-Zelt and director Portia Krieger will shatter the glass around the complicated history of natural history dioramas: the animals in them, the people who made them, and our insatiable human desire to preserve what we love in a world that is closing, one Forever 21 store at a time.

Playwright Alexis Roblan will explore the creation of white “safe spaces” through law, culture, and violence in She Flies With Her Own Wings, an excavation of the history and consequence of white supremacy — and its alluring fantasy of self-sufficiency — in her home state of Oregon.

Flamenco embodies resistance and grace; sorrow and gratitude. Death transforms individuals, communities, rituals. Playwright Riti Sachdeva will explore making a play about how flamenco might embody death as transformation. Or how death may transform into flamenco. Forgiveness, violence and dignity meet at the crossroads of grief.