Theater: We Live by the Sea, "Brits Off Broadway" series at 59E59 2018

WE LIVE BY THE SEA

Devised by Patch of Blue
Directed by Alex Howarth
With Alexandra Brain, Tom Coliandris, Lizzie Grace, and Alexandra Simonet

Katy wears orange on Thursdays, purple on Sundays, and eats three fish fingers for tea every day. She lives with her sister, Hannah, and her imaginary dog, Paul Williams, and she'll ask to tap your shoes before she can say hello. When the new boy in town breaks her routine, their lives are changed in unexpected ways. Katy wants to tell you their story.
A visual play with a live electronic score about autism, friendship, and a very big wave.

The multi-award-winning Patch of Blue brings We Live By The Sea to New York after sold out runs at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Beijing, and the Arts Theatre, London West End.

Theater: The Bats perform "LOCKED UP BITCHES" at The Flea Theater, 2018

Book & Lyrics by Catya McMullen
Music by Catya McMullen & Scott Allen Klopfenstein
Directed & Choreographed by Michael Raine

Get ready for some RUFF bitches! When Pipsy, a pedigree cocker spaniel, lands at the Bitchfield Animal Shelter, she becomes the center of a turf war between the dogs and the cats. Initially a long running #serialattheflea, LOCKED UP BITCHES is a sweet, psychotic, queer, and outrageously funny hip-hop parody mash-up of a certain Netflix prison drama and Bernstein-Sondheim musical.

This world premiere production features The Bats, Lacy Allen, Leila Ben-Abdallah, Xandra Clark, Charly Dannis, Ure Egbuho, Philip Feldman, Katherine George, Arielle Gonzalez, Alice Gorelick, Alex Haynes, Cristina Henriquez, Tiffany Iris, Adama B. Jackson, Jenny Jarnagin, Marcus Jones, Mia Longenecker, Bre Northrup, Emma Orme, Juan “Skittlez” Ortiz, Jennifer Parkhill, Alexandra Slater, Ryan Wesley Stinnett, Tanyamaria, Xavier Velasquez and Keith Weiss.

The creative team includes Scott Allen Klopfenstein (Music Director & Arranger), Kerry Blu (Co-Music Director), Yu-Hsuan Chen (Scenic & Properties Designer), Eva Jaunzemis (Costume Designer), Jonathan Cottle (Lighting Designer), Megan Deets Culley (Sound Designer), Zach Serafin (props master), J. David Brimmer (fight director), Kimille Howard (Assistant Director), and Cody Hom (Stage Manager).

Catya McMullen is a playwright and comedian. Her short play, Missed Connection won the 37th Samuel French OOB Short Play Festival, was directed by Leslye Headland and is published by Samuel French. She is the author of the plays GEORGIA MERTCHING IS DEAD (EST/Youngblood, The Lark), AGNES (Rattlestick Playwrights Theater), Everything is Probably Going to be Okay (Rattlestick), We Pray to Elephants (EST/Youngblood developed), A**holes in Gas Stations (EST/Youngblood, Ground UP Productions developed), LOCKED UP BITCHES (The Flea World Premiere, The PIT), Rubber Ducks and Sunsets (World Premiere Ground UP Productions), and The Collective (Triskellion Arts) along with numerous shorts. She is a proud alum of the Obie Award-winning EST/Youngblood and a company member of The Middle Voice Theater Company; the apprentice company of Rattlestick Playwrights Theater. She was a finalist for the City Theater National Award for Short Playwriting and is the Creator of the WE ARE ANIMALS series, a quarterly variety show series she writes with Scott Klopfenstein of the Gold Record selling band Reel Big Fish, where she raps under her feminist hip hop alias “Chihuahua Fancy.” BA: UNC Chapel Hill Dramatic Art, Creative Writing.

Theater: The Bats perform "ms. estrada" at The Flea Theater, NYC 2018

By The Q Brothers Collective
Directed by Michelle Tattenbaum

The boys at Acropolis U are too preoccupied with the Greek Games to treat their ladies right. But fierce feminist goddess, Liz Estrada, rallies her besties to take a stand – and campus chaos ensues.

A Hip-Hop remix of Aristophanes’ classic comedy, ms. estrada may well be the Girl Anthem of 2018.

Music directed by Postell Pringle (a member of the Q Brothers Collective) and choreographed by Ana “Rokafella” Garcia.

ms. estrada features The Bats, the resident acting company at The Flea, including Dolores Avery, Caturah Brown, Raiane Cantisano, Marguerite Frarey, Jack Gilbert, Arielle Gonzalez, Jenna Krasowski, Madeline Mahoney, Maggie McCaffery, Michael Ortiz, Karsten Otto, Malena Pennycook, Zac Porter, Hassan Nazari Robati, Jonathon Ryan, Ben Schrager, Pearl Shin, Lily Sondik, Monique St. Cyr, David A. Wallace, Quest Washington and Brittany Zaken.

The creative team includes John McDermott (Scenic Designer), Robin I. Shane (Costume Design), Oona Curley (Lighting Designer), David Ferdinand (Sound Designer), Claire Edmonds (Assistant Director), Marina McClure (Assistant Director), Daniel Prosky (Assistant Scenic Designer), Emily White (Assistant Costume Designer), Keithlyn B. Parkman (Assistant Lighting Designer), Megan Deets Culley (Assistant Sound Designer), Gina Solebello (Production Stage Manager), Rebecca Darling (Assistant Stage Manager) and Keith Middleton (Step Choreographer).

Film: The animated films of Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia

The Hand / Ruka
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1965, 35mm, 18m
No dialogue
Trnka’s final work is a powerful, deeply personal allegory about the plight of the artist toiling under the restrictions of a totalitarian government. The story of a simple sculptor who is menaced by a giant, disembodied hand that forces him to bend to its will, it was banned by the Communist censors for two decades—but has since taken its place as an acknowledged masterpiece of animation.

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Passion / Vasen
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1962, 9m
No dialogue
A boy’s need for speed causes problems throughout his life in this triumph of modernist design, which blends puppet, stop-motion, collage, and cutout animation with a gothic humor and Pop Art–like visual design.

Cybernetic Grandma / Kyberneticka babicka
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1962, 28m
Czech with English subtitles
Trnka took a turn into Space Age sci-fi surrealism with this dark, dystopian satire on automatization in which a child traverses a forbidding technological wasteland to meet (surprise!) her uncanny new robotic grandmother.

Archangel Gabriel and Mistress Goose / Archandel Gabriel a pani Husa
Jiri Trnka, Czechoslovakia, 1964, 29m
No dialogue
Adapted from a story in Boccaccio’s Decameron, this irreverent, medieval-set lampoon of religious hypocrisy mixes Christian iconography with bawdy black humor to tell the tale of a lusty Venetian monk who assumes the guise of the angel Gabriel to seduce a married woman.