Living Free NYC Big City, Small Pockets, No Problem! 
When:Thursday, February 10, 2011- Saturday February 12,02011
Time:8pm
Where:Incubator Arts Project
131 East 10th Street
New York, NY
Cost:$5 donation w. Reservations @ 917-639-3166
Join terraNOVA Collective February 10-12 at the Incubator Arts Project, for the second tier in their Groundbreakers Playwrights Group, a five month long program in which playwrights work on a specific script with intent to create a completed draft. Through its three-tired process of table reads, staged readings and main stage productions terraNOVA Collective has cultivated some of the best emerging playwrights in New York City.
This year’s Groundbreakers are award winning playwright Lauren Feldman (Agnes Ranjo Capps Award for an Emerging Female Playwright; nomination for the 2009 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award), emerging playwright Andrew Kramer (A Map of Our Country at the 2010 Samuel French Short Play Festival), and writer and director Leah Nanako Winkler (Big Girls Club at The Brick; The Internet at Incubator Arts Project).
The staged readings, presented by terraNOVA Collective in association with the Incubator Arts Project (131 East 10th Street at 2nd Avenue), will be February 10-12 at 8pm. All readings are free, with a $5 suggested donation. For advance reservations please call 917-639-3166.
The reading of Halley Feiffer’s Sidney and Laura has been postponed. Dates TBA.
DEATH FOR SYDNEY BLACK
Written by Leah Nanako Winkler
Directed by Mallory Catlett
Featuring Jenny Gomez, Nicole Hodges, Emily Kratter, Jen Kwok, Lauren Marcus, & Rachel Radenberg
Thursday, February 10 @ 8pm
Mean Girls with bite. Heathers with fangs. Death for Sydney Black follows Nancy, the frumpy new girl at Northeast Valley High as she maneuvers her way through an absurdist deconstruction of a familiar movie genre. Props fall from the sky and original songs on ukulele frame this wacky world, but a truth about the way girls – and ultimately women – treat each other rises from the extreme imagination of Leah Nanako Winkler. This all female ensemble of five portray girls with ambition, girls aimlessly searching, girls with pom poms, girls with lipstick, and the boys who love them.
WHALES AND SOULS
Written by Andrew Kramer
Directed by Tom Wojtunik
Featuring Jackie Chung
Friday, February 11 @ 8pm
A Creature emerges from the lake in a small, rural town to warn the villagers of an impending doom. This one-woman fable delves into the way we relate to the environment and the choices we make to free ourselves from the shackles that bind us to the place called “home”.
A PEOPLE
Written by Lauren Feldman
Directed by Jessi D. Hill
Featuring Ben Beckley, Nick Choksi, Zack Fine, Lanna Joffrey, Jon Levenson, Maria-Christina Oliveras, Franny Silverman, Tiffany Rachelle Stewart, & Chris Tramantana
Saturday, February 12 @ 8pm
A magical, lyrical journey into heritage, tradition, religion and humanity. Through vignettes, music and monologues, Lauren Feldman holds up a mirror to 4000 years of Jewish history, reminding us that we’re all descendents, and we choose to embrace our lineage, deny it, or wrestle with it. Hilarious and terrifyingly honest, A People gathers a tight ensemble of ten performers, taking on a mass of old and new world personalities to create snippets of life the way we see it, the way we want it to be, and the way it is.
LAUREN FELDMAN Plays include Grace, or the Art of Climbing; The Egg-Layers; a People; Fill Our Mouths; and her current work-in-progress Quinn and also The Mooncalves; as well as a dozen short plays; the solo piece Funny Story; and several collaborative/devised works. She is also a co-creator of The Apocryphal Project. She was a U.S. playwright delegate at the Royal Court Theatre and at World Interplay/Australia, and she has been an artist-in-residence at Tofte Lake Center (upcoming), Montana Artists Refuge, Cornell University, The Missoula Colony/Montana Rep, Sewanee University of the South, and Theater Emory/Brave New Works Festival. Most recently, she received the Agnes Ranjo Capps Award for an Emerging Female Playwright, and a nomination for the 2009 ATCA/Steinberg New Play Award for Grace, or the Art of Climbing. M.F.A. Playwriting, Yale School of Drama; B.A. English, Cornell University; The Shakespeare Programme, British-American Drama Academy/Skidmore College.
ANDREW KRAMER hails from Cleveland and is a proud recent graduate of Ball State University’s Department of Theatre and Dance in Muncie, Indiana where he was the founder/president of Busted Space Theatre Company, Ball State’s student-run theatre company specializing in new works and non-conventional theatre performances. His play, A Map of Our Country, was a part of this year’s 35th Annual Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival. He was a 2010 Core Apprentice Writer at the Playwrights’ Center in Minneapolis, where he developed his play The Dog(run) Diaries. He is currently being considered to be the newest member of the X-Men.
LEAH NANAKO WINKLER is a writer and director from Kamakura, Japan and Lexington, Kentucky who now lives in NYC. Leah’s essays on hapa identity has been seen on Discover Nikkei through an New York University A/P/A commission for the Japanese American National Museum in California. She has directed her plays at the Ontological Hysteric Theater (Pale Horse…), The Brick Theater (Big Girls Club- Happy Dance Dance Princess Show in The Antidepressant Festival), HERE Arts Center (The Formula Play) and the Indianapolis New Art Theatre (Everywhere). Her short plays have been seen at the Cultural Development Corporation’s Source Festival (little girls- dir Scott Fortier), Workingman’s Clothes Productions’ Binge Festival (BGC-Dir.Teddy Nicholas) and Butler University. She has also worked with the Asian American Arts Alliance and Young Jean Lee’s Theater Company and is a founding member of Everywhere Theatre Group. She most recently wrote for the multi-media dance piece, The Internet at the Incubator Arts Project.
TERRANOVA COLLECTIVE is a vibrant playground for artists devoted to innovative new and original theatrical works. Its multi-layered development process, solo arts festivals, and productions serve to nurture and liberate our community.