Film: Shoplifters, director Hirokazu Kore-eda 2018 Japan

Kore-eda’s

Cannes Palme d’Or winner is a heartrending glimpse into an often invisible segment of Japanese society: those struggling to stay afloat in the face of crushing poverty. On the margins of Tokyo, a most unusual “family”—a collection of societal castoffs united by their shared outsiderhood and fierce loyalty to one another—survives by petty stealing and grifting. When they welcome into their fold a young girl who’s been abused by her parents, they risk exposing themselves to the authorities and upending their tenuous, below-the-radar existence. The director’s latest masterful, richly observed human drama makes the quietly radical case that it is love—not blood—that defines a family. An NYFF56 selection. A Magnolia Pictures release.

Theater: BOING! at the New Vic 2018

"If you want Santa to come, you have to go to sleep..." But Joêl and Wilkie are way too excited for snoozing! Rambunctious pillow fights, robot dance battles and silly sibling shenanigans do nothing to tucker out the two bouncy brothers in this playfully imaginative, award-winning, dance theater production. 

Cast:
Joel Daniel
Wilkie Branson

From Travelling Light Theatre Company
Bristol, England

Theater: THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA at The Tank, NYC 2018

The Tank and Theater of the Apes present
THE TRUTH ABOUT SANTA
An Apocalyptic Holiday Tale  by Greg Kotis
Directed by Ilana Becker
Music Direction by Steven Gross

Many people think they know the truth about Santa, but they are wrong. Ho ho ho, children! Santa has some shocking unadvertised powers, a couple of half-mortal offspring his wife hasnt found out about yet, and a lot on his mind. He’s tired of those damn singing elves. Hes tired of the lies. This is the Christmas Santa will reveal his true self. Prepare for the Ragnarök, urm, SANTA CLAUS' RETURN TO OFF-OFF-BROADWAY.

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Greg Kotis (playwright) is the author of many plays and musicals including Urinetown (Book/Lyrics), The Sting (Lyrics), Lunchtime, Give the People What They Want, Michael von Siebenburg Melts Through the Floorboards, Yeast Nation (Book/Lyrics), Pig Farm, Eat the Taste, and Jobey and Katherine. Future projects include ZM, an original musical about teenaged fast-food workers trying to survive a zombie plague. Greg co-founded Theater of The Apes with his wife Ayun Halliday, and is a member of the Neo-Futurists, the Cardiff Giant Theater Company, ASCAP, and the Dramatists Guild. He grew up in Wellfleet, Massachusetts, where he celebrated Christmas with his secular Jewish family, and now lives in New York City where he waits each year for Santa’s return.

Theater: THE RUSSIAN AND THE JEW at The Tank, NYC 2018

Anna & Kitty, Inc. and The Tank present THE RUSSIAN & THE JEW Co-written by Liba Vaynberg and Emily Louise Perkins

THE RUSSIAN AND THE JEW is a political fairy tale that explores anti-Semitism and misogyny through a female friendship in the Soviet Union in 1968, underlining the eternal question of fidelity to one's self, one's partner, and one's country. The project was created as a part of the COJECO BluePrint Fellowship, supported by COJECO and Genesis Philanthropy Group.

Music: The Argus Quartet at Metropolis, 1 Rivington, NYC 2018

The Argus Quartet (in collaboration with Metropolis Ensemble), perform works by Ted Hearne, Juri Seo, along with the NYC premiere of Christopher Cerrone's Can’t and Won’t and How to Breathe Underwater for quartet and electronics. Dec. 3, 7pm at Metropolis Ensemble’s venue, 1 Rivington.

Film: Harold Lloyd’s THE KID BROTHER

(1927, Ted Wilde) Lloyd’s most unsung masterpiece, as mild-mannered but resourceful Harold assembly-lines the domestic chores for his rough-neck brothers, tenderly romances the girl from a visiting medicine show, and at last wins his sheriff father’s respect, after a hair-raising battle aboard a derelict ship. Featuring Jocko, the monkey from Buster Keaton’s The Cameraman! 35mm. Approx. 83 min.​


Live piano accompaniment by Steve Sterner.

Theater: NATURAL SHOCKS by Lauren Gunderson

October 28-November 25, 2018
World Premiere

by Lauren Gunderson
directed by May Adrales
with Pascale Armand

A darkly hilarious solo tour-de-force where an unnamed woman is forced into her basement when she finds herself in the path of a tornado. Trapped there, she spills over into confession, regret, long-held secrets, and giddy new love. But as the storm approaches, she becomes less and less sure where safety lies — and how best to defy the danger that awaits. Directed by the acclaimed May Adrales (Vietgone at Manhattan Theatre Club), Natural Shocks marks the highly-anticipated New York return of Lauren Gunderson, the most produced female playwright in America today.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lauren_Gunderson

Theater: Sakina's Restaurant (2018, Minetta Lane Theater, NYC)

Photo Credit: Walter McBride

A presentation of Wheelhouse Theater Company
Actor, writer, and former correspondent for The Daily Show Aasif Mandvi's Sakina's Restaurant is a vibrant, funny, and heartwarming one-man show that centers on an Indian immigrant who comes to New York to work at a restaurant and live the American dream. Sakina's Restaurant is written and performed by Mandvi, who brings his acclaimed performance back to the New York stage 20 years after its Obie Award-winning debut.

Review: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/14/theater/sakinas-restaurant-review-aasif-mandvi.html

Theater: HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE

Written by Kurt Vonnegut, Jr.
Directed by Jeffrey Wise
October 18 - November 29, 2018

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE takes a searing and darkly comedic look at American culture through the brilliantly perverse lens of Kurt Vonnegut. After being presumed dead for eight years, respected war veteran and big game hunter, Harold Ryan, returns home and brings with him an old way of thinking, celebrating a Hemingway-esque machismo and American exceptionalism. Harold soon discovers that the society he returns to has made attempts to progress into a more modern, enlightened cultural narrative. HAPPY BIRTHDAY, WANDA JUNE is a dynamic and often hilarious meditation on toxic masculinity and a capitalistic America's failed attempts at progress cloaked in honor and morality. Simply put, and as the first few lines of the play state, this is a play about men who enjoy killing, and those who don't.

http://www.wheelhousetheater.org/

Theater: The Ferryman

Northern Ireland, 1981.
The Carney farmhouse is a hive of activity with preparations for the annual harvest. A day of hard work on the land and a traditional night of feasting and celebrations lie ahead. But this year they will be interrupted by a visitor.

Paddy Considine, as Quinn Carney, presiding over a family gathering shadowed by tragedy in Jez Butterworth’s sprawling play. Credit: Sara Krulwich/The New York Times

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/21/theater/the-ferryman-review-broadway-jez-butterworth.html

Film: A Bold Peace

Director: Matthew Eddy

Costa Rica disbanded its military 70 years ago and directed its resources toward education, health, and the environment. Since then it has earned the number one spot in the Happy Planet Index, a ranking of countries based on measures of environmental protection and the happiness and health of its citizens. Surrounded by war elsewhere in the Americas, how has the government of Costa Rica managed to put the happiness of its people first?

Mead Film Festival 2018

Film: The Sign for Love

Directors: Elad Cohen, Iris Ben Moshe

Director Elad Cohen grew up deaf and gay in a hearing family in Israel. He never felt at home, especially after his mother’s death. Fearing he won’t find a partner in their small deaf community, Cohen decides to have a baby—a hearing infant—with his best friend, Yaeli, who is also deaf. They raise the baby together, revealing the challenges of parenting and the ways that a child can repair a family.

Mead Film Festival 2018

Film: Nothing is Forgiven

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zineb_El_Rhazoui?wprov=sfti1

Directors: Vincent Coen and Guillaume Vandenberghe

How much would you sacrifice to fight for your freedom of expression? Meet Zineb El Rhazoui, a Moroccan journalist and activist living in Paris, and follow her journey before, during, and after the attacks on the famous satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo, where she worked as a writer. Her story provides both a radical and layered perspective on religious expression and its representation.

Mead Film Festival 2018

Film: The Art of Moving

Director: Liliana Marinho de Sousa

Can the Syrian creators of Daya Al-Taseh, a satirical daily web series that mocks ISIS recruitment videos, maintain their creative output while their world crumbles? In the face of violent threats, political upheaval, and ramped-up economic pressures, this young group of comedian-activists move from country to country struggling to keep their show—and themselves—alive and safe.

Mead Film Festival 2018

Film: Genesis 2.0

Director: Christian Frei

What if scientists brought the woolly mammoth back from extinction? Straight out of speculative fiction, follow two brothers as they search for the key to a bioengineered future: woolly mammoth tusks. One, a scientific researcher, pursues his Jurassic Park dream of bringing the extinct mammal back to life while his brother searches for DNA-rich tusks in the frozen earth of the New Siberian Islands.

Mead Film Festival 2018

Film: Eastern Memories

Directors: Niklas Kullström, Martti Kaartinen

From the Mongolian steppes to the diplomatic circles of Tokyo, Asia has seen rapid economic and social transformation in the last century. Narration drawn from the writings of a late-19th-century linguist create a provocative sense of contrast against scenes of contemporary life.

“In the time span of over a hundred years Mongolians have gone through three completely different kinds of societal systems, that each have nullified the previous one. The ardor that remains is deeply rooted in their immutable surroundings, binding together generation after generations.”

– Martti Kaartinen | Director, Eastern Memories

Mead Film Festival 2018

Film: Stolen Daughters: Kidnapped by Boko Haram

Director: Gemma Atwal

Meet the young women whose kidnapping by Boko Haram, a militant terrorist organization based in northeastern Nigeria, drew global attention and inspired the social media campaign #BringBackOurGirls. Through exclusive interviews, see how girls who managed to escape are adapting to life after their imprisonment as thousands of women and girls remain captives of Boko Haram today.

Mead Film Festival 2018

Film: FISTS IN THE POCKET

Directed by Marco Bellocchio
(1965) Ah, la famiglia. In a country house outside Piacenza, a blind mother holds all the deeds, while elder brother Augusto, the only one with a job, wants to marry his way out, but it’s hard to do after his fiancée receives an incriminating letter, obviously from sister Giulia, who in turn has to fend off under-the-table footsying from epileptic brother Lou Castel and his barely suppressed rage (think of the title)… Add man-child youngest brother Leone, some murder attempts (two successful), an epileptic fit or two, and Castel’s magnetically hateful performance for a scabrous look at an Italian institution – Bellocchio’s debut. (The villa was borrowed from his own mother.) DCP restoration. Approx. 105 min.

Film: IMPULSO

WRITTEN AND DIRECTED BY EMILIO BELMONTE
Rocίo Molina is 32 years old: an avant-garde performance artist/flamenco dancer with a dash of Björk and Pina Bausch thrown in for good measure. Often onstage alone, her work grows from the flamenco tradition but she infuses it with a modern, magnetic passion: crawling through red paint (suggestive of menstrual blood or the aftermath of a violent crime) or moving to a hard-driving rock beat. At times her look is minimal, almost Japanese in its austerity; at other times her performance suggests a sexy, plump fruit, ripe and edible. Emilio Belmonte follows Molina as she rehearses for her Paris debut at the Chaillot National Theater. She is never less than a force of nature.

https://youtu.be/LcPGPtFe9lQ

Dance: Nacera Belaza, "Sur le fil" at Danspace 2018

https://vimeo.com/233122834

From the web site: https://www.bozar.be/en/activities/115675-sur-le-fil

Nacera Belaza lighting design, dance, sound designer, choreography – Aurélie Berland dance – Anne-Sophie Lancelin dance – Christophe Renaud lighting design – Dalila Belaza dance – Gwendal Malard sound

Persisting in a logic of personal introspection which leads her to the Other, in this trio Sur le fil, Nacera Belaza once again experiences shared transcendence with two other female performers and the audience. Since her very first performances her dance, which is both telluric and meditative and which stretches the body to its extremes thus enabling it to go beyond the live experience, shows the way like others might work the earth. She is elsewhere and takes the audience with her along those quiet routes in a contemporary trance.

Film: NYFF 2018

American Dharma (documentary re: Steve Bannon)
Border
A Family Tour
Divide and Conquer: The Story of Roger Ailes

Dance: Deborah Hay's "Ten" at MoMA 2018

Music: GatherNYC

GatherNYC is a revolutionary weekly concert experience.

Held every Sunday morning in downtown Manhattan, Gather evokes the community and spiritual nourishment of a religious service, but the religion here is music, and all are welcome.

Guests are served exquisite live classical music by New York’s most celebrated artists, artisanal coffee and pastries, a taste of the spoken word, and a brief celebration of silence. The entire experience lasts one hour.

http://subculturenewyork.com/gathernyc/

9/30/18 Attacca Quartet played:
Caroline Shaw: Entr'Acte
Beethoven: String Quartet, Op. 130, 1. Adagio ma non troppo - Allegro
Dvorak: String Quartet No. 13 in G majoe, 2. Adagio ma non troppo
Caroline Shaw: Valencia

Theater: The True (The New Group 2018)

(L to R): Michael McKean, Edie Falco, Peter Scolari in 'The True' by Sharr White, directed by Scott Elliott for The New Group, Pershing Square Signature Center (Michelle Carboni)

THE TRUE

by Sharr White

directed by Scott Elliott

with Austin Cauldwell, Edie Falco, Glenn Fitzgerald, Michael McKean, John Pankow, Peter Scolari, Tracy Shayne 

​

Scenic Design Derek McLane, Costume Design Clint Ramos, Lighting Design Jeff Croiter, Sound Design and Music Composition Rob Milburn & Michael Bodeen

Edie Falco stars as Dorothea “Polly” Noonan, the blunt, profane, decades-long defender of Albany’s Democratic Party machine in Sharr White’s fiery return to The New Group.  When it comes to Polly, politics is only personal, especially now that her hero, “mayor for life” Erastus Corning II (Michael McKean), is battling for party control while at the same time fighting the fiercest primary challenge of his life. The True is an intimate portrait of the bounds of love, loyalty, and female power in the male-dominated world of 1977 patronage politics.

Theater: Machine de Cirque at the New Vic 2018

Film: PRAIRIE TRILOGY

1978-1980 / 120min / DCP

DIRECTOR: JOHN HANSON & ROB NILSSON

John Hanson and Rob Nilsson, co-directors of Cannes Camera d’Or winner Northern Lights and fellow members of San Francisco’s Cine Manifest film collective, collaborated on this remarkable series of documentaries underwritten by the North Dakota Humanities Council and the North Dakota AFL-CIO. In Prairie Fire, 97-year-old ex-organizer and poet Henry Martinson recounts the 1916 birth of the Socialist Nonpartisan League—also the subject of Northern Lights—his narrative accompanied by images shot by Nilsson’s own grandfather, Frithjof Holmboe. Rebel Earth finds Martinson, accompanied by a younger farmer, revisiting the scenes of his life, seeking out the spot of his Divide County homestead. Survivor, finished the year before Martinson’s death, focuses on the biography of its subject, found in a funny and expansive mood. A gorgeously-shot work of documentary-as-historical corrective, which finds hope for the future through excavating a radical past.

Film: Jeanne Dielman, 23, quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles

Dir. Chantal Akerman
1976 Belgium/France
French with English Subtitles
201 minutes

A landmark of feminist art, Chantal Akerman’s minimalist masterpiece is both a monumental and microscopic view of three days in the life of a fastidious Belgian single mother (a sphinx-like Delphine Seyrig) as she goes about her housework, peeling potatoes and washing dishes with the same clinical detachment with which she makes love to the occasional john. And then slowly, almost imperceptibly, things begin to go awry… The rigorous, relentlessly impassive gaze of Babette Mangolte’s camera is transfixing but, in the words of the director, “never voyeuristic”; it’s a uniquely feminine way of seeing made manifest by one of the most sui generis filmmaker-cinematographer partnerships in history.

Film: Summer 1993 - Estiu 1993 - dir. Carla Simón

Carla Simón
2017 Spain
Catalan with English subtitles
97 minutes

In the summer of 1993, following the disappearance of her parents, six-year-old Frida (Laia Artigas) moves from Barcelona to the Catalan countryside with her aunt, uncle, and younger cousin Anna (Paula Robles). Although her new family embraces her, Frida struggles to adjust in an environment that seems mysterious and estranging. Winner of the Best First Feature Award at the 2017 Berlin International Film Festival, Simón’s autobiographical drama is a captivating, emotionally frank reflection on family relationships and childhood loneliness, anchored by moving performances by its two young stars (Laia Artigas, Paula Robles).

Film: Look Up - Guarda in alto - dir. Fulvio Risuleo, Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2018

Fulvio Risuleo
2017
Italy/France
Italian with English subtitles 90 minutes

While taking a cigarette break on a rooftop in Rome, a young baker (Giacomo Ferrara) notices a curious fowl plummeting from the sky. He crosses from one rooftop to the next to get a closer look, and what he discovers is the beginning of a journey down an urban rabbit hole of incredible situations and bizarre characters (including one played by a delightfully off-kilter Lou Castel). Documentary filmmaker Fulvio Risuleo’s fiction debut is an odd bird indeed, an unpredictable and imaginative twist on the road movie that evokes Alice in Wonderland...

Film: Beautiful Things, dir. Giorgio Ferrero (Open Roads: New Italian Cinema 2018)

Beautiful Things, dir. Giorgio Ferrero

This wildly ambitious documentary follows four men who work in isolation at remote scientific and industrial sites around the world. Like monks, they carry out their daily tasks in silence and solitude, creating products soon to enter the capitalist cycle of production, consumption, and destruction. A ravishingly beautiful audiovisual experience, Giorgio Ferrero’s debut feature is a transfixing work about the origins of consumer society imbued with a musical sense of rhythm (Ferrero is also a composer and sound editor) and a wealth of aesthetic ideas about the way we live now.

http://www.beautifulthings.it/en/



The creators of this film present us with a few 21st century "immensities" --
the immensity of our petroleum production and consumption, the immensity of cargo shipping, the immensity of our technology to test the physical construction of goods, and the immensity of garbage produced by our excessive consumption.

This is presented in a context of worldly immensities: the vastness of Texas oil field lands, the vastness of the oceans, the loneliness of humans in some of these consumer-propelled professions.

The director, with his ear for music and cool handling of topics, allows the viewer to create their own emotional landscape(s) inside the luscious visuals. When we witness the final "music-video version of ourselves" joyfully dancing at the temple of consumerism (the shopping mall), we know that the director and all of the creators of the film are looking at us for our response.  -- dp

Theater: SECRET LIFE OF HUMANS, by David Byrne, 59E59 Brits Off Broadway

photo: David Monteith-Hodge 

SECRET LIFE OF HUMANS By David Byrne

Directed by David Byrne & Kate Stanley

With Richard Delaney, Olivia Hirst, Andy McLeod, Andrew Strafford-Baker, and Stella Blue Taylor

In 1949, Dr. Jacob "Bruno" Bronowski installs a secret, alarmed room in his house. Fifty years later, his grandson and his blind date delve into Bruno's locked room for the first time, unearthing echoes from across six million years of human history. 

Inspired by Yuval Harari's international bestseller, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind and the work of the mathematician and intellectual behind hit television series, "The Ascent of Man", Jacob Bronowski.

Film: Stories of Love That Cannot Belong to This World - (Amori che non sanno stare al mondo) - dir. Francesca Comencini

Dir. Francesca Comencini
2017 Italy Italian with English subtitles
92 minutes

Francesca Comencini adapts her own novel for this intelligent, intensely felt romantic comedy. Academics Claudia (Lucia Mascino) and Flavio (Thomas Trabacchi) have been a couple for seven years, but their physically and intellectually passionate relationship seems to have reached an impasse, and neither of them understands why. As a result, Claudia begins a process of reflection and self-exploration to come to terms with Flavio’s love in light of her own insecurities and neuroses. This funny, charming movie reveals the inner work we must do in order to move on with our lives.

Theater: Peace for Mary Frances, The New Group, 2018

PEACE FOR MARY FRANCES
By Lily Thorne
Directed by Lila Neugebauer

Scenic Design Dane Laffrey, Costume Design Jessica Pabst, Lighting Design Tyler Micoleau, Music and Sound Design Daniel Kluger

Mary Frances has lived a good life; she's ninety years old and ready to die. Born to refugees fleeing the Armenian genocide, her last wish is to die peacefully at home surrounded by her family. Her dream collides with reality as three generations of explosive women flood her small New England home to battle for their family’s legacy. Mary Frances must navigate the volatile relationships of the children she raised -- or die trying. Lois Smith stars as a tenacious survivor, struggling to break the bonds that tie her to this life. Directed by Lila Neugebauer, Lily Thorne’s Peace for Mary Frances is a wrenching and caustically funny portrait of an American family in crisis.

Theater: Time’s Journey Through a Room by Toshiki Okada, 2018 NYC

Time’s Journey Through a Room is set one year after the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan. This intimate, multi-layered play observes how hope can spring up alongside sadness and fear, and change can be realized if we are awake to the present moment.

Written by
Toshiki Okada
https://chelfitsch.net/en/

Translated by
Aya Ogawa

Directed by
Dan Rothenberg

Featuring:
Maho Honda
Yuki Kawahisa
Kensaku Shinohara

Set Design:
Anna Kiraly

Costume Design:
Maiko Matsushima

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toshiki_Okada :

Okada focuses on connecting to his audience's sense of alienation by separating speech and movement in his plays. Okada's hyperrealistic style is often referred to as "super real Japanese," which draws influence from Oriza Hirata's "quiet theater" movement from the 1980s.
His works are distinguished by the use of fragmented and abbreviated idiosyncratic language in the vernacular of Japanese in their twenties, which is deliberately inarticulate, drawn out, and circular. 
...
Okada believes that his actors should be able to manipulate their consciousness and balance their attention on both their words and movement. The gap between language and the body is the lived experiences each performer gathers from their environment to bring to their performances, and they use the external body to reflect those lived experiences or "images." Okada advises his actors to not be overly attached with the language or the physicality of the performance so that the audience can interpret the "image," themselves. Actors are one single entity to the image; in addition, Okada uses "the performance's disjointed elements of language, movement, design, music, and more" to signify the "image" in his plays.

Theater: Replay, Nicola Wren

REPLAY

Written and performed by Nicola Wren
Directed by George Chilcott
DugOut Theatre

Featuring the voices of Will Brown, Tanya Kraljevic, and Mark Weinman

When a fiercely independent, workaholic police officer receives an old cassette tape with a message from her big brother on it, she is propelled back to her vibrant childhood and forced to confront a tremendous loss.

Replay is an intimate, moving, and life-affirming story about learning to celebrate the past, however painful.

Film: Columbia University Film Festival 2018 (CUFF)

Three Nights and a Goat (Tres Noches y una Cabra)
An unexpected arrival sets off a war between two neighboring families.

Director: Nicolas Becerra
Writer: Ben Gottlieb

Talent Night at Auschwitz: Bunk Five
After he survives a shocking trauma, a 14-year-old boy retreats to his flamboyant imagination, a dark and glittering dreamworld. His fortress becomes a prison as memories refuse to stay buried in the sand.

Writer/Director: Max Rifkind-Barron
Producer: Alex Peace

Del Rio
A young mother separated from her daughter during a border patrol raid on the US/Mexico border struggles to make her way back to her daughter.

Director: Raj Trivedi
Writer: Raj Trivedi

The Bee
McKenzie is preparing for an important spelling bee. Just days before the bee, she grows increasingly insecure about her eyebrows. When her mother won't allow her to get them threaded, McKenzie takes matters into her own hands.

Director: Keenon Nikita
Writer/Producer: Alexandria Ashley

Knights in Newark
Armed with her vivid imagination, a young girl completes a secret project on the roof of her apartment building to protect her family from a dreaded curse brought upon by the Knights in Newark.

Director: Nic Yulo  
Writer/Producer: Christopher Abeel

One Sunny Day
On Ross’ 14th birthday, he wishes for his lifelong dream of watching the sunrise on a beach. But this is a lofty aspiration for Ross, who suffers from xeroderma pigmentosum—a rare genetic disorder that makes his skin intolerable to ultraviolet light.

Writer/Director: Minjae Chang
Writer/Producer: Elliot Zarrabi

Everything's Fine: A Panic Attack in D Major
A musical comedy about a woman at the onset of her quarter-life crisis and her existential journey through the various stages of anxiety in song and dance.        

Writer/Director: Zack Morrison    
Producer: Taylor Ortega    
Cast: Carly Blane, Derek Klena, Tait Rupert, Chelsea Watts, Alyson Reim, Elise Vannerson, Lauren Luciano

Tail End of the Year (年尾巴)
On Chinese New Year Eve, ten-year-old Yang Lan is anxiously waiting for her singer mother to come home. While her big family is celebrating loudly with Mahjong, fireworks, dinner, and laughs, she struggles to reconcile her urge to feel, at least for a brief moment, loved.

Writer/Director: Chieh Yang
Producer: Yu Yen Cheng  

Green
An undocumented Turkish pedicab driver unwittingly draws police attention, endangering his brother, his community, and himself.

Writer/Director: Suzanne Andrews Correa
Writer/Producer: Mustafa Kaymak

Happy Mask
A man suffering from depression is given a mysterious happy mask that allows him to keep up a cheerful appearance. However, is the smile genuine?

Director: Yi Liu      
Writer: Yi Liu, Sarah Abdulla
Producer: Luca Marcovici  

Horizon
To realize her dream of discovering uncharted space, a determined female astronaut must choose to leave her humanity behind.  

Writer/Director: Nic Yulo    
Producer: Mahak Jiwani    

Saturno
After her brother is killed in a drug bust operation, a guilt-stricken Luna begins to see his spirit and struggles to make meaning of his appearances to help him find peace.

Director: Bianca Catbagan
Writer: Chantel Clark

Curandera
Maruja, an Andean woman with mystical powers, works at a household where a little girl never seems to stop acting out her rage. Being able to see the images that haunt the little girl's mind, Maruja decides to try to heal her with the help of a special brew.    

Director: Mauricio Rivera Hoffmann
Writer: Mauricio Rivera Hoffmann
Cast: Magaly Solier, Danaya Sladkov, Katerina D’Onofrio  

Theater: Operation Crucible @ 59E59, Brits Off-Broadway 2018

OPERATION CRUCIBLE

By Kieran Knowles

Directed by Bryony Shanahan

With Salvatore D'Aquila, Kieran Knowles, Christopher McCurry, and James Wallwork

"Sheffield was on fire. It was glowing orange, like hell, like a furnace, like steel."

On the December 12, 1940, during World War II, a single bomb reduced the Marples Hotel, which stood proudly in Fitzalan Square in Sheffield, from seven stories to just 15 feet of rubble. Only one of the ten compartments in the hotel's cellars withstood the blast. Trapped within it were four men.

This is their story, from beginning to end...

"A SMASHING FIRST PLAY BY KIERAN KNOWLES... A CAST OF EXACTLY FOUR, ON A NEAR NAKED STAGE, MANAGED TO SUMMON THE ENORMITY OF THE SHEFFIELD BLITZ."
- Ben Brantley, The New York Times

★★★★ "GORGEOUSLY POETIC...THESE MEN AND THEIR STORIES STAY WITH YOU."
- The Stage