We’re excited to announce our first foray into podcasting, thanks to the fine folks at Mayfest, one of the UK’s most exciting festivals of contemporary theatre.
Starting Friday morning (at or around 8:50am) and streaming through the duration of the festival, you can hear snippets of songs and stories recorded during our most recent workshop of Primer for a Failed Superpower.
Photo by Em Watson.
To celebrate a decade together, we’re throwing a party to top them all. Big scale.
Joining us for a performance of scenes, songs, and highlights from our past ten years:
Mandy Patinkin
Kathryn Grody
Taylor Mac
Cristin Milioti
Lucy Alibar
TR Knight
Cory Michael Smith
(and a few last-minute warriors, cause that’s how we roll)
There will be music, there will be raffle prizes and sweet auction items, and there will be drinks a-plenty. And most importantly, there will be excellent company. And we hope that includes YOU.
We’re auditioning people aged 65+ for a developmental workshop of our latest project, Primer For a Failed Superpower, a theatrical concert event.
The final piece, slated for 2016 in New York, will feature a multigenerational cover band of TEAM ensemble members, teenagers and elders playing songs of social/political outrage, intercut with movement and candid conversation between 3 generations about personal and national power.
We Are Seeking:
Community-minded citizens ages 65+ with an interest in collaboration and performing. Musical ability is a plus, opinions and the willingness to creatively express them is a must.
Workshop Dates
The workshop will take place April 5-18, 2015 in Brooklyn, with daily rehearsals for the senior ensemble from 2pm to 5pm. The workshop will conclude with a public presentation of the work-in-progress on April 18. Some schedule flexibility is possible—please be sure to include any schedule conflicts for the workshop dates in your email to schedule an audition.
Compensation
The workshop will be unpaid, but a travel stipend will be provided to all participants.
AUDITION INFO
To schedule an audition, please email hello@theteamplays.org with “Primer Auditions” in the subject heading, and include your full name and contact information. A representative of the company will be in touch with you to schedule an appointment.
To audition, please prepare the following:
1) Choose a song that feels like your America to bring to your audition. We will be able to play cds, mp3 files, YouTube videos, or plug our speakers into a headphone jack on most phones, laptops, or an iPod/Pad.
2) Fill in the blanks, and be prepared to speak the text for us:
When I was born, I was ______________.
I grew to view my country as a __________________.
I heard this song: _________________________
Which made me feel like _________________________.
I wondered what I could do to change that.
All around me, I see _____________________.
I want you to ___________________________.
I sing because ___________________________.
Then play (either yourself with an instrument, or a recording) or sing us your song from the first activity.
Please also bring with you a resume of relevant performance experience, or a brief bio about yourself, and a recent picture.
As the TEAM celebrates its 10th Anniversary, we’re sharing our favorite memories from the last 10 years together.
JESS: Jill and I were busking for the team on Princes Street in Edinburgh for A Thousand Natural Shocks and we were handing out flyers for the show. The flyers had Brian’s face on them with a big black eye because we had a huge boxing montage between Hamlet (who I played) and Laertes (played by Brian). Jill and I and the rest of the team were walking around with black eyes and bruises on our faces and boxing gloves. This little red headed Scottish kid comes up to me, plump, broguey, and total UK-style Little Rascals and punches me. Hard.
He may have said something. Maybe Jill remembers…
All I know is he scared the shit out of me and was one tough seven year old.
JESS: YES!
After compiling, editing, and proofreading for nearly a year, we now have in our hot little hands an anthology of five of our plays, hot off the press from Oberon Books in London. And we’re throwing a party! Join us for an intimate evening at one of Brooklyn’s most delightful local independent bookstores, BookCourt. We’ll read excerpts, take questions, drink wine, and sign books like real authors do.
Saturday, January 31st at 7pm
BookCourt
163 Court Street, Brooklyn
Can’t make it to Brooklyn, but want to snag a copy? Buy one now and we’ll ship it to you!
UK Friends: order directly from Oberon Books here.
Jill and Libby in Particularly in the Heartland
Over the month of December, as the TEAM celebrates its 10 Year Anniversary, the company will share their favorite memories from the last 10 years.
There’s a lot of eggs in Particularly in the Heartland. There are six glitter filled eggs for New Years (hand blown each day into large bowls filled with raw egg. We ate so many omelettes on those tours our company cholesterol was at an all time high). There’s five raw eggs for audience members to throw at Anna Springer and one for her to crush on her forehead in a lesson about consequences. One raw egg to be blown directly onto my face during the Biblical alien invasion, and of course one hard boiled egg to be stored in my mouth for ten minutes and magically appear upon waking up human.
Jill accompanied by Anna and Todd’s hands.
Thank god for awesome stage managers to help coordinate all this.
The mouth egg was my personal responsibility, though. It had to be just right- not too big (ten minutes playing dead in a wheelbarrow is a long time to keep an egg in your mouth. I lived in fear of getting a cold and not being able to breathe through my nose) and not too small (if any of the cast living through The Rapture bumped into the wheelbarrow I’d swallow it). There was also the matter of actual hard boiling- sometimes on tour we were without kitchen. I remember once boiling an egg in the top of an electric tea kettle- not recommended.
After the raw egg was blown on my face, there’s a music sequence where Anna and Todd wash me off. I’ll never forget the day we forgot to put water in the bucket. Being dry rubbed with industrial sponges on my egg covered face is a vivid sensoral memory. The way my costume smelled after dozens of eggy shows was also…vivid.
We performed Heartland over 100 times, and I’m proud to say I played Tracy Jo each and every time. It took awhile, but I can eat eggs again now too. – JILL
Described as a “hunk-a-hunk-a burnin’ waste,” RoosevElvis makes an unexpected appearance as #26 on Senator Tom Coburn’s annual Wastebook.
Clearly, this means we’ve arrived.
View the entire “report Washington doesn’t want you to read” here.
They’re baaaaack!
Officially announced in the New York Times today, RoosevElvis will return for 11 performances at the Vineyard Theatre as part of PS122’s 2015 COIL Festival, January 2-10, 2015. UPDATED: Tickets are on sale now!
We are proud and pleased to share that the TEAM is 1 of 12 recipients of the American Theatre Wing’s National Theatre Company Grant. We’re in tremendous company, with our friends at Ars Nova, Red Bull Theatre, and Keen Company in New York, and others from across the country.
The grant provides always-needed-yet-seldom-funded general operating support–to help cover decidedly less glamorous but necessary things like insurance, office rent, and toner for our relentlessly thirsty printer. The storage we rent in Connecticut to house all of our sets when we’re not on tour. Oh, and the hardworking administrative staff in our office. Them too.
We’re thrilled and honored by the recognition of the American Theatre Wing, and grateful for their generous support.
(But we do still need project support, specifically and most immediately for The Holler Sessions. Consider making a celebratory gesture and pitching in to our Indiegogo campaign?)
UPDATE (9/30/14): Highlights from last night’s American Theatre Wing grant presentation:
An Artistic Director from a theatre company in Chicago announcing that after over 20 years of voluntary service, this grant has given his board the confidence to give him a full-time salary, and that he quit his day-job on Friday before flying to New York to receive the grant; talking with our fellow recipient theatre companies from across America, from Fargo to the Bay Area to NYC, about how they are creating, developing and sustaining their communities and their artists; the view from the Viacom building; and celebrating this great distinction/hamming it up in front of the step-and-repeat together.
More photos on Facebook.
Rachel and Matty are headed to Seattle in October for two weeks of final development on The Holler Sessions, Frank’s new one man love letter to jazz, premiering in January at On The Boards.
We need your help to get them there! We’re raising $4,000 on Indiegogo and every little bit helps! Watch our snappy pitch video and consider throwing us some dough? Airline miles are also welcome and appreciated.
[vimeo]https://vimeo.com/106063685[/vimeo]
From a cramped and cluttered booth in Kansas City, an explosive DJ named Ray broadcasts his love of jazz music with an eccentric passion and total irreverence.The Holler Sessions includes loud music, profanity, poetry, silence, improvisation and a singular devotion to inspiring a more visceral and emotional experience of jazz – and to the belief that it is America’s truest expression of itself.
Originally conceived of during another TEAM project’s development, The Holler Sessions took on a life of its own when Frank returned to Seattle and continued creating the piece. Green-lit for On The Boards’ 2014-15 season, The Holler Sessions will be the TEAM’s first time working in the Northwest, and the first time we’re co-producing with a member of the company.
Your donation, should you choose to make one, will directly underwrite the transportation of our collaborators from one coast to the other, and ensure that everyone gets a paycheck for their work on the show. And in return for your generosity, we’ll send you goodies including a primer on jazz music you should know (curated by Matty and Ray), as well as sneak peeks of the show.