ZOETROPE

Created with composer/director Alec Duffy and designer Mimi Lien, Zoetrope is a contemporary song-cycle set in an ever-changing and confused landscape of home, work, and play. Choreography by Jaamil Kosoko and music direction by Rick Burkhardt. Performed by Rick Burkhardt, Kristine Haruna Lee, Birgit Huppuch, Paul Pinto, Mikaal Sulaiman, and Marshall York.

Workshopped at Princeton University's Atelier and supported by a Creativity Fund workshop at New Dramatists and a residency at LMCC.  Workshop video here. Minimalist music video here.

painful adventures

A performance text based on Nicola Sabbattini's Manual for Constructing Theatrical Scenes and Machines (1638). A troubled theater director named Ms. Seabottom attempts to stage Shakespeare's Pericles using archaic machinery, but she can't get Mr. Heights, who might be her father, out of her head.

Shown, left, at St. Ann’s Warehouse Puppet Lab featuring Colleen Werthmann, directed by Katie Pearl, 2005. Later adapted in 2007 with Jeremy Wilhelm for the tiny stage of the Bryant Lake Bowl in Minneapolis, MN. 

Open to future processes. Photo by Richard Termine. 

VENDETTA CHROME

Vendetta, a late bloomer at a Victorian girls' school, must save her friends and her family from a legacy of trouble — and it's all in the dance moves.

Production at Clubbed Thumb. Productions at Ohio State University, Emerson College, Sarah Lawrence College, Purchase College/SUNY and others. Supported by a Jerome Fellowship from the Playwrights Center in Minneapolis.

Full-length play. 9W !! + 1M. 80 minutes with dances.

Agent contact for script. Photo by Carl Skutsch. 

NIGHTLANDS

Nightlands combines Philadelphia history with family myth to tell the story of two women whose relationship ignites an entire city. Commissioned by New Georges through a Full Stage NYC grant administered by New Dramatists. Premiered October 2011 at HERE Arts Center in New York directed by Tamilla Woodard produced by New Georges.

This play is based on the life and work of my grandmother, Jeanette Oswald, who was an astrologer with her own radio show.

Full-length play. 3W, 2M. 100 minutes. Contact for script.

“We are in history now,” one character says as the simmering tensions finally burst loose near the end. When “Nightlands” is at its strongest, it reminds us that that statement is always true.” — The New York Times

Photo by Carol Rosegg.

PROFANITY

Two brothers run a real estate agency in Philadelphia selling land that doesn't exist. The final installment of the Mystery Plays trilogy (Sun Ra, Nightlands), Profanity, was written in the wake of the Bernie Madoff scandal. The play is a parable about spiritual responsibility for one's community inspired by Jewish mysticism, the history of Philadelphia's sinking houses, and the author's family lore.

Full-length play. 2W, 3M. 110 minutes. Agent contact for script.

Undermain Theatre, world premiere, directed by Katherine Owens, 2013. Soho Rep, workshop, directed by Pam MacKinnon, 2012. Developed in Clubbed Thumb Writers Group 2011-2012. Awarded Six Points Fellowship 2010-2012.

SUN RA

A theatrical response to avant-garde jazz composer Sun Ra’s biography and body of work. Inspired by John Szwed's biography of Sun Ra, Space Is The Place.

Adapted for two concert performances at Joe's Pub directed by Charlotte Brathwaite incorporating a live 11-piece jazz band playing Sun Ra's music - the towering crew of the Burn Sugar Arkestra.

Written in the 2008-2009 Soho Rep Writer-Director Lab, reading directed by Rafael Gallegos. Winner of the Whitfield Cook prize from New Dramatists. Workshopped at LaMaMa E.T.C., December 2012, directed by Charlotte Brathwaite. Recipient of Jerome Foundation Travel/Study Grant. Presented as the SUN RA VISITATION SERIES at Joe's Pub 11/14/13 and 1/9/2014 in collaboration with director Charlotte Brathwaite and the Burnt Sugar Arkestra.

Full length play, flexible cast. Video here. Agent contact for script.
Photo by Groana Melendez.

DISFARMER

Dan Hurlin’s large-scale puppetry work, Disfarmer, imagines the last days of the outsider photographer Mike Disfarmer whose stark images of rural Arkansas townspeople in the 1940s are at the core of the artist’s mysterious legacy. My performance text for this show functioned like a layer of the design, it was the world of Disfarmer’s thought.

More about Dan and the show here.  Video excerpt featuring text here. 

Moving, poignant and occasionally hilarious, “Disfarmer” is a wonder. - Variety

Photo by Richard Termine.