Work in Progress Performance
December 4th, 2018
at Mister Rogers, Crown Heights
Written and Directed Nessa Norich
With writing contributed by Jen Clark and Ali Levin
Cast:
Jen Clark - Holofernes
Ali Levin - My Brother Light
Judith in Grief - Vanessa Soudan
Judith in Rage - Mati Esther Engel
Judith in Love - Laura Escalante
The Elders - Jana Jett Loeb, Janna Diamond, Elana Brody
Musical Direction of Jewish Songs: Elana Brody
Sound Design by Joro Boro & Nessa Norich
Lighting Design by Alexa Zanikos
Costume Design by Laura Escalante & Nessa Norich
Set Design by Stephanie Acosta
Dramaturges: Mati Engel, Jana Loeb, Stephanie Acosta, Hannah Roodman
CANDLE LIGHTING RITUAL
Judith Plaskow, Shira Kline, Yehuda Webster & Bronwen Mullen
DIRECTOR / CHOREOGRAPHER / PRODUCER
A selection of drag for live performance and video.
PLAYWRIGHT / PERFORMER / CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR
The New York Neo-Futurist's are the visionaries behind The Infinite Wrench, a weekly ongoing, ever-changing attempt to perform 30 plays in 60 minutes.
We are a collective of wildly productive writer/director/performers who create:
~ Theater that is fusion of sport, poetry, and living-newspaper.
~ Non-illusory, interactive performance that conveys our experiences and ideas as directly and honestly as possible.
~ Immediate, unreproducable events at heads-slappingly affordable prices.
~ We embrace those unreached or unmoved by conventional theater-inspiring them to thought, feeling, and action.
Fridays + Saturdays 10:30 PM 85 E. 4th Street.
www.nynf.org
2015 NYIT Nominees
2014 Drama Desk Nominees
2013 NYIT Nominees
2012 Drama Desk Nominees
2011 Recipients of the NYIT Outstanding Performance Art Award
2010 Recipients of the NYIT Caffe Cino Award
2009 NYTheatre People of the Year!
2009 Winners of the Village Voice Readers’ Choice for Performance Art!
2006 Recipients of the NYIT Outstanding Performance Art Production Award for TOO MUCH LIGHT MAKES THE BABY GO BLIND.
Queer magic is a force to reckoned with! A tv series* celebrating the transformational power of faggotry. Manhattan city boy Mark discovers he is one of The Fae... and travels to the mythical Greene Sanctuary to claim his magic.
Written by Shelton Lindsay, Justin Taylor & Joshua Fesi
Directed by Nessa Norich
*Currently in post production.
Written & Performed by Nessa Norich
Commissioned by Lab/Shul for Awe: High Holidays 2019/5780
Hammerstien Ballroom, October 9th, 2019
Musical Accompaniment by Daniel Avi Halper
Earth Altar by Morning Altars
Photos by Ali Levin Photography
Yom Kippur offers us a time and a space to encounter and release the pain we hold individually and collectively throughout the year. With awe as this year's theme, I looked to nature for her messages on forgiveness and healing. I spent a few days in nature in silence. During this time, I uncovered profound grief about the destruction of our planet. This grief revealed a challenge: how do I forgive a loss as great as this? How do I heal a wound as deep? How do I let go of guilt this heavy? This piece is a meditation on how forgiveness can heal the source of our pain. Using breath and full bodied listening, we will focus in on how pain is held and released from the body, and how this kind of somatic healing can change the ways we show up for our greatest battles to make the world a better place. The Yom Kippur Torah reading is a manual for our day of atonement, and this piece looks to its instructions to find a code for dealing with grief that feels too great to encounter alone. I am looking to ancient symbols to help us reckon with current loss.
EXPERIENCE DESIGNER / CREATIVE DIRECTOR / FACILITATOR
Well of Wills is a collaboration of 5 women-identifying Jewish artists seeking to examine and explore the link between spirituality and creative process through a feminist lens.
These photos were taken by Inna Shnayder at our Ritual Lab in November of 2017. With 30 women, over 7 hours, we dove into the role of ritual in our personal growth and transformation.
Opening Meditation was written by Nessa Norich with Music by Saint Abdullah
Experience & Ritual Lab Design by Nessa Norich & Hannah Roodman
Art Direction & Co-Facilitation by Danielle Friedman and Meirav Ong
Editorial Content & Co-Facilitation by Mati Engel
Written and Performed by Colin Summers
Directed by Nessa Norich
2016 Winner: NY Innovative Theater Award for Outstanding Production of a Musical
4th Street Theater, NYC: Aug. 6-22nd, 2015.
Joe's Pub, NYC: April 19th, 2014
www.nynf.org/steve
“Cheerful and affecting…an investigation into obsession and the yearning to forge something real, whether a human connection or a work of art.”
–The New York Times
“The songs are charming…and so is Mr. Summers.”
–The New York Times
“The intelligence of the staging — all the way from the many forms of multi-media and live music… points to why director Nessa Norich is such an interesting artist. Her approach to and delicate handling of this story are admirable.”
–Stage Buddy
“In a world of pessimism, denial, and Donald Trump, we need the theater for the sincerity, bravery, and joy it provokes. While we may never filly understand it, like the words of Steve, we need it. We need Steve.”
–Theatre is Easy
“A winning and winsome theatrical excursion.”
–American Theatre Web
“Fascinating, funny, and strangely moving.”
–Maxamoo
“The source material is golden, and Colin can do no wrong with it.”
–New York Theater Review
“Steve is a fun, refreshingly original piece…”
–NY Theater Now
CO-ARTISTIC DIRECTOR / PERFORMER
Parties, Art Galleries, Festivals, Streets – the theater belongs everywhere - as disruption, as war cry, as comedic relief, as a reminder to laugh at life.
I have brought grandmas to burlesque parties and painted aliens to auctions at art institutions such as the Institute for Contemporary Art in London. The goal these outrageous happenings is always the same: to extend the boundaries of convention in order to play and question more.
PRODUCER
Imagine a space where self expression is celebrated – where dance is used by a collective to transmute, transcend and transform. Now add the best DJs, the best rhythms, the best sound and a room full of sweaty smiling people. These are the parties I produce.
Morning Gloryville NYC
Featured in the New York Times, CBS News, and NY Magazine.
Pantheon Presents: Shine On
Featured on HBO's High Maintenance: Season 1 Episode 4.
Pantheon Presents: Vitamin D
House of Yes
February 28, 2018
This piece was commissioned by the Jewish organization, LabShul for their annual Prophetic Post Patriarchy Purim Performance Party at the House of Yes.
Nessa directed a 48 hour devising lab with 17 women with varying performance experience. The piece subverts the tropes of the Beauty Pageant as a symbol of mass-broadcasted misogyny and patriarchal oppression. The all-female identifying ensemble shared personal stories of choosing agency and sovereignty over social acceptance, even when the result was exile. The piece examines the choices women make to labor for love.
Working with these women affirmed that telling our true stories is an important piece of our personal and collective liberation from institutional oppression. Stories told by all of us - not just those who “make a living” from making art. Witnessing women standing boldly in the expression of vulnerability, struggle, joy and truth is seeing the cracks forming in the foundations of patriarchy.
PLAYWRIGHT / DIRECTOR
Magic Futurebox in Sunset Park, Brooklyn 2012
Produced by Carly Hoogendyk in association with Hole In the Sky Productions
Costumes by Nessa Norich, Set by Sofia Belenky and Chriton Atkinson, Lighting by Mike Faba, Projections by Gene Kogan
Devised with the Cast: David Gerson, Daniel Wilcox, Micah Stinson, Marguerite Van Cook, Caitlin Harrity, Colin Summers, Stephan Hershey, Chas Carey
2012 New Orleans Fringe Festival
Cast: Ben Otto, Marguerite Van Cook, Chas Carey, Jordan Barbour, Rick Busser, Sara Jannat, Akku Kulhari
"The most innovative, gripping and intriguing version of Hamlet that I've seen to date. "
- The Huffington Post
"Nessa Norich [is] an innovative theatrical force emerging from France's Jacques Lecoq International School of Theatre...
"contemporaneous and electrifyingly involving"
"The Rub also shows a freedom of conception that to me is the essence of Art."
- The Hooded Utilitarian
THE RUB was chosen as one of four top shows out of 69 of the NEW ORLEANS FRINGE by THE GAMBIT:
"The fusion of popular culture and tragedy hits a brilliant note."
"One doesn't need to know or like the original tragedy to enjoy this show."
"A torrent of visuals and tones grace the floor of the Den of Muses, an appropriate setting for the whimsical pop-culture references and cracked-mirror view of the world that the work embodies."
- The Defender
PERFORMER
Performed at NY Live Arts - January 2016
"The brutal rawness and immediacy that we’ve come to expect from Ms. Young, a divisive performer and choreographer, reaches new heights — or newly disturbing depths — in her “Elektra,” – The New York Times
DIRECTOR
Poetry: Emily Sause
Dancers: Valentina Strokopytova & Yeman Brown
Violin: Andrei Matorin
Harp: Stephanie Babirak
A collaboration with art collective Future Clear & activist organizers Peace Accelerators. A Brooklyn community holiday party fundraiser for No Kid Hungry at The William Vale Hotel.
ACTOR
T H E L A D I E S A L M A N A C K
is a feature-length film written & directed by Daviel Shy, based on the novel of the same title by Djuna Barnes.
The film is a kaleidoscopic tribute to women’s writing through the friendships, jealousies, flirtations and publishing woes of female authors and artists in 1920’s Paris.
with Nessa Norich playing a starring role as Romaine Brooks.
http://www.theladiesalmanack.com/about
Conceived, Adapted and Directed by Nessa Norich and David Neumann
Thesis Performance by Nessa Norich at Barnard College, May 2008
Starring Nessa Norich, Meghan Claire, Pardis Dabashi, Maya De La Rosa Cohen, John DeSerio, Emily Kaplan, Stephanie Lane, Casey Llewellynn, Melissa Macedo, Ross Olmos Torres, Lakshmi Sundaram, Bettina Weiner, Sam West
This visionary adaptation of SNOW WHITE, combined the Brothers Grimm, Disney, and Donald Barthelme interpretations of the tale with anthropological research on early photography, using primary sources about its traumatic affect on collective consciousness and its relationship to death.
CO-CREATOR / ACTOR
Devised and performed by CRANK THEATRE
Norwegian tour – Dec. 2014
Battersea Arts Center, London – November 2013
CO-CREATOR / ACTOR
Fusing dark humor with tragic scope, CRANK explore the legacy of Britain's Tower Blocks, and the Brutalist Architects behind them.
Devised and performed by CRANK THEATRE
British Film Institute – January 2014,
attersea Arts Center, London – December 2012,
Edinburgh Fringe 2012
www.crankcrankcrank.com
"Contains more thought-provoking ideas and images in its one-hour performance than many productions do in three." - Total Theater
"This is JG Ballard via The Mighty Boosh, all couched in Fritz Lang’s Metropolis."
A young company with that rare thing: a distinctive voice." - The List
"A great piece of physical theatre" -The Skinny ****
"Brave new theatre" "Glittering and sharp" -Edinburgh Guide ****
