coLAB Arts

THE ORPHANAGE

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. This year’s Breakthrough Arts Fest will feature readings of four new plays by both emerging and early career playwrights.

The Orphanage series happens on Saturday, July 18, 25 and August 1st and is FREE.

Saturday, July 18, 3pm – The Orphanage: a staged reading of Lia Romeo’s “SUPER”

A New York yuppie discovers he has super powers. Aided by a homeless guy who is similarly “challenged” he picks up the call to fight crime. But when it interferes with the life and relationship he’s trying to rebuild, what choice should he make?

Lia Romeo is an MFA playwrighting graduate from MGSA Theatre. She went to the Kennedy Center last summer with her play “Green Whales” which will be getting its world premiere this season at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas. With her brother, Lia co-authored the book “11,002 Things To Be Miserable About.”

Saturday, July 25, 3pm – The Orphanage: a staged reading of “Night Cycle” by Jessica Corn

If having the perfect life means making everyone around you happy and making yourself miserable is the perfect life worth having? Should one compromise one’s dreams for security?

Jessica Corn is a graduate of Wheaton College and has worked previously at Trinity Rep, Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey, and Highwire Theatre Company . She currently works at George Street Playhouse as manager of education where she teaches playwrighting and is co-producer of the coLAB new play development program, The Orphanage.

Saturday, August 1, 3pm – The Orphanage: a staged reading of the New Play Network commission of “Revelation” by Samuel Brett Williams

Revelation is an adaptation of the Book of Revelations from the New Testament. It’s a New Play Network Commision.

Samuel is a 2008 Helen Merrill Emerging Playwright Award winner. He was in the Cherry Lane Theatre Mentor project 07-08 season under Charles Fuller with his play “The Woodpecker” that he initially developed at the O’Neill conference. He went to the Kennedy Center last summer to develop his play “The Revival”. He is an MFA in playwriting graduate from MGSA Theater.

What IS Pandora’s Box?
Think Margaret Cho meets, Tenacious D meets Carol Burnett

It’s a fun, funny, fun-a-licious show. Don’t miss a night of laughter and serious silliness!

When and Where?
Saturday May 2nd at 8:30pm at George St. Playhouse
9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, NJ 08901
For Directions: http://www.georgestplayhouse.org

How Much?
Ticket prices are from $5-$10 sliding scale…basically pay what you can!

FEATURED ARTISTS!
Stand Up Comedian: George Higgins
Spoken Word Artist: Samantha Barrow
Musical Guest: Athena Reich

WHO ELSE?
Sketch Comedy performers: Dianna Jones, Izzie Steele, Dan Swern, James Herrera, Suze Chic, MooseJaw Muldoon and Jack Leary

Host: Haha-Sapien Dynamo Pandora Scooter

Pandora Scooter hosts this brand new variety/comedy show. She’s an outrageous “spoken word rock star” who leaves audiences laughing their asses off about everything from personal neuroses to political plunders. She has performed at venues including New Jersey Performing Arts Center and universities up and down the East Coast, including Rutgers University, Boston University, George Washington University and NYU.

PRAXIS/POIESIS is curated by Reid Addison Bingham and Jen Sohn-Park as part of the Collaborative Arts Gall3ry series. Gall3ry is designed to give emerging artists and curators the opportunity to produce their own exhibitions under the guidance of Collaborative Arts’ artistic leadership. The curator is guided through the process of refining an exhibition idea, contacting artists, developing materials about the artist and organizing an opening reception. The curator then further develops the exhibition thematically by advising artists on selection and organization of their works for presentation.

Praxis/Poiesis features the work of artists Ariana G. Barat, Alexander B. Conner, Olivia Kaufman-Rovira, and Matthew West.  By showing a short retrospective of each artist’s work, this exhibition hopes to highlight how investigations into new technologies, materials, and ideas have influenced the artists’ Praxes.

Ariana G. Barat is currently pursuing her B.F.A. at Mason Gross School of the Arts, with a minor in French Language at Rutgers University. She has previously studied at the Pont Aven School of Contemporary Art in Pont-Aven, France, worked at the Glasgow Print Studio in Glasgow, Scotland, and interned at the Lower East Side Printshop in New York City. Her work explores the psychology of time perception by utilizing imagery that speaks to the genre of problems, uncovered in such narratives relating to time, issues of interiority and exteriority, absence, presence, transcendence, and the partiality of perspective. She depicts life as a dream whose shapes return due to the never-ceasing strain of thought and consciousness. myarugula@aol.com

Alexander B. Conner is an artist living and working in Philadelphia and a 2008 graduate of Rutgers College with a dual-degree in Sociology and Middle Eastern Studies. Conner began his artistic practice independent of any formal art institutions. His works document and filter the dense milieus of social interactions in urban environments as it relates to his examinations of psychological space.  Currently focusing on photography and painting, he has worked with other diverse mediums such as crochet, plaster casting, mail art, and MS Dos.  His works have been exhibited in New York City, New Jersey, and Philadelphia. His website is http://surnameconner.blogspot.com/ and can be contacted at alexanderbconner@gmail.com.

Olivia Kaufman-Rovira, a sculptor and printmaker, graduated Summa Cum Laude from Mason Gross School of the Arts in 2006 where she was awarded the James Dickinson Carr Scholarship – a four-year full academic scholarship. Her work ranges from large-scale installations involving ceramics and grass, to handmade paper sculptures that focus on the interplay between light and shadow. After studying in Barcelona at the international contemporary art workshop Metáfora, she has begun to incorporate plastics and other recyclable materials into her work. Her website is http://oliviakaufman.com. She can be reached at oliviakaufman@gmail.com.

Matthew West is a resident New Jersey artist, born and raised in South Dakota. Matthew West creates sculptures and installations that range from the realistic depictions of buffalos and automobiles, to large-scale works of abstract minimalism. West creates his own vernacular of images, symbols, and investigations of form drawn from his experiences growing up in South Dakota. He uses media as diverse as paper, clay, and computer animation.  He has shown work in New Jersey and abroad in Germany, and currently works for the Matrix Art Collective where he resides in Jersey City. His website is http://westieinc.com. He can be reached at westieinc@mac.com.

Jen Sohn-Park is a recent visual arts graduate of Mason Gross School of the Arts. Her focus in media spans from photography, videos, and illustration, to mixed-media collages. Through her work she concentrates on transformative possibilities, rearranging so-called “set” constructs, issues of control, and the battle between self-determination vs. destiny and chance. She has previously participated as an artist in coLAB Arts’ Resonate series, shown work at the Seed Gallery in Newark, New Jersey, studied and worked in Puerto Limón, Costa Rica, and was a curator for the Alfa Art Gallery in September 2008.  In addition to her work as an artist, Sohn-Park was an active organizer of art happenings throughout New Brunswick including This Town Needs A Parade (now in its fourth year), is a coLAB Arts visual arts producer, and currently resides in Central New Jersey. Her wesbite is http://jensohnpark.com. She can be reached at penjark@gmail.com.

Reid Addison Bingham is an electronics and video artist currently based in New Jersey.  He graduated from Rutgers College in 2007 with a B.A in the arts, spending most of his time making short video pieces and circuit bending.  Bingham has performed and exhibited throughout Philadelphia, Washington D.C., New Jersey, and New York.  He has been active in organizing many shows and events in the New Brunswick area, including the first installment of This Town Needs a Parade and the 431 Albus Cavus Gallery in Highland Park. He is a coLAB Arts visual arts producer and is presently interning at the digital media arts center, Harvestworks in Manhattan. He is currently learning the programming language, ‘Processing,’ to build audio/video synthesizers out of micro-controllers. His website is http://alloverthewhere.org. He can be reached at reidbingham@gmail.com.

Join us for this FREE event at the Alfa Art Gallery to celebrate the talents of local artists; Michael Benevenia, Alexis Palmaffy, Elizabeth Santana, Annie Sobrin and Lila Rose Nadelmann at Collaborative Arts first Resonate of the season! There’ll be food, fun and ART!!!

Collaborative Arts announces its lineup for Breakthrough Arts Fest: A Collaborative Arts mini-festival featuring visual and performing arts. Among the original work by New Brunswick artists included in the two weeklong festival are the world-premieres of one-act plays Baby Boom and Touch, and dance work Sentient. Breakthrough Arts Fest is being presented from May 16 through June 1.

Theater work consists of Baby Boom by Lia Romeo and directed by Laura Credidio, showing in repertory with Touch by Carrie Louise Nutt and directed by Christa Cillaroto. Also being staged is Wendy MacLeod’s Juvenilia, directed by Collaborative Arts artistic director Dan Swern, highlighting actors from Lab Theater, a Rutgers University student theater ensemble.

An original dance/theater piece, Sentient, directed by Avianna Perez, written in collaboration with Justin Woo is being performed by Collaborative Arts’ dance ensemble, Insurgo Stage Project. Sentient will be performed in repertory with The Day of Two Noons by graduating Rutgers University dance major, Morgan Hille Refakis, as well as Milestones: Dumping, by daring and hilarious spoken word/performance artist Pandora Scooter.

As part of ongoing efforts to make the work by New Brunswick playwrights more visible, the Breakthrough Arts Fest will include readings of four new works: Kevin Franklin’s Ivory for Ebony and Brett Williams’ The Revival directed by Dan Swern; Carrie Louise Nutt’s When Gods Walk the Earth directed by Christa Cillaroto; and Lia Romeo’s Green Whales directed by Brett Williams.

All dance and theater works will be presented in Downtown New Brunswick at the George Street Playhouse, located at 9 Livingston Avenue, New Brunswick, New Jersey 08901.

For a full calendar of events and ticket information please visit www.colab-arts.org/breakthrough-arts-fest. You can also make an inquiry or reservation by email at inquiry@colab-arts.org or by phone at (732) 993-5842.