The Flea premieres new drama by Sarah Gancher, directed by Danya Taymor.
April 14 - May 30 at The Flea Theater
The Flea Theater welcomes playwright Sarah Gancher with the world premiere of THE PLACE WE BUILT. Artistic Associate Danya Taymor (My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer, I Hate Mexicans) directs members of The Bats, The Flea’s resident acting company, with music direction and arrangements by The Bengsons. Previews start April 14th, with opening night slated for April 25th.
In a deserted neighborhood in post-communist Budapest, a group of young bohemians build a bar. Reclaiming a Jewish identity their parents’ generation abandoned after the Holocaust, they create a vibrant new subculture combining big ideas and intense debates with wild abandon and outrageous parties. But as authoritarianism and antisemitism make a surprise comeback in Hungary, they must fight to save the place they built.
THE PLACE WE BUILT features The Bats: Brittany K. Allen, Lydian Blossom, Tom Costello, Brendan Dalton, Tamara Del Rosso, Philip Feldman, Kristin Friedlander, Cleo Gray, Rachel Ingram, Ben Lorenz, Ash McNair, Sonia Mena, Isabelle Pierre, Xavier Reminick, Leta Renée-Alan, and Tessa Hope Slovis. The creative team includes Arnulfo Maldonado (scenic design), Masha Tsimring (lighting design), Claudia Brown (costume design), Ben Truppin-Brown (sound design), Alex J. Gould (fight choreography), Zach Serafin (props master), Jocelyn Clarke (dramaturg), Charise Greene (dialect coach), Jake Beckhard (assistant director), and Tzipora Reman (stage management).
THE PLACE WE BUILT run April 14 - May 30 on an irregular schedule. Tickets start at $20 with the lowest priced tickets available on a first-come, first-served basis. The Flea Theater is located at 41 White Street between Church and Broadway, three blocks south of Canal, close to the A/C/E, N/R/Q, 6, J/M/Z and 1 subway lines. Purchase tickets by calling 212-352-3101 or online at theflea.org.
BIOS:
SARAH GANCHER (playwright) is a playwright who loves epic stories, big ideas, and deep comedy. Her most frequent subject is how history is reflected in individual lives—how places, communities, and debates evolve over time. Her plays have been produced or developed at London’s National Theatre, Edinburgh’s Traverse Theatre, Budapest’s Quarter6Quarter7 Festival, Steppenwolf, PS122, Ars Nova, P73, New York Stage and Film, the Women’s Project, NYC SummerStage, the Great Plains Theater Conference, and Telluride Theatre, among others. She has been a Time Warner Fellow at the Women’s Project Playwrights Lab, a member of P73’s writer’s group Interstate 73, a Writing Fellow with The Playwrights’ Realm, and a member of the Ars Nova Play Group. Sarah is the winner of the New York Stage and Film Founder’s Award, the Clifford Odets Ensemble Play Commission, and residencies from the Jewish Plays Project, Tofte Lakes, and SPACE at Ryder Farm. She has been a playwright-in-residence at Budapest’s Quarter6Quarter7 Festival, which presented Hungarian language staged readings of three plays from her 7th cycle (Seder, Klauzál Square, and Five Mothers) and continues to provide support for that project. She frequently collaborates with devising ensembles such as Colorado’s Telluride Theatre, Hand2Mouth from Portland, Oregon, NYC’s The TEAM, and Blue Man Group. She is the collaborating playwright on Mission Drift, a musical about capitalism and the myth of the frontier written with director Rachel Chavkin, composer Heather Christian, and The TEAM (Coimbra, Lisbon, Salzburg, Edinburgh Fringe, PS 122 COIL Festival, Perth, Hong Kong, and London’s National Theatre; winner of Edinburgh International Festival Fringe Award, Scotsman Fringe First, Herald Angel, Guardian Best of 2011, nom, Drama League for Distinguished Production of a Musical.) She is currently under commission from Ars Nova, writing a musical with The Bengsons. She has worked behind the scenes at The Colbert Report, The Metropolitan Opera Guild, The Big Apple Circus, and Norway’s Stellapolaris, among others. As a jazz violinist, Sarah has played in groups from New Orleans to Budapest. A proud Oakland native, she currently lives in Queens. MFA: NYU.
DANYA TAYMOR (director) is a director and translator. She is an Associate Artist at The Flea Theater, where she served as a Resident Director from 2011-2015 and received the Van Lier fellowship. Work at the Flea includes: Brian Watkins’ My Daughter Keeps Our Hammer (NY Times/Time Out Critics Pick) and Luis Enrique Guitiérrez Ortiz Monasterio’s I Hate Mexicans. She co-created The Shakes, The Flea’s late night classical theater series, where she directed Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet and is a frequent director of #serials@theflea. Other recent work includes Brian Watkins’ Wyoming (Lesser America), Anna Moench’s In Quietness (Dutch Kills/Walkerspace) and Wildrose (Sheen Center/The Claque), Lucy Teitler’s Engagements (Ensemble Studio Theater), Shakespeare’s The Tempest (NYU/Stella Adler) and Anton Chkehov’s The Cherry Orchard (Stella Adler). She is a 2014-2016 Time Warner Directing Fellow at Women’s Project, a 2050 fellow at New York Theatre Workshop, a 2015 Artist in Residence at Theatre for a New Audience, a New Georges Affiliated Artist, a Visiting Artist at Strasberg/NYU and an alumna of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab.
THE BATS are the resident acting company of The Flea Theater. Each year over a thousand actors audition for a place in this unique company. The Bats perform in extended runs of challenging classic and new plays. Major as well as up-and-coming writers vie to have The Bats tackle their work. As performers, these actors are known being fearless not feckless and bring verve and vision to the written word. Stage and Cinema calls The Bats “Always charming and energized,” and Ben Brantley calls them “fresh-faced,” which is “...good news, especially for New York casting agents.”
THE FLEA THEATER, under Artistic Director Niegel Smith and Producing Director Carol Ostrow, is one of New York's leading off-off-Broadway companies. Winner of a Special Drama Desk Award for outstanding achievement, Obie Awards and an Otto for political theater, The Flea has presented over 100 plays and numerous dance and live music performances since its inception in 1996. Past productions include premieres by Trista Baldwin, Steven Banks, Thomas Bradshaw, Sheila Callaghan, Kim Davies, Bathsheba Doran, Will Eno, Karen Finley, Amy Freed, Sean Graney, A.R. Gurney, Laurel Haines, Jennifer Haley, Hamish Linklater, Enrique Gutiérrez Ortiz Monasterio, Itamar Moses, Anne Nelson, Qui Nguyen, Adam Rapp, Jonathan Reynolds, Roger Rosenblatt, Todd Shalom, Julian Sheppard, Tommy Smith, Elizabeth Swados, Ken Urban, Mac Wellman, Beau Willimon, Brian Watkins, and Frank Winters. Highlights include Drama Desk nominated She Kills Monsters, These Seven Sicknesses, Restoration Comedy, The Mysteries and eight World Premieres by A.R. Gurney including the WSJ Best New Play of 2013, Family Furniture.