On August 1, we’re reuniting the extraordinary artists from the TEAM’s beloved show RoosevElvis for a live-streamed reunion reading via Play Per View. Tickets to the reading and 100% of the proceeds after artists feeds will benefit the Emergency Release Fund. Get your tickets here.
Last night during the curtain speech for RoosevElvis (Re-MX’D) at New York Live Arts, we shared the following information with our audience:
NEA funds came to us at a critical moment of producing the premiere of this show, which directly led to the robust national and international touring we’ve enjoyed for the past year and a half. Though it isn’t the biggest part of our budget, government support is a vital part of how we make our work.
Funding for the entire stream of culture and critical thinking in our country is under attack, from National Public Radio to the National Endowment for the Humanities to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting to the National Endowment for the Arts.
This country is not a faceless corporation. The agencies and programs that are on the chopping block are essential to the rights of individuals, rights to expression, information, fair trial, education, and so much more. American fundamentals exist to protect the people of the United States, not the United States, Inc.
We were blown away by the audience’s response to hearing these figures, and so we are inviting our colleagues to #ShareTheNumbers–in curtain speeches, eblasts, and across social media—to tell your community what government grants have paid for and made possible. Let’s use our platforms to illustrate the exponential power of every grant dollar in action. We are taxpayers, we are job creators, we are community developers. We must ask our audiences, our boards, and our donors to call their representatives and #FightForCulture.
Photo: Helen Murray
After sold-out performances in London, Boston, Minneapolis, and Michigan, we are thrilled to be bringing RoosevElvis back to New York! Created specially for Live Ideas, RoosevElvis (Re-MX’D) is a concert-style re-imagining of the production, showcasing “two performances of enormous conviction” (The Telegraph) in this special one-night-only performance.
Thursday, March 16 at 8pm
Tickets $15 – $30
Live Ideas is an annual humanities festival of arts and ideas, exploring the ideas, controversies and thinking informing a different bodily-oriented theme each time out. Curated by trans-genre artist Mx Justin Vivian Bond, the 2017 series examines the idea of a world without binaries–across gender, politics, theology, sensory perception and race–featuring a lunch time reading series, an afternoon film program curated by Dirty Looks, Happy Hour panel discussions on trans-theology, afrofuturism, activism and social justice, caregiving and choral workshops, genre bending performances, and ends with a queer punk rock dance party.
For the full schedule: newyorklivearts.org
“Funny, thoughtful, affecting…the excellent performances of actors Libby King and Kristen Sieh, and [Rachel] Chavkin’s clever direction, carry the day.”
“Strange, charming and highly likable…a straight-ahead, full-tilt voyage through man- (and woman-) hood.”
“Not your ordinary take on history or gender…[an] imaginative, theatrical collage.”
“Weirdly brilliant…surprisingly emotional…wildly entertaining.”
A limited number of seats and standing room have been released for our final 13 performances at A.R.T. Book now!
★★★★
“An exhilaratingly bumpy ride into the myth-making landscape of America…The pleasure is in the piece’s highly developed sense of the ridiculous…It’s a joyride into the construction of identity, and one with unexpected emotional resonance.”
★★★★
“Combines witty cultural literacy with a tender intimacy… anchored by two performances of enormous conviction – a technically dazzling one from Sieh and a subtle, profoundly emotional one from King that lays bare the soul of America as a land full of heroes that is also a very lonely place to be.”
★★★★
“The juxtaposition of President and popstar encapsulates something vital about masculinity…Image is key too: the way we present to the world, the identities we construct online, and our failure to measure up to our sense of self or our sense of others. It is, amongst other things, one of the best portraits of depression I’ve ever seen.”
“Two brilliant comic performances, born from rigorous research and intense acts of gender-bending empathy, make this a surprisingly easy sell from the get-go…when a company as talented as The TEAM serve an all-you-can-eat-feast, it’s worth adjusting your waistband.”
If there was only one theatre company making work in the world, it should be @theteamplays. #RoosevElvis @royalcourt
— Alexander Ferris (@AlFerris) October 24, 2015
#RoosevElvis @royalcourt is clever, silly, epic, intimate, funny, serious, quietly heartbreaking and quietly beautifully hopeful. ADORED it.
— Corinne Furness (@DisAgg) October 22, 2015
Sorrynotsorry I LOVED @theteamplays #RoosevElvis @royalcourt last night. Properly funny, imaginative and quite, quite mad.
— Martha Rose Wilson (@martharosew) October 27, 2015
Adored @theteamplays RoosevElvis tonight. Subversive hero drag soaked in all American beer & one inspiring road trip.
— LAURA NORMAN (@Cassette_Girl) October 24, 2015
Photo: Helen Murray
The TEAM is headed both West and East this week!
RoosevElvis is loading in at the Royal Court as we speak (check out that gorgeous neon marquee action!) and Teddy and Elvis are departing for England tomorrow. We begin previews next Wednesday and are ecstatic about the month ahead. U.K. friends: book tickets on the Royal Court website if you haven’t already!
The TEAM’s very own Jake Margolin is simultaneously gearing up to represent the company in St. Louis County, MO as part of #Every28Hours.
Every 28 Hours is a national theater event inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement. Jake will spend the next week, in conjunction with artists and theater companies from across the nation, generating over 60 one-minute plays in response to the systemic oppression of black people in the United States. For more information, check out the Every 28 Hours Facebook page.
It’s going to be a busy week in both cities! Check back on the blog, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter for more updates.
Big news! We are so very excited that RoosevElvis is headed to The Royal Court Theatre in October for its official London debut. Tickets are on sale to the public beginning Friday, July 17th.
For more information, visit: http://www.royalcourttheatre.com/whats-on/roosevelvis
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!
Join the TEAM to celebrate the closing night of RoosevElvis, their critically-acclaimed production running now through November 3rd at The Bushwick Starr. Following our final performance, join us onstage and on the roof for a fantastic final hurrah, featuring raffle prizes, Mt. Rushmore photo ops, rooftop views, and (always) exceptional company.
…Did we mention admission includes all the beer and wine you can drink?
Performance at 5pm
Please note: tickets to the party do not include admission to the performance.
Buy tickets to the performance
Party at 7pm
Tickets are $15 in advance, $20 at the door (cash only)
Buy advance tickets to the party
All proceeds benefit the TEAM.
The Bushwick Starr
207 Starr Street, Brooklyn [between Irving and Wyckoff]
Raffle prizes include:
Atlantic Theater Membership and wine vouchers;
Four lessons with vocal coach Danielle Amedeo;
A print by Jake Margolin and Nick Vaughan;
A pair of tickets to see Cheri at Signature Theatre;
Dinner for 4 at Riverpark and a private tour of Riverpark Farm;
A custom made cake by Kristen Sieh;
A “Treat Yourself” basket;
Two bottles of G’Vine boutique gin;
Two, 1-hour audiobook tutorial sessions with Jessica Almasy;
A stitch + bitch knitting lesson with the head of sweater design at American Eagle;
A personal investing lesson with Will Hunter and copy of The Little Book that Beats the Markets by Joel Greenblatt;
A bottle of wine and Coq Au Vin cooking lesson with Libby and Jaime King.
And more still to be announced! If you can’t join us but still want to enter the raffle, absentee raffle tickets can be purchased here. Just shoot us an email with the items you’d like to enter to win!
“…researched to the teeth, [RoosevElvis] offers a spirited and insightful commentary on two archetypes of American masculinity, while finding teasing ambiguities within both that suggest that machismo is a shaky existential choice.”
– Ben Brantley, New York Times
“This glorious show is strong precisely because it focuses, at long last, on individuals. It fully, totally revels in King’s gravelly, bourbon-soaked tones; it exploits to the last degree Sieh’s titanic comic gifts…Some astonishing scenes, several the best I’ve seen this year, are the result.”
– Helen Shaw, Time Out New York
“The most awesome buddy comedy in American history…in typical TEAM fashion, it explores so much more, from the limits of hero worship to the impossible standards of masculinity in America, and all with thrilling athleticism and unfailing intelligence.”
“Command performance[s] by King and Sieh who carry the whole production by weaving in and out of their characters and counter-characters seamlessly…[they] deftly spar across the stage through historically biographical reflections and witty one liners.”
– Grace Moon, velvetparkmedia
Photo by Sue Kessler.