INDEPENDENT THEATRE

Some of my favorite projects in New York's indie theatre spaces

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WM.SHAKESPEARE

Arclight Theatre

THE

TEMPEST

Staging Shakespeare’s The Tempest at the Archlight demanded more than conjuring a storm in a teacup. I set out to explore the play’s grand themes—revenge and forgiveness—within the most intimate setting imaginable: the human mind.

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

Koteles and Jacobs, who also brought the award-winning comedy Bald Diva! The Ionesco Parody Your Mother Warned You About to the very first Fresh Fruit Festival 10 years ago, are returning with another Ionesco-inspired play."

Broadway.com

DAVID KOTELES

Fresh Fruit Festival

AFTER THE

CHAIRS

Inspired by the Eugene Ionesco absurdist tale, David Koteles' After the Chairs tells the story of two men, Marc and Richard, alone in a quiet hospital room waiting for what happens next. A visit from friends? The telling of stories? Results from a doctor? A big performance? End of life as they know it? It is a play about family, marriage in sickness and in health, death, drag, drugs and (like the Ionesco play) many, many, many chairs.

WINNER!

Best Direction, Fresh Fruit Festival 2013

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

An afternoon of pleasantries quickly turns into a boiling teakettle of tension...the ending of the play is subtle and numbingly powerful."

Letters From the Mezz

I want the audience to look at the Founding Fathers through a lens that includes class, race and gender."

Call Me Adam

DAVID KOTELES

Metropolitan

Playhouse

M Y

FIRST

LADY

Presented as part of the Metropolitan Playhouse Founders Festival, My First Lady takes a funny and unexpected turn towards a battle of race, class, and gender in the new American republic when First Ladies Martha Washington, Abigail Adams, Dolley Madison, and Thomas Jefferson’s daughters gather for a "friendly" tea. The gloves come off when Jefferson's enslaved mistress Sally Hemmings claims her rightful place at the table.

The REAL First Ladies of Washington City give the dish on the 1801 Election."

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

Jacobs believes the choice of first-person perspective gives the audience an immediate point of entry. It's "that very human, individual response" missing from statistics-heavy news stories."

Seven Days

KATHRYN BLUME

Arclight Theatre

THE

BOY

COTT

Inspired by the ancient anti-war comedy Lysistrata, actor-activist Kathryn Blume plays Kathryn Blume, a woman trying to fight global warming and save the world — by writing a screenplay about the First Lady of the United States launching a national sex strike to fight global warming and save the world. Aided by her impassioned daughter, a high tech Secret Service agent, and a plucky Brazilian tree frog she meets on the Astral Plane, Lyssa bumps and lurches her way into an unexpected, wildly comic, and ultimately successful campaign.

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

As the story quickly moves from situation to situation, cleverly staged by Jason Jacobs on a minimalistic set ... (Sheinmel) begins to discover the meaning behind initially irrelevant occurrences and that life is full of the unexpected."

Theatre Is Easy

BY RICHARD

SHEINMEL

LaMama

POST-MODERN

LIVING

/LOST

IN STATEN ISLAND

I had the pleasure to direct two installments of Sheinmel's "Modern Living" play cycle, which began in 2006 at La MaMa. Much like Armistead Maupin's "Tales of The City", this series of related plays center on Mitch, a gay "downtown" New York performance artist (played by Sheinmel), as he writes plays about his life. The plays incorporate original songs and music by Clay Zambo.

The antidote to the surfeit of soulless synthetic musical comedies on Broadway awaits you at La MaMa, in the form of Post Modern Living, [...] whose casual informality, honesty, and warmth are rivaled only by its dazzlingly high entertainment quotient."

Martin Denton, NYTheatre.com

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

An evening of Jewishly inflected, queer songs brings Weimar Germany back to life with humor and music."

Tablet

a beautifully realized evocation of a club in Germany in the ‘30s ... a thrilling reminder of the power and strength of cabaret at its best.”

NitelifeExchange.com

BY JEREMY

LAWRENCE

PANGEA

LAVENDER

SONGS

2008 Bistro Award Winner! Originally produced in 2008 and revised in 2016 in response to the Trump ascendency, this cabaret theatre piece had an extended run at Pangea. Featuring songs originally written and performed by queer aertists in Weimar-era Berlin (with new English lyrics by Jeremy), the piece was based on an evening created by Alan Lareau for the U.S. Holocaust Museum om Washington DC.

Out of this minimal landscape, director Jason Jacobs creates a vibrant, small-scale panorama with his precise staging. Lawrence glides around, often stands still totally, but remains mesmerizing due to Jacobs’ command of visual technique."

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

OTHER VENUES

POST-LIU

VERMONT THEATRE CO

THEATRE ASKEW

ORIGINAL WORK

TEMPEST

WM.SHAKESPEARE

Arclight Theatre

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

CHAIRS

DAVID KOTELES

Fresh Fruit Festival

Broadway.com

WINNER!

Best Direction, Fresh Fruit Festival 2013

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

FIRST

LADY

DAVID KOTELES

Metropolitan

Playhouse

An afternoon of pleasantries quickly turns into a boiling teakettle of tension...the ending of the play is subtle and numbingly powerful."

Letters From the Mezz

The REAL First Ladies of Washington City give the dish on the 1801 Election."

I want the audience to look at the Founding Fathers through a lens that includes class, race and gender."

Call Me Adam

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

BOY

COTT

KATHRYN BLUME

Arclight Theatre

Jacobs believes the choice of first-person perspective gives the audience an immediate point of entry. It's "that very human, individual response" missing from statistics-heavy news stories."

Seven Days

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

LIVING

/LOST

BY RICHARD

SHEINMEL

LaMama

Theatre Is Easy

Martin Denton, NYTheatre.com

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

LAVENDER

SONGS

BY JEREMY

LAWRENCE

PANGEA

An evening of Jewishly inflected, queer songs brings Weimar Germany back to life with humor and music."

Tablet

a beautifully realized evocation of a club in Germany in the ‘30s ... a thrilling reminder of the power and strength of cabaret at its best.”

NitelifeExchange.com

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

OTHER VENUES

POST-LIU

VERMONT THEATRE CO

THEATRE ASKEW

ORIGINAL WORK

THE
TEMPEST

WM.SHAKESPEARE

Arclight Theatre

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

AFTER THE
CHAIRS

DAVID KOTELES

Fresh Fruit Festival

Broadway.com

WINNER!

Best Direction, Fresh Fruit Festival 2013

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

MY
FIRST LADY

DAVID KOTELES

Metropolitan

Playhouse

An afternoon of pleasantries quickly turns into a boiling teakettle of tension...the ending of the play is subtle and numbingly powerful."

Letters From the Mezz

The REAL First Ladies of Washington City give the dish on the 1801 Election."

I want the audience to look at the Founding Fathers through a lens that includes class, race and gender."

Call Me Adam

G A L L E R Y

C L O S E

THE
BOYCOTT

KATHRYN BLUME

Arclight Theatre

Jacobs believes the choice of first-person perspective gives the audience an immediate point of entry. It's "that very human, individual response" missing from statistics-heavy news stories."

Seven Days