The Animals

By Amina Henry
June 30 - July 9, 2016

The Animals is a wicked look at a year in the life of the teachers at Peabody Elementary School, depicting their quarterly struggle to maintain their humanity. Directed by Gretchen Van Lente, this darkly comic play alights in the teachers’ break room every month, tracking their progress and regress over the course of the year. New recruit Dot Banks strives for perfection while dealing with a wayward student, a demanding mother, an alarming eating disorder and the dramas of the veteran teachers at the school. With exhilarating highs and devastating lows, the schoolteachers work their way through the school year amidst demanding parents, unruly students, standardized testing and the piling-on of personal crises.

PERFORMANCES:
Thursday - Saturday, June 30 - July 2 and Thursday - Saturday, July 7 - 9
All shows at 8 pm

Playwright: Amina Henry
Director: Gretchen Van Lente
Featuring:
Melissa Diaz * (appearing courtesy of Actors Equity Association)
Amelia Fowler
Richard McDonald
Isabelle Pierre
Leta Renée-Alan
Stage Manager: Lauren Graneto
Production Team: Angelica Borrero and Christopher Cancel ​

Amina Henry (Playwright) is a playwright and arts educator. Her work has been produced, presented, and/or developed at: Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Kitchen Dog Theater, The Flea (NYC), The New Group (NYC), Clubbed Thumb (NYC), Barefoot Theatre (NYC), Little Theater @ Dixon Place (NYC), National Black Theater (NYC), the cell (NYC), Theatre for the New City (NYC), HERE Arts Center (NYC), Drama of Works (Brooklyn, NY), The Brick (Brooklyn, NY), and HERO Theater, as well as Brooklyn College and Texas State University. She was a 2012-2013 Core Apprentice playwright at The Playwrights Center. She was a 2013 Finalist for the Leah Ryan FEWW Playwriting Prize for her play Bully, a play that is on the 2015 Kilroy List, a curated survey of the top 7% recommended plays by female and female-identified playwrights in the US. She is a graduate of Yale University, the NYU Performance Studies MA program and the Brooklyn College MFA Playwriting program.

Gretchen Van Lente (Director) is a freelance director and the Artistic Director of the award-winning multidisciplinary company, Drama of Works. The company has created over a dozen shows, received seven Henson Foundation grants, participated in multiple developmental series and performed in international festivals in over five countries. Outside of DOW, she has directed or assisted with productions at Theatre for the New City, Brooklyn College, {Your name here}, Bond Street Theatre, New Georges, Dixon Place, at various festivals, and many others... Gretchen is also a full-time theater teacher in the NYC Public School System, working with elementary students with special needs. She received a BFA in illustration from Parsons School of Design, a BA in theatre from Eugene Lang College, an MFA in theater direction from Brooklyn College, and is working toward her MS in education from Pace University.

Photo by Emon Hassan