LMAY F*cking & Dying: Who We're Talking To

For our final Let Me Ascertain You of the season, F*cking & Dying, we decided to delve into two of our favorite obsessions to see what happens when death and sex fixations collide. 

For the past few months, we've been exploring our competing sex and death drives, morbid curiosities, and dirty secrets on the path to nirvana. In true Civilians' fashion, we've interviewed a huge cross-section of individuals on the subject(s), including the owner of a six-feet-under club (yep, it's exactly what it sounds like), a sex therapist, a sex addict, a terror sex enthusiast, a "rent-a-boy," and many more.  

We wanted to share some brief experts from the interviews we've conducted for our cabaret at Joe's Pub on Saturday May 17th @ 7pm. Here’s a little preview of what we have in store:

We warn them that if they have something real special, like a designer suit, and they bring it down into the coffin, and you’re like number ten down there, it will get dirty. There’s no stopping that. Yah? And we kind of advise people to use condoms, uh, and we say like yeah, we don’t stop you from doing it without a condom, but just like clean up your stuff down there, like be aware that people want to go in the coffin afterwards and if there’s a mess down there, you’re cleaning the stuff up, it’s not the gravediggers job to clean up your...jizz down there.
––Six-Feet-Under Club

Screen Still from the movie SHAME

And, part of that is this whole ritual of repression, like repressing the repulsion. Um, trying to instigate and curate desire and ultimately, for me it's meant being um... vulnerable to strangers. In a way that is like, deeply disturbing. Sometimes it feels even unhealthy. Sometimes it's kind of magical, actually. To go into these high-rises in New York and to always, the door opens and the stranger is behind the door. And then to walk over every time to the window and look at the view. Usually it's a setting sun. And, and then to take a deep breath. And then be like, "Okay, I no longer- I'm no longer me." It's not always terrible, but most of the time it is.

––Rent-A-Boy

LMAY: F*cking and Dying - Meet The Composers!

In anticipation of Let Me Ascertain You: F*cking and Dying, we wanted to give you a sneak-peak of our impressive lineup of composers. Check them out below, and then grab your tickets to the show before we sell out. Saturday, May 17th @ Joe's Pub. Tickets available HERE! 

César Alvarez writes about theater, music and science here. He’s a Drama Desk-nominated composer, lyricist, performer and writer. Founding member of The Lisps. Co-founder and resident composer of LA-based dance company Contra-Tiempo.

Lady Rizo is a Grammy Award winning comedienne and chanteuse who was named the ‘Cabaret Superstar’ by New York Magazine. She has sung and recorded with Moby and Yo-Yo Ma among many others. She is Mistress of Ceremonies for current hotspot The Darby, and performs regularly at the legendary nightclub Nell’s and at Joe’s Pub since 2009. A recipient of the New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship. Be sure to check out her website here. 

Maggie-Kate Coleman wrote the book and lyrics for POP! and From a Childhood, written with Erato Kremmyda. She's been all over the place: The York Theatre Company’s NEO Cabaret (with composer Daniel Maté), Joe’s Pub, Barrington Stage, Laurie Beechman Theatre...just to name a few!

Erato A. Kremmyda is a New York based composer, originally from Athens (Greece).  Theatre (selected): Agamemnon (Irondale, NYC), The Dot (Bios, Athens), We Are Theatre(Cherry Lane Theatre, NYC), Wagon Wheel (Loewe Foundation Development Award, Planet Connections, NYC), Field Trip: A Climate Cabaret (Superhero Clubhouse/ Marfa Dialogues NYC)...and many more! Take a trip over to Erato's website.

Called “electrifying” by The Huffington Post, the Brooklyn-based Grace McLean is a multi-hyphenate actress-composer-singer-writer-teacher on the rise. Following a year as a lead in Off-Broadway's critically acclaimed electro-pop opera Natasha, Pierre & the Great Comet of 1812, Grace has returned her focus to her acclaimed original music, both as a solo artist and with her band Grace McLean & Them Apples.

Andrea Grody was Music Director for The Civilians’ The Great Immensity at the Public Theater. Other recent projects include Fortress of Solitude at Dallas Theater Center, Venice at the Public, Love Labour's Lost at Shakespeare in the Park, White Christmas at Northern Stage, and a workshop of Carmen set in Cuba and reimagined by Moisés Kaufman and Arturo O’Farrill. Upcoming: Robin Hood at Williamstown Theater Festival. You can hear Andrea's most recent output on our podcast Sex Variants!  
  

The Civilians are Hiring a New Producing Director

PRODUCING DIRECTOR

The Civilians seeks a Producing Director to partner with the Artistic Director to lead the company's ongoing organizational development and advance its artistic mission. The Producing Director will provide inspirational leadership and help promote collaboration, innovation and sustainability for this thriving theater company. The position manages relationships with all of The Civilians’ stakeholders both internally (staff, artists and board) and externally (producers, presenters, funders, program partners). This position plays the leading role in producing The Civilians’ work, which includes an annual New York production, co-productions locally and nationally, touring, and online media. We seek an individual with exceptional creativity, entrepreneurial vision, and proven management skills for this critical role in our company.

Responsibilities:

·         Producing the company’s artistic work, including marketing and audience development;

·         Sustaining key relationships and cultivating new resources available to The Civilians; 

·         Budgeting and financial management;

·         Individual and Institutional development in collaboration with the Development Director.

·         Identifying and developing new opportunities for growth both for artistic programs and the company overall.

·         Staff leadership, Board relations and strategic planning.

Necessary skills: At least seven years of management responsibility in the arts. Several years of producing experience. Non-profit financial management. Experience with nonprofit development. Solid understanding of commissioning, artist, and presenting contracts. 

Ideal skills: An established national network with producing theaters and presenters. Experience with marketing and PR. Online media literacy. Experience with educational programs.

Competitive salary and benefits. Please send a letter of interest, resume, and salary requirements to: search@thecivilians.org.

ABOUT THE CIVILIANS

Led by Artistic Director Steve Cosson, The Civilians is a company that creates new theater from creative investigations into the most vital questions of the present. Through a number of artistic programs, The Civilians advances theater as an engine of artistic innovation and strengthens the connections between theater and society.

Since its founding in 2001, The Civilians has existed as a theater of discovery.  As a company, we have sought to challenge our ways of knowing and reveal the world as a bigger, stranger, and more complex place than previously believed.  Through this work, artists and audiences have walked in the shoes of those they hadn’t known, found something new in the familiar, broke out of insularity, and grappled with the unknown.  We have investigated the ever-changing present, the “others,” the civilians. 

By embracing this philosophy and a distinctive developmental process, The Civilians has become nationally and internationally known for a string of acclaimed theatrical works, including: Mr. Burns: A Post-Electric Play (2013), Paris Commune (2012), In the Footprint: The Battle Over Atlantic Yards (2010), This Beautiful City (2009), (I Am) Nobody's Lunch (2006) and Gone Missing (2003). The Civilians works with countless partners locally, national, and internationally in order to create, present, and produce this work.  In addition to the creation of work, The Civilians has created a slate of programming in support of artists and their process, including the R&D Writers Group, Let Me Ascertain You cabarets and podcasts, and online media programs.

For more information please visit  www.thecivilians.org.

"Rowena" from Let Me Ascertain You: Sex Variants 1941

Check out Cyrilla Baer performing "Rowena" (music by Erato A. Kremmyda and lyrics by Maggie-Kate Coleman) from our recent Let Me Ascertain You: Sex Variants 1941 at Joe's Pub! 

Go HERE to listen to the entire podcast, and please subscribe on iTunes and rate us.

Balancing Agenda + Art

The Civilians’ artistic team has started interviewing other artists that address climate change in their work as part of an ongoing series. We are excited to feature a brief portion of the next interview in the series, a chat between the founder and “Captain” of Superhero Clubhouse, Jeremy Pickard, and The Civilians’ Literary Associate, Amina Henry. 

Superhero Clubhouse is a collective of artists and environmental advocates working at the intersection of science and theater. They make original performances via a collaborative, green and rigorous process. 

Jeremy Pickard in DON'T BE SAD, FLYING ACE! at the 14th St Y, photo by Marina McClure

I’m curious as to when you started – so you had the first seed of an idea for “Don’t Be Sad, Flying Ace!” and when did you start writing it?

So I had the seed of an idea a couple years ago but I just didn’t know much more than it had to do with a dog inspired by Snoopy, stuck on his rooftop floating in the middle of the ocean, and it was called “Don’t Be Sad, Flying Ace!” I didn’t know much more than that. But I figured it had something to do with rising oceans and maybe storms. 

I wonder if you could talk a little about the trick of talking about issues via performance but avoiding it becoming an ‘issue piece’ that is alienating or isolating.

This is the crux, like, this is it, that’s what eco-theater is striving towards, is finding the balance. And I keep trying to figure out ways to define what I’m doing and my most recent definition is that eco-theater is the craft of balancing agenda and art. And that’s really tricky. Because if I want to just write a play with no agenda then I might start writing a character and the character wants to go in this direction and we take that character in this direction. But I’ve encountered this time and time again with so many of the plays where we’ll be creating it, and we will get excited because we’ll start figuring things out about what happens with the character. And we’ll get lost in the typical way that’s really helpful for a play. But then you have to step back and go, is this actually telling the story that is rooted in this question? Is it doing that justice? Is it reflecting this question? And so, I find that actually, rather than being inhibiting, it’s really freeing, because it forces you to make a choice. It’s what Anne Bogart calls ‘the violence of decision-making in art,’ the violence of making a choice.

I was just at this conference in Toronto called “Staging Sustainability” and the speaker began the conference by saying one of her main themes was ‘living in the questions.’ And that’s my thing, living in the questions because not even the scientists have the answers, nobody has the full-on solutions…because the real solutions are not going to happen. A real solution would be everyone in the world stops flying, stops driving cars, stops eating meat. Or the other solution is that scientists get tons of funding to start sequestering carbon, which may happen, but like none of these are easy. Building walls around Manhattan is not an easy solution, and that may not be the solution, right? I don’t know, I mean there are so many big problems that are fast approaching and so many problems that we’re already in the thick of that nobody knows the answer to. So why in the world would I make a play and tell people the answer to anything? Because to me the point of eco-theater is to engage the audience in questions so that they leave and think about it.

Be sure to check out our website devoted to The Great Immensity for more interesting projects that explore the intersection of art + science + activism. 

Sex Variants, Part IV

This is our fourth and final episode of our Let Me Ascertain You: Sex Variants 1941, taking inspiration from a study conducted in the 1930’s by Dr. George Henry in which he interviewed a couple hundred individuals and cataloged data such as a complete family history with symbols to indicate who had what venereal disease, tuberculosis, alcoholism, who committed suicide, who was psychotic. We set some of these personal histories to song and brought others to life with monologues performed at Joe’s Pub in NYC.

To kick us off, we’ll start with a song written and performed by Max Vernon taking inspiration from the case study of Moses I. And the little intro you’ll hear is taken from Dr. Henry’s own words, performed by Trey Lyford. Also featured, actor Nedra McClyde performing the case study of Myrtle K, a vaudeville comedian. After that, we’ll wrap things up with a sea shanty, “Odd Girl Out” written by Jill Sobule, inspired by Roberta H., and performed by Marykate O’Neil. Many thanks to everyone involved in this project and our project contributors Ian Daniel, Joel Glassman, Amina Henry, Leicester Landon, and Benjamin Viertel.

TO SUBSCRIBE TO THE LET ME ASCERTAIN YOU PODCAST SERIES ON ITUNES, PLEASE CLICK HERE!

We Want Your Stories!

Hi Friends of The Civilians,

Our “Let Me Ascertain You” series returns to Joe’s Pub on Saturday, May 17^th at 7pm. We’re hoping you can help us with our next installment: “F*cking and Dying.”

If you didn’t notice, we’re a bit obsessed with sex and death at The Civilians and this cabaret explores what happens when those fixations collide. We will look at the duality of human nature and our competing sex and death drives - our instinct for life, love and reproduction against our instinct toward death, aggression, and repulsion...and we need your stories!

If any of you or anyone you know might have good stories about sex or death or tales where the two collide -- please send details our way!

We’re looking to hear stories about…

- Wild coming-of-age sex stories or sexual explorations

- Sex addiction or Nyphomania

- Auto-erotic fetishes

- Dominatrix work

- “Terror sex” following disaster or trauma

- Sexual encounters near or connected to dying, funerals

...or of course necrophilia 

Please send us a brief summary of your story or shoot any questions you might have to projectmanager@thecivilians.org and if we think your story might work for us, we’ll be in touch about setting up an interview. Any and all leads are helpful. We’re looking forward to hearing your stories. For more information click here. 

Yours,

The Civilians

Photo Credit: Antoine D'Agata