Teams of writers, directors, and musicians are tasked with creating new 15-minute musicals in one weekend in response to the advocacy work of local organizations and communities.
This year’s participating organizations include Deportation and Immigration Response to Emergencies (D.I.R.E.), Youth Advocate Programs, and the Brady Project.
Join coLAB Arts for a Story Slam on September 26, 2019 at 7pm at State Theatre New Jersey in New Brunswick. The evening’s stories are unified around the theme of Destinations: the people, places, and everything in between where you are and where you want to be. The event will feature local storytellers sharing their own unique experiences living and working in Middlesex County.
This evening's performance will feature monologues based on initiative interviews featuring recent immigrants in and around Newark. The event will also feature work from Newest Americans' resident photographer, Ed Kashi.
37 VOICES is composed of interviews with NJ residents in the ALICE threshold (Asset Limited Income Constrained, Employed) - those who make too much money to qualify for federal assistance, but are unable to save against the high cost of living in NJ.
Middlesex County and the Public Outreach and Engagement Team (POET) at Rutgers University are working with coLAB Arts to provide residents of Middlesex County the opportunity to participate in a FREE storytelling workshop!
What is it? This storytelling workshop will bring participants together in a supportive and fun atmosphere to learn the techniques of personal narrative storytelling. Participants will use inspiration from their own lives and personal experiences to craft and share a story under the guidance of experienced coLAB Arts teachers. Over the course of the ½ day workshop, the coLAB team will take participants through a step-by-step process meant to make storytelling meaningful and accessible for everyone.
Why are we doing this? This storytelling series is all about ensuring that the diverse communities that make up Middlesex County are seen and heard. Middlesex County is currently gathering feedback to determine the priorities for the future of our county by developing a new Master Plan called DESTINATION2040. This plan will set the course for how we live, work and do business in our communities in the future. It is important that ALL voices are heard as part of that process—and storytelling is a great way to make that happen!
What happens next? The story-telling workshop is only the beginning of the process. A selection of participants who complete the entire storytelling series will be invited to perform their stories at a special event at the State Theatre of New Jersey. This historic venue is a Middlesex County mainstay of arts and culture that has hosted some of the most talented artists and performers over the last 100 years. Our storytellers will now have a chance to be part of that history!
El Condado de Middlesex y el Equipo de Participación y Alcance Público (POET) en la Universidad de Rutgers están trabajando junto a coLAB Arts para brindar a los residentes del Condado de Middlesex la oportunidad de participar en un taller GRATUITO de narración de cuentos.
¿Qué es? Este taller cuentacuentos reunirá a los participantes en un ambiente de diversión y una atmósfera de apoyo para aprender las técnicas de narración personal. Los participantes utilizaran inspiración de sus propias vidas y experiencias personales para desarrollar y compartir una historia bajo la guía de diferentes educadores de arte de coLAB Arts. A lo largo del taller, el equipo de coLAB Arts se encargará de guiar a los participantes paso por paso con el fin de poder elaborar una narración que sea emotiva y accesible para todos.
¿Por qué estamos haciendo esto? Esta serie de talleres cuentacuentos intenta promover y garantizar que las comunidades diversas que conforman el Condado de Middlesex sean vistas y escuchadas. El Condado de Middlesex actualmente está juntando comentarios con el fin de determinar las prioridades para el futuro de nuestro condado por medio del desarrollo de un nuevo Plan Maestro llamado DESTINO2040. Este plan definirá el curso de cómo vivimos, trabajamos y hacemos negocios en nuestras comunidades en el futuro. Es importante que TODAS las voces se escuchen como parte de este proceso, ¡y contando nuestras historias es una excelente manera de asegurarnos que esto sea posible!
¿Qué pasa después? El taller de narración de historias es solo el comienzo del proceso. Se invitará a una selección de participantes que completen la serie entera de talleres cuentacuentos para que presenten sus historias en un evento especial en el State Theatre de Nueva Jersey. Este lugar histórico es un pilar de las artes y la cultura del Condado de Middlesex que ha acogido a algunos de los artistas y presentadores más talentosos de los últimos 100 años. ¡Nuestros narradores ahora tendrán la oportunidad de ser parte de esa misma historia!
Middlesex County and the Public Outreach and Engagement Team (POET) at Rutgers University are working with coLAB Arts to provide residents of Middlesex County the opportunity to participate in a FREE storytelling workshop!
What is it? This storytelling workshop will bring participants together in a supportive and fun atmosphere to learn the techniques of personal narrative storytelling. Participants will use inspiration from their own lives and personal experiences to craft and share a story under the guidance of experienced coLAB Arts teachers. Over the course of the ½ day workshop, the coLAB team will take participants through a step-by-step process meant to make storytelling meaningful and accessible for everyone.
Why are we doing this? This storytelling series is all about ensuring that the diverse communities that make up Middlesex County are seen and heard. Middlesex County is currently gathering feedback to determine the priorities for the future of our county by developing a new Master Plan called DESTINATION2040. This plan will set the course for how we live, work and do business in our communities in the future. It is important that ALL voices are heard as part of that process—and storytelling is a great way to make that happen!
What happens next? The story-telling workshop is only the beginning of the process. A selection of participants who complete the entire storytelling series will be invited to perform their stories at a special event at the State Theatre of New Jersey. This historic venue is a Middlesex County mainstay of arts and culture that has hosted some of the most talented artists and performers over the last 100 years. Our storytellers will now have a chance to be part of that history!
coLAB Arts has officially moved into our new office and community workshop space. Thanks to our incredible relationship with First Reformed Church in New Brunswick we have leased office and studio space in their historic education building right on the corner of Bayard and Nielson Streets.
We have purchased some new furniture, painted the walls, and installed a coffee maker.
Wanna see it? Drop in on Tuesday July 9 anytime between 5:30pm-8pm for an informal open house. Have a glass of wine and some snacks and chat with coLAB Arts staff, artists, board members, community partners and collaborators.
Let us know if you are you are definitely coming or even if you are iffy. It will help us get a sense of how much summer salad to make.
This is a FREE performance and community event. Our Common Thread is an annual performance event presented by coLAB Arts and the First Reformed Church, to support New Brunswick's Interfaith Mens' Rotating Shelter. The event features theater, choral performance, and a panel discussion about homelessness and poverty in New Brunswick. For this year’s performance, coLAB Arts will be presenting monologue selections from 37 Voices, based on interviews with local individuals who find themselves within the ALICE threshold.
Join us for an incredibly special coLAB Arts fundraising event at the First Reformed Church of New Brunswick!
Produced by New Brunswick Cultural Center and coLAB Arts, stART is an access program for teens to attend regional performing arts events, mingle with other area students, and engaged with professional artists and arts administrators.
Life, Death, Life Again: Children Sentenced to Die in Prison is a verbatim theater piece by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, that shares the stories of four people sentenced to die in prison for violent crimes committed as children, and a victim’s grandson who chose to lead with forgiveness. Each performance will be followed by a facilitated discussion on the themes discussed in the play - radical forgiveness and how we can create a more humane criminal justice system.
Life, Death, Life Again: Children Sentenced to Die in Prison is a verbatim theater piece by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, that shares the stories of four people sentenced to die in prison for violent crimes committed as children, and a victim’s grandson who chose to lead with forgiveness. Each performance will be followed by a facilitated discussion on the themes discussed in the play - radical forgiveness and how we can create a more humane criminal justice system.
Life, Death, Life Again: Children Sentenced to Die in Prison is a verbatim theater piece by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, that shares the stories of four people sentenced to die in prison for violent crimes committed as children, and a victim’s grandson who chose to lead with forgiveness. Each performance will be followed by a facilitated discussion on the themes discussed in the play - radical forgiveness and how we can create a more humane criminal justice system.
Russian-Jewish emigrate Haskell Harelik arrives at the port of Galveston, Texas in 1909 seeking refuge from his homeland. With only his banana cart in tow, Haskell finds compassion and friendship from an unlikely couple, falls in love, and creates a pastoral life for his family. About The Immigrant, USA Today said “the scenes evoke the rural era with the firm-handed clarity of a Jewish Horton Foote … they glow.”
Cost: just $5 (includes ticket, lunch, and artist talk back)
Pick Up and Drop Off Location:
Poke Nagomi, 342 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Questions: email coLAB Arts Director of Education John Keller, jpkeller@colab-arts.org
Produced by New Brunswick Cultural Center and coLAB Arts, stART is an access program for teens to attend regional performing arts events, mingle with other area students, and engaged with professional artists and administrators. All events include a performance and meal for just $5. To learn more or register for any of the events below check us out at: www.colab-arts.org/start
Please join us for our annual Stakeholder Event to learn more about coLAB Arts’ artist residencies, programming, new initiatives, and partnerships. Hear from staff, collaborators, board members, and community partners, and find out how you can get involved.
If all the world's a stage, then why fill it with utter nonsense? In this wicked satire of epic proportions and theatrical pretensions, an invitation to see the final dress rehearsal of a tragedy proves to be pure comedy.
Cost: just $5 (includes ticket, lunch, and artist talk back)
Pick Up and Drop Off Location: George Street Playhouse, 103 College Farm Rd, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Questions: email coLAB Arts Director of Education John Keller, jpkeller@colab-arts.org
Produced by New Brunswick Cultural Center and coLAB Arts, stART is an access program for teens to attend regional performing arts events, mingle with other area students, and engaged with professional artists and administrators. All events include a performance and meal for just $5. To learn more or register for any of the events below check us out at: www.colab-arts.org/start
Presented by coLAB Arts and Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts - Dance Department. Featuring new works of dance created in collaboration with local social advocacy organizations and their constituencies.
Presented by coLAB Arts and Rutgers University, Mason Gross School of the Arts - Dance Department. Featuring new works of dance created in collaboration with local social advocacy organizations and their constituencies.
Advance sales are now closed. Please click here for the waitlist to place your name, contact information, and number of tickets requested. We’ll start releasing waitlist tickets to those present at 7:00pm in the order in which they were reserved.
Race. History. Power. Zoe, a black student at an Ivy League University, visits her white professor’s office hours to discuss her thesis about slavery’s effect on the American Revolution. In this riveting two-person drama, a polite clash in perspectives explodes into an urgent and dangerous contemporary debate. “Scintillating,” raves Peter Marks in the Washington Post. “The story of America, it seems, is destined to be wrestled over to the bitter end.” Kimberly Senior (Disgraced on Broadway) directs.
Cost: just $5 (includes ticket, lunch, and artist talk back)
Pick Up and Drop Off Location: Rutgers Barnes and Nobel, 100 Somerset Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Questions: email coLAB Arts Director of Education John Keller, jpkeller@colab-arts.org
Produced by New Brunswick Cultural Center and coLAB Arts, stART is an access program for teens to attend regional performing arts events, mingle with other area students, and engaged with professional artists and administrators. All events include a performance and meal for just $5. To learn more or register for any of the events below check us out at: www.colab-arts.org/start
CO-PRESENTED BY STATE THEATRE NEW JERSEY AND CROSSROADS THEATRE COMPANY
Join us for a unique concert that celebrates the holiday seasons in and around the month of December. This co-production between the State Theatre and the Tony Award®-winning Crossroads Theatre Company features local choirs, Broadway talent, and community organizations including Gospel choirs, South Asian Dance, and more! Featuring the Youth Choir of Anshe Emeth Memorial Temple, Abundant Youth Dance Troupe, JP Stevens South Asian Dance Troupe, Rutgers Liberated Gospel Choir, and the Body & Music School from Piscataway. “We are honored to partner with Crossroads to celebrate the diversity of our community during this holiday season," said Sarah Chaplin, President & CEO of State Theatre New Jersey.
Cost: just $5 (includes ticket, lunch, and artist talk back)
Pick Up and Drop Off Location: Shalimar Restaurant, 349 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Questions email, coLAB Arts Director of Education John Keller, jpkeller@colab-arts.org
Produced by New Brunswick Cultural Center and coLAB Arts, stART is an access program for teens to attend regional performing arts events, mingle with other area students, and engaged with professional artists and administrators. All events include a performance and meal for just $5. To learn more or register for any of the events below check us out at: www.colab-arts.org/start
Join the cast of The Vagina Monologues and some special guests for Ladies’ Night, a benefit concert of fun and empowering songs celebrating and uplifting women. Co-directed by Mariella Klinger and Dave Seamon and produced by coLAB Arts, this concert will benefit Dina’s Dwellings, a New Brunswick-based nonprofit that provides permanent, supportive and affordable homes to survivors of domestic violence and their children.
This performance is open to New Jersey, New York, and Pennsylvania attorneys with ticket. Life, Death, Life Again: Children Sentenced to Die in Prison is a verbatim theater piece by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, that shares the stories of four people sentenced to die in prison for violent crimes committed as children, and a victim’s grandson who chose to lead with forgiveness. Each performance will be followed by a facilitated discussion on the themes discussed in the play - radical forgiveness and how we can create a more humane criminal justice system.
THIS IS IT! THE 2018 CULMINATING SLAM! Free Event!
Ever felt like you reached the end of your rope? Ever faced adversity head on and lost? Ever found a ray of hope amid the darkness? What got you through? What kept you going? What gave you strength?
Life, Death, Life Again: Children Sentenced to Die in Prison is a verbatim theater piece by Elizabeth Weill-Greenberg, that shares the stories of four people sentenced to die in prison for violent crimes committed as children, and a victim’s grandson who chose to lead with forgiveness. Each performance will be followed by a facilitated discussion on the themes discussed in the play - radical forgiveness and how we can create a more humane criminal justice system.
Comic in a Day is an annual art-making competition held by coLAB Arts where teams of illustrators and writers work together to create a standard American size comic book of 24 pages, all within the span of 24 hours. The entrants’ comics are read live by a group of actors and is underscored by new original music at a showcase at Pino's Lounge in Highland Park that will close the event, and is adjudicated by a panel of judges from the industry and community. The winning comic book receives a first place prize and online distribution!
Williams’s phantasmagorical play is set in a plaza of a teeming tropical seaport where the rules are not always clear and the dangers real. A young, idealistic boxer stumbles into a world of figures from history and literature, artists and criminals, tyrants and idealists, the poetic and the banal, in a fever dream that Williams called “a prayer for the wild of heart kept in cages.”
Content Advisory: The show has adult language and themes. If it were a movie it would be rated PG-13
Cost: just $5 (includes ticket, lunch, and artist talk back)
Pick Up and Drop Off Location: Levin Theater, Mason Gross School of the Arts, 85 George Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
Questions email, coLAB Arts Director of Education John Keller, jpkeller@colab-arts.org
Produced by New Brunswick Cultural Center and coLAB Arts, stART is an access program for teens to attend regional performing arts events, mingle with other area students, and engaged with professional artists and administrators. All events include a performance and meal for just $5. To learn more or register for any of the events below check us out at: www.colab-arts.org/start
This powerful new play explores the challenges of international aid across interpersonal borders, and how e bridge seemingly impossible cultural divides.
Content Advisory: The show has adult language and themes. If it were a movie it would be rated PG-13
Ticket, Chartered Bust Transportation and Lunch provided for just $5
Pick Up and Drop Off Location: Lord Stirling School rear parking lot, 101 Redmond Street, New Brunswick, NJ 08901 Depart: 12:00pm, Return: 6:00pm
Questions email, coLAB Arts Director of Education John Keller, jpkeller@colab-arts.org.
Produced by New Brunswick Cultural Center and coLAB Arts, stART is an access program for teens to attend regional performing arts events, mingle with other area students, and engaged with professional artists and administrators. All events include a performance and meal for just $5. To learn more or register for any of the events below check us out at: www.colab-arts.org/start
Ever hear a bump in the night, come in contact with the spirit world, or run into a string of bad luck? Has a memory, person, event from the past, suddenly shown up again without invitation? Ever gotten to know someone and they suddenly disappeared? Collect your black cats, voodoo dolls, and a lock of your ex’s hair, and come to theVOM and tell a five to seven minute story about GHOSTS.
