coLAB Arts

Click here for link to the incredible review.

Romeo y Julieta
de William Shakespeare
dirigido por Dan Swern
19 de agosto – 29 de agosto, Jueves – Domingo

Primera Iglesia Reformada de New Brunswick
9 Bayard Street
Situado en Downtown New Brunswick entre las calles Bayard y Paterson.

Todos los espectáculos son GRATIS! Reserve su entrada hoy por correo electrónico jpkeller@colab-arts.org.

Esta producción contemporárea explorara la comunidad de New Brunswick y su historia reciente, y se ocupa de su política subyacente y las tensiones raciales. Puede el amor de dos jóvenes, de mundos muy diferentes superar el odio de sus padres?

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a benefit for Collaborative Arts

at PJ’s Coffee in Highland Park
315 Raritan Avenue
Highland Park, NJ 08904

Friday, July 23
7:00-10:00pm

$15 tickets available online
$20 tickets available at the door

Featuring live music by The Bond Trio

Open beer and wine bar with admission
Food and beverages available (COME HUNGRY!)

Silent Auction featuring original art and gifts from local Highland Park and New Brunswick vendors and restaurants

coLAB Arts gratefully acknowledges its event sponsors:
New Brunswick Jazz Project (www.nbjp.org)
PSAK & Associates (www.psaklaw.com)
Dental Hypnosis Center of New Jersey (www.graysondds.com)

BUY TICKETS HERE

Fear Junkie 2012: Are you Addicted?
written and performed by Pandora Scooter
August 5, 6, 7 at 8:00 pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick)
The world is coming to an end in 2012. Or is it? You gonna make a buck or be taken for a ride? Pandora Scooter takes a hilarious whirlwind tour of the craziness that’s gonna rain down on us as the Mayan calendar comes to an end.
$10 tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

Puppet Slam!
curated by Mary Gragen
August 8th at 8pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick)
Puppeteers from All Around the Tri-State area come to perform everything from shadow to hand puppetry. This is not-just-for-kids puppetry; this is puppetry like you’ve never seen before on subjects ranging from freedom, to coming of age, to oppression. You don’t want to miss this once-a-year event. Underwritten by IBEX Puppetry.
$10 tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

LMAOpen Mic: Laughing My Ass Off – an open mic for Stand Up Comics
Mondays, Aug 9, 16, 23, 30 at 8:00 pm
coLAB Arts (49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor, New Brunswick)
Come bust a gut with some of the funniest up and coming stand up comics in our area.
$5 Tickets (only available at the door)

BUY TICKETS HERE

Motion: New Dance Works
a collaborative choreographic event by artists from New Jersey
Thursday & Friday, August 12 and 13th at 8:00pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ)
Modern Dance takes center stage at Breakthrough Arts Festival with these engaging and experimental works by the next generation of choreographers.
$10 tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

Flash in the PAN: Performance Art Night
Saturday, August 14 at 8:00pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ)
$10 tickets

SLAM! Poets in Action
Sunday, August 15th at 7:00 pm
George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ)
Ever seen a slam poet spit out words like a machine gun and totally change your perspective all at once? Slam Poets (a la Def Poetry Jam) from New York City and all over New Jersey are going to come and compete for prizes. This is where art and competition meet and it promises to be a blast.
$10 Tickets

BUY TICKETS HERE

Romeo and Juliet / Romeo y Julieta
by William Shakespeare
adapted and directed by Dan Swern
August 19 – 29 (Thu – Sun) at 8:00 pm
First Reformed Church (9 Bayard Street, New Brunswick)
This contemporary bilingual production of Romeo and Juliet, brings the classic tale to present day New Brunswick. Cast with professional actors from New York City and community members from New Brunswick, the Montagues (Romeo’s family) are played by Afro-Caribbean actors and the Capulets (Juliet’s family) are played by Latino actors. The beautiful and tragic love story is set against the sometimes positive, sometimes challenging changes facing our home town. This is a Romeo and Juliet like you’ve never seen.
All performances are FREE!!!

Collaborative Arts is the only guaranteed place to catch the hottest emerging artists in Central New Jersey. Breakthrough Arts Fest, for its third year, is the only summer ticket in New Brunswick, with something happening almost every night through August. There’s something for everyone, featuring puppetry, music, dance, theater, and visual art over three separate spaces in Downtown New Brunswick.

You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter for periodic updates as we countdown towards the festival.

An exhibition featuring paintings by Maria Giancola and photography by Sam Hetzel
Curated by Alana Integlia and Janine d’Auguste

Reception: June 10, 2010, 7-10 p.m.
coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Featuring live music performance by Michael Lawton and his band
through the Somerset Jazz Consortium (www.somersetjazz.com)

Additional gallery hours:
Tues-Thurs
6-8 p.m.

A comparison both visually and conceptually of Maria Giancola and Sam Hetzel’s work is the conceptual embodiment of this exhibition, Dual Perspectives. I see their work as playing off of the standard binary structure, more specifically masculinity versus femininity. The medium, the choice of imagery and how they came to represent the works within the gallery itself, comes from what I perceive as their gendered perspective. The manner in which they use this binary as a means of comparison is subtle. Giancola and Hetzel reference key concepts in the history of art to play with the visually gendered landscapes they depict in their imagery. Their work, strong alone, complements and in a way argues the significance of gender in art; the subtleties of their visual and conceptual references prove the inspiring and knowledgeable ways in which they try to represent their dual perspectives. The perspective of an artist, and any individual is influenced innumerably; it is not just the gender binary that has been the muse to Giancola and Hetzel but also notions such as “private versus public” and “natural versus industrial”. There are so many visual cues that inspire my reasons for analyzing these artists’ works through the simplicity of the binary system but the obvious conceptual duality of their work is unavoidably the most persuasive. – Alana Integlia, Curator

Opening on Thursday, April 15, 7-10pm

coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

Wine and light hors d’ouevres will be served.

This exhibition consists of works by Terri Beckles and Nakeya Brown; the exhibit provides a sample of their best and/or most recent series. Terminology that is deemed socially appropriate to identify is more often than not a categorizational tool used without true understanding of the subject and in so doing, further homogenizes individual or communal identity. In other words to define these women and/or their subject under standardized terms would not be to provide actualized information instead create a stereotypical depiction in which the previously stated subjects may or may not embody. This exhibit provides visual insight into what can only be an interpretation of the “Identifiable” characteristics of any given individual and/or community.

DERBY DAY
by Samuel Brett Williams

Sunday, April 11 at 5pm
coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

FREE Staged Reading

Featuring:
Joe Tisa
Joachim Boyle
Brian Corbett
Kristen Lazzarini

Three estranged brothers are reunited in Arkansas by the passing of their father. A day at the races thrusts their history into full focus, opening the door to reconciliation if they don’t kill each other first.

Samuel Brett Williams’ plays include “The Woodpecker” (Cherry Lane Mentor Project) and “Arkadelphia” (published in “Best American Short Plays ’04-’05″). Previous Orphanage readings include “Fraternity,” “Revelation” (a New Play Network commission), and “The Revival,” to be produced by Project Y Theatre at Theatre Row in Manhattan, Fall 2010.

The Orphanage is the only new play reading series in Downtown New Brunswick, providing a home for local theater artists and a safe environment for playwrights to develop their work.

BABIES
by Lia Romeo
directed by Louis Wells

FREE staged reading

Sunday, March 21 at 7pm
coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

A lost infant leads to the hilarious intersection of five strangers’ lives. This new dark comedy from Lia Romeo explores the lengths we can go for the things we want.

This reading follows hot on the heels of the world premiere of Lia Romeo’s play “Green Whales,” first given a public reading at coLAB Arts’ Breakthrough Arts Fest. She is the co-author of “11,002 Things To Be Miserable About.”

The Orphanage is the only new play reading series in Downtown New Brunswick, providing a home for local theater artists and a safe environment for playwrights to develop their work.

THE LEAK
by FERNANDA COPPEL

FREE Staged Reading. To reserve a seat, please email us at info@colab-arts.org.

Sunday, February 21st at 7:30pm
coLAB Arts
49 Bayard Street, 3rd Floor
New Brunswick, NJ 08901

When a leak starts dripping in Lucia (single mother) and Drea’s (only child) modest Los Angeles apartment their first reaction is to ignore it. The dripping grows stronger and stronger as Lucia’s boyfriend Carlos moves in. Lucia’s sister, Cuca isn’t fond of Carlos because of his fascination with Drea. After the leak begins to drip blood, this family is left to deal with generations of secrets and the ghosts that live under our tongues.

Playwright Fernanda Coppel was born in Mazatlan, Sinaloa, Mexico, and raised in San Diego California. A poet and playwright, she received her MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU with a concentration in Playwriting. Her thesis play, Chimi-Changas and Zololft was nominated for the Goldberg Award (2009) and won the Asuncion Queer Latino Festival at Pregones Theater (2009). She received NYU’s John Holden Playwriting Award upon her spring 2009 graduation. Fernanda is currently in the Lila Acheson Wallace Playwriting Fellowship Program at the Juilliard School.

Director Alex Correia is currently the Director in Residency for the INTAR Actors’ Collective where he directed 365 Plays/ 365 Days by Suzan Lori Parks and Thorny Bushes, a Staged Radio Novella, written by INTAR Playwrights Group. In INTAR’s New Works Lab he directed plays by Desi Moreno-Penson, Cusi Cram, Mando Alvardo, and Mariana Carreno. Some of his Directing Credits include: The Woman by Michael John Garces for the 24hr Plays Company; Dwarfs  by Harold Pinter and Dutchman by LeRoi Jones at the Williamstown Theatre Festival Workshop; I Am Yours by Judith Thompson at Center Stage (NY); and Othello by William Shakespeare at the  John  Houseman Studio Theater (NY).

Producer Jeremy Karafin Is currently the Program Associate for DNAworks (Dialogue and Healing through the Arts).  He founded and produced the first three seasons of the Kinetic Poetics Project, an annual spoken word and poetry festival on the west coast (now in its 7th season).  He is also the producer for the show See Something…Say Something and Love Redefined.  He has directed half a dozen productions including the world premiere of Kristina Goodnight and Darren Blaney’s What the Hell is Going on Here?  Previously he was the Assistant Director of Student Media and the SCTV Broadcast Adviser at the University of California, Santa Cruz.  He has worked with the Penguin Repertory Theatre, Houses on the Moon Theater Company, MADD Productions, Intangible Collective, Textbook Execution, Shakespeare Santa Cruz, Rainbow Theatre, Brooklyn for Peace and the Wild Project.

“nothing to be sorry for”
by KATHRYN VAN RENSALIER
directed by JESSICA CORN

Sunday, November 22 at 7:30pm
Black Box at George Street Playhouse (9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick)
This is a FREE staged reading

A new play where lines blur between fantasy and reality, charm and tragedy.

The Orphanage is the only new play reading series in Downtown New Brunswick, providing a home for local theater artists and a safe environment for playwrights to develop their work.