PIONEERS!#goforth

By William Burke
March 24 - April 9, 2016

After turning JACK into a canine kennel for 2015’s Comfort Dogs, and dramatizing the plight of a Times Square Elmo in Furry (JACK, 2013), theater-maker William Burke returns to our venue with an audacious framework for his mystical texts. In PIONEERS#goforth, Burke suspends actors Nikki Calonge, Zoë Geltman and Ugo Chukwu in a net above the audience for a play about making choices and the limitations placed on the experimental nature of our young. Composer/musician Catherine Brookman will provide live underscoring, employing her technical wizardry and ethereal voice.

With set designer Carolyn Mraz inverting the space, the audience views the performance from below, basking in beautiful, uninhibited youth and trying to balance the harmonies of the outdoors and the clanging silence of the indoors. This is a youth play. With a middle finger.

Featuring Nikki Calonge, Zoë Geltman and Ugo Chukwu.
Designed by Carolyn Mraz
Live music composed and performed by Catherine Brookman
Lights by Megan Lang
Costumes designed by Alice Tavener
Produced by John Del Gaudio

This production is funded in part by a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant.

WILLIAM BURKE (Playwright and Director): Past productions Burke has written and directed include the food was terrible (The Bushwick Starr) COMFORT DOGS: Live from the Pink House and FURRY!! (JACK), I Made a Mistake, EXPLODITY!!, DAY!Night?fuck… (Target Margin and The Stahl Center at Stony Brook University). Workshops and readings include the devil want his hat back (The Bushwick Starr and Black Swan Labs at OSF), Fire Liberty (Bushwick Starr Reading Series), this might catch fire in a tragic way (Bushwick Starr reading series) and Keeners (Dixon Place). Burke has shown work at Little Theatre at Dixon Place, The Prelude Festival (CUNY Grad center) and CATCH. Target Margin Associated Artist. Curator: the Starr Reading Series and Artistic Development Associate at The Bushwick Starr. Brooklyn College Playwriting MFA under Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney. BFA, Cornish College of the Arts.