April 14 – May 19, 2012Final Performance: Saturday, May 19, 7pmFollowed by Q & A and cast party

EFA Project Space323 West 39th Street, 2nd floor(btw 8th and 9th Ave)New York, NY 10018T. 212-563-5855 x 244projectspace@efanyc.org www.efanyc.org

Organized by: Kara Hearn

Director: Sarah Cameron SundeAssistant Director: Trent AndersonComposer: Christopher BergChoreographer: Pia Monique Murray

Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! is a presentation of EFA Project Space’s Artist/Organizer Series. This series highlights the activities of Artist/Organizers — pivotal artists who, through the act of organizing, readdress and refresh the framework through which we use artistic expression to build community.

EFA Project Space presents interdisciplinary video artist Kara Hearn’s barebones, experimentally cast production that uses an orphan-themed Broadway musical (we have been advised not to name) as its point of departure. Inspired by the experience of watching or listening to orphan-themed musicals as a child and projecting oneself into the starring role, the project is designed to serve a group of adults who never had the chance to fulfill this dream on stage. The casting of each part was based more on the willingness and need of the performers than on singing, dancing ability, or appearance.

Under the direction of Sarah Cameron Sunde in collaboration with Assistant Director Trent Anderson, Choreographer Pia Monique Murray and Composer Christopher Berg, the team will have the absurd task, that is, the creative challenge of generating a new musical that fulfills the performers’ sincere desire to be in a famous orphan musical without them actually being in one of the famous orphan musicals.

The 8 cast members were drawn to the project for a variety of reasons. Doug had an audition to be in Oliver when he was 11 but backed out at the last minute from stage fright. Angela is an adoptee and an orphan who has a complicated relationship with orphan-themed musicals. Katherine was consistently overlooked for starring roles because of her race. Brian is a performer who loves musicals but who doesn’t sing well. Michael was drawn to performing arts as a child but was steered by his parents into an engineering high school instead. This is his first time performing.

This impractical project is taking place over 5 weeks at EFA Project Space in Manhattan. The project will exist as an ongoing live performance (rehearsals are open to the public) and in its final form as a 30 to 45 minute video documenting the process of putting on the production, from auditions to opening night. There is a final performance on May 19 at 7pm.

For press inquiries please contact Michelle Levy, Director of EFA Project Space at michelle@efanyc.org.

A Program of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts

323 West 39 Street 2nd Floor New York NY 10018212.563.5855 x 244 Wed- Sat 12- 6 www.efanyc.org

Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical!

presents

Rene Barkett is a ceramicist, video art-ist, and designer liv-ing in New York City. She works as both a fashion designer and design manager in ac-cessories, where she dedicates herself to a product line from be-ginning to end, across three continents, to en-sure its success. As a ceramicist, she draws from a wide range of cultural influences to create work that is frac-

tured, patterned, textured, complex, rhythmic, bold, and fluid. Her work searches for artistry in the functional, and has ap-peared in numerous books and shows. Her budding practice as a video artist walks on a fine line of satirical comedy, such as in her award-winning inaugural video, President Sarah Palin Goes To Paris. What she hopes to get out of Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! is a lot of laughs for years to come.

Brian Dunlop is thrilled to be a part of the amazing process that is Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! Originally hailing from the tiny state of Con-necticut he attended Coastal Carolina Univer-sity where he received a B.A. in Dramatic Arts and a B.A. in Communi-cation. He then went on to study at the Eugene O’Neill National Theatre Institute in Waterford, CT and the St. Peters-

burg State Theatre Academy in St. Petersburg Russia. An avid improviser, writer and mover he is constantly searching for new faces to make and new voices to use, much to the chagrin of his roommate. He is very excited to share this pro-cess with the world and can’t wait to discover more about his inner orphan. Special thanks to the Unnamed Broadway Mu-sical: The Musical! team for being so awesome it makes his head want to implode, his family, friends, and Taka-Sa.

Sydney A. Batten hails from Birmingham, Ala-bama, but currently re-sides in Brooklyn. After graduating from Emory University in 2008, she worked on farms in Eu-rope before moving to New York in 2010. She has been on stage since she was 6, perform-ing for regional the-ater groups across the southeast. By day she is a mild-mannered mar-keting associate work-ing in Midtown. Through

Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! Sydney hopes to explore what it means to find your family (whether biological or otherwise) and to make your own home in the world.

Doug Levy is a New York-based writer and editor for Flavorpill, a website dedicated to local and national arts and culture. As a child, he dreamed of being a professional actor and went so far as to pre-pare a song to audition for a Broadway pro-duction of an orphan musical. He never did make it to that audition though, after simultane-ously developing a seri-ous case of stage fright.

Later on, Doug did find his place on stage as the lead singer for NYC band the GoStation, having discovered that original music was a more natural outlet for his talents. The group released one album, Passion Before Function, in 2007. Un-named Broadway Musical: The Musical! marks Doug’s first theatrical appearance since he held minor roles in 4th and 5th grade afterschool productions of Guys and Dolls and Prep-pies. Clearly, it was worth the wait.

M e e t t h e C a s t !

Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical!

Michael Pool wel-comes the challenge of creating a new orphan-themed musical from the ground up with his fellow cast-mates and an amazing production team. By working to-gether and drawing on common experiences he hopes that we can create a new shared vi-sion that fulfills each of our individual dreams and goals. While Mi-chael hasn’t been on stage since he last per-

formed in a sixth grade church play, he leapt at the chance to join our collaborative vision of Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! Michael works in the financial district managing travel loyalty programs and is seriously considering awarding frequent flyer points to patrons who visit our performance on a regular basis. Michael was born in Texas and thanks his family for the countless hours they endured during camping trips while he played his favorite orphan musical soundtrack over and over (and over).

Katherine Lim re-cently returned to New York City after over ten years in London. She practiced law in Eng-land and hopped back across the pond to qualify as an attorney in New York. She re-cently finished a Mas-ter’s in Law at George-town, where she played Peep-Bo in The Mikado and a Tragedian and Horatio in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. She was also

Assistant Director for Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom. Katherine was drawn to Unnamed Broadway Musical: the Musical! as she has loved musicals ever since she was a girl sing-ing “Tomorrow” in her first recital. And the copyright issues grabbed her attention.

Megan Tefft is origi-nally from a rural town in PA that grazes the Mason-Dixon, which is the source of her nasal and lazy accent and the home of her first relationship with live performance. She now lives and waits tables in Brooklyn. When moving to NYC 7 years ago, she networked, in-terned, interviewed and scoured for a career. Instead, she worked for free, co-founding an

arts education and art space exchange program in Bushwick that catered to many artists and disadvantaged kids. They have since lost their space and she has decided to focus more on the cultivation of her own creative seeds. Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! happens to coincide perfect-ly with this self-reinvention and also happens to be a project that is interesting to her as a venue for collaborative work. The theme of orphans can be interpreted in so many ways and she is very excited to see what happens and to own part of what is ultimately created.

Angela Williams is an orphan and adop-tee who seeks enlight-enment and kitty cat yawns. Having unlim-ited access to kitty cat yawns at home, she turned to Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical! for enlighten-ment. She thinks she’s going to find it. When she’s not at the Eliza-beth Foundation for the Arts she knits and sends people to chase ghosts in flight suits as

a part of her Ghostbusters shadow cast show, called the Min-ions of Gozer, where she works as creator, producer, assis-tant director, and cast member.

M e e t t h e C a s t !

Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical!

Unnamed Broadway Musical: The Musical!

Kara Hearn is an interdisciplinary video artist. She makes quiet and absurd work about the way tragedies reside in the head; the way heroisms play out in the mind’s eye, the inside place where stories get conjured, dreamed, remembered. Dithering between melodrama and deadpan, her videos degrade mainstream cinema by being too sincere, too simple, telling too many stories with very little stuff. Hearn’s work has been screened and exhibited nationally and internationally at such venues as DiverseWorks, White Columns, The Luckman Gallery, Pacific Film Archive, New Langton Arts, Southern Exposure, the Walker Art Center, Dallas Video Festival, Women in the Directors Chair International Film and Video Festival, and the Festival Tous Courts International Festival of Cinema. She received an MFA from the University of California at Berkeley in 2007, was a Core Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston from 2007-09, and completed a residency at Recess Activities Inc. in New York City in 2010.

Sarah Cameron Sunde is a New York based theater director who collaboratively creates interdisciplinary performances for the stage and beyond. She started directing while living in England in 1997 and was influenced by European traditions of expressionism and devising theater. She has directed several U.S. debut productions of plays by contemporary international master playwrights: THE ASPHALT KISS by Brazil’s Nelson Rodrigues, and her own translations of NIGHT SINGS ITS SONGS, DEATHVARIATIONS, and SA KA LA by Norway’s major contemporary playwright, Jon Fosse – who considers her “his American voice.” World premiere directing credits include productions at 3LD Art & Technology Center (THE DIARY OF A TEENAGE GIRL), The Guthrie Studio (WHAT MAY FALL), Rattlestick Playwrights Theater (THE AMISH PROJECT), and New Georges (GOOD HEIF) – one of NYC’s premiere downtown theater companies where she has been on staff since 2001. Sunde is also Co-Artistic Director of Oslo Elsewhere, a published translator, and an active advocate for the art of translation. Honors include: American Scandinavian Society Artist Award, Hermitage Foundation Residency, a NYtheatre.com Person-of-the-Year Award, and a Princess Grace Award.

Trent Anderson is a graduate of Manhattanville College (BA Theatre, 2011) and the National Theatre Institute (Spring 2010). He has interned with Clubbed Thumb (New York) and Ensemble Theatre (Sydney, Australia). Recent projects: The Chairs (dir.), Twelfth Night (Sir Andrew), and Into the Woods (Baker) at Manhattanville; The Small (Elf / Chive Puppeteer) with Clubbed Thumb; Foreplays 2012: Full Fervor (ass’t, Estreilles Verdes) with FullStop Collective.

Christopher Berg is a composer, pianist, music director and theater artist. Reviewing a recording of his Songs on Poems of Frank O’Hara, the American Record Guide said, “On the evidence of these songs, Berg may be an American Hugo Wolf.” Steven Blier, Artistic Director of the New York Festival of Song, has written, “Just as Poulenc illuminated the poetry of Apollinaire and Eluard, Chris Berg clarifies O’Hara. He musicalizes O’Hara’s words with an expert sense of timing, a perfect balance of recitative and tunefulness and a dry sense of humor. In this subtle blend of music, words, and silence, he locates the poem’s furtive sensuality.” New recordings of several of his song cycles featuring singers David Krohn, Lauren Snouffer, and Vera Slywotzky, will be released in 2012. Among his other composing credits are a musical, Back Home, produced at the New York Music Theater Festival 2007, and an opera,Cymbeline, based on Shakespeare’s play. As pianist and composer, he has ongoing collaborations with the Mirror Visions Ensemble and Opera on Tap. As an actor/performer, he has appeared with Gorilla Repertory, the ArcLight Theater Company, Holderness, and Keigwin & Co., and currently with the performance group Lydian Junction.

Pia Monique Murray is originally from Brooklyn, New York and has been dancing since the age of three. She has trained in ballet, modern, West African and hip-hop dance. While majoring in Dance and African American Studies at Oberlin College, she had the opportunity to work with Dianne McIntyre and perform her choreography with Cleveland Dance Theater and attended the Trinity/LaMama Performing Arts Program in New York City. She studied dance forms of the African Diaspora with Adenike Sharpley, leading the troupe Dance Diaspora as dance captian. Pia travelled to the Gambia, West Africa to learn Guinean traditional dance with Alasane Sumak of Fatala African Ballet. She is currently studying traditional Ivorian dance with Vado Diomande and performing with his group Kotchegna Dance Company. Pia’s choreography has been performed at Dixon Place and LaMama ETC among other New York venues. She currently performs with alongside emerging pop artist Tecla Esposito and with Rakia Seaborn’s RAKIA! Pia engages in dance as a performer, choreographer, administrator, tour manager, teaching artist, and stage manager and is the Founding Artistic Director of the Pia Monique Murray Dance Collective (PMMDC). She has worked with a diverse roster of artists in various capacities: dance companies Urban Bush Women, Doug Elkins & Friends and Vangeline Theater; dancers Nora Chipaumire, Katsura Kan, Blondell Cummings, Paloma McGregor and Souleymane Badolo; and musicians Thomas Mapfumo and the Blacks Unlimited, Courtney Bryan, TECLA, Gordon Voidwell and Kassa Overall.

T h e C r e a t i v e T e a m