Works-in-Process are excerpts from new work, in development or recently premiered.

Q&A moderated by Nina Angela Mercer.

Misogynoir

In its current iteration, Misogynoir is the black woman’s BET. A network for black women, by black women. But, as with all media, it must go through the filter of white acceptance. So programming such as “Who Wants to be an Activist” becomes a show about white feminism vs. black feminism. As network creators, Tabatha and Sam, start to create content we learn that Sam is more than willing to do whatever it takes to grab power and reach heights described to him by the media. Even if it comes at the cost of Tabatha’s emotional, physical, and mental wellbeing. Misogynoir had its debut off-broadway as part of Ars Nova’s ANT Fest this past summer. Development of the show began in December of 2017 and Sam and Tabby are excited to see where it goes.

Tabatha Gayle & Sam Kebede have developed/helped developed shows at Ars Nova, The Public’s UTR Festival, New York Musical Festival, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center’s National Playwrights Conference, The Lark, the National Black Theater, and IRT Theater. Also between the two of them are four different schools, a Bachelor’s in Neuroscience, a Bachelors in Acting, a Bachelors in Theater Studies, a Masters in Acting, and a Minor in Biology.

Lighting Design in full production: Matt Lazarus
Voice in full production: Nick Nudler
Cast list for tonight’s performance:
Black girl: Tabatha Gayle 
Tambo: James Jelkin 

Special thank you to Ars Nova for giving us a place to premiere and Andrew Kircher for the guidance and support.

www.tabathagayle.com; www.samkebede.com 

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Taxilandia

Taxilandia is an immersive play and staged tour of a specific regional neighborhood. The audience of up to 4 is picked up in a cab by Flako while he narrates their journey. As he cruises along the neighborhood, he will make stops at sentimental spots, and regale his customers with an epic yarn: seamlessly switching between poems and stories, anecdotes and testimonies of past customers, both passenger and driver find themselves rolling down ‘Flako’s memory lane’ of the town. Meanwhile, the neighborhood explodes into life! With an ensemble of performers, some young and some old, residents of Bushwick. Along the ride, the audience experiences the neighborhood through the local landmarks and businesses where Flako will make “pit stops”.

Modesto Flako Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised theater maker, producer, and educator. HOLA Best Ensemble Award Winner 2015. ATI Best Actor Award Winner 2016. HOLA Outstanding Solo Performer for 2017, NY Times and Wall Street Journal profiled. Flako is best known for original productions and three signature festivals – Ghetto Hors D’Oeuvres, One Catches Light, and Oye! Avant Garde Night! – produced with his company Oye Group. Flako has appeared on TEDxBushwick, Early Shaker Spirituals (Wooster Group), Last Night At The Palladium (Bushwick Starr/3LD), Yoleros (Bushwick Starr/IATI theater), Conversations Pt.1: How To Make It Black In America (JACK). Take Me Home (3LD/ Incubator Arts Project), Richard Maxwell’s Samara (Soho Rep.), Kaneza Schaal’s Jack &. (BAM). He received the 2016 Princess Grace Award Honorarium in Theater. In 2018 he became the first Dominican-American Lead Artist in The Public Theater Under The Radar Festival with his show Oye For My Dear Brooklyn.

Director: William Burke | Techincal Director: Kevin Torres | Producer: Jane Yung
Production Manager: Skye Morse-Hodgson | Line Producer: Ann Marie Dorr

Upcoming

Flako will be performing at BAM in Jack &. by Kaneza Schaal and at 3LD in Esperpento Two Black Lights and One Red in October 2018

www.oyegroup.org; www.flakojimenez.com

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A Hard Time

A Hard Time is a bawdy alt-comedy cabaret and futurist meditation created by Jess Conda, Jenn Kidwell, and Mel Krodman. In this fast-paced variety show, three dynamic performers play old men, little girls, and everything in between, blowing farewell kisses to the patriarchy amid the absurdities and violence of gender expectations.

Pig Iron Theatre Company, founded in 1995 as an interdisciplinary ensemble, is dedicated to the creation of new and exuberant performance works. Pig Iron has created over 30 original works, toured to festivals and theaters in 14 countries, received two OBIE awards, and launched a graduate program in devised theatre. The mission of Pig Iron Theatre Company is to expand what is possible in performance by creating rigorous and unusual ensemble-devised works; by training the next generation of daring, innovative theatre artists; and by consistently asking the hardest questions, both in our art and in its relation to the world around us.

Co-creators: Jess Conda, Mel Krodman & Jenn Kidwell
Performers: Jess Conda & Mel Krodman
Director: Dan Rothenberg
Sound Design: Justin Hicks
Costume Design: LaVonne Lindsay

With support from the Wyncote Foundation.

Upcoming

A Hard Time premieres May 1st, 2019, at Fringe Arts in Philadelphia.

Superterranean (working title) by Mimi Lien/Pig Iron, Philadelphia Fringe Festival, September 2019

www.pigiron.org; @pigirontheatre;@PigIronTheatreCo; @pigirontheatre

Nina Angela Mercer (Moderator) is an interdisciplinary artist and cultural worker based in the Bronx. Nina’s plays include Gutta Beautiful; Gypsy & The Bully Door; Itagua Meji: A Road and A Prayer; A Compulsion for Breathing; Elijaheen Becomes Wind and Charisma at the Crossroads. Her work is published in Black Renaissance Noire; Continuum: the Journal of Black Drama, Theatre and Performance and Killen Review of Arts and Letters, among others. Her video poem “An invocation for Jose Antonio Aponte” (created in collaboration with director Toshi Sakai) is included in the traveling exhibition Visionary Aponte: Art and Black Freedom. Nina is a Ph.D fellow in Theatre and Performance at the Graduate Center, CUNY.