ABOUT THE LAB
CHOREOGRAPHERS + WRITERS
COLLABORATE
ON MOVEMENT
FOR NEW MUSICALS DURING
INCUBATION
The New Works Lab makes space for 3 choreographers to bring 3 original musicals to life, often for the first time. Both the choreographers and writers benefit from seeing their piece staged while still in development. Writer Hunter Bell ([title of show], Silence! The Musical, Other World) will be the lab's Guest Moderator. Curated by Avital Asuleen, the participating all female-identifying choreographers include Courtney Laine Self, Angela Nicole Patmon and Zanza Steinberg.
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The featured musicals include Rob Rokicki and Sara Beth Pfeifer’s Experience Marianas (about an oceanic cult), Jaime Cepero’s Francois and the Rebels (a punk-rock retelling of the 1791 Haitian Revolution), and Lynne Shankel and Sara Cooper’s Perpetual Sunshine & Ghost Girls (a fresh all-woman+ look at the untold story of the radium girls). All three shows have been featured in New York Theatre Barn’s award-winning New Works Series. The company continues its partnership with Full Out Creative who will collaborate with the choreographers to film their pieces live.
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There is a limited amount of tickets for the in-person audience, as well as tickets to live stream the presentation. Patrons attending in-person will need to provide proof of a complete COVID-19 vaccination AND proof of a booster dose (for those eligible in accordance with CDC guidelines), along with a government-issued photo ID. New York Theatre Barn staff and artists are subject to mandatory vaccination and booster policy in addition to testing protocols.
conceived + curated by
Avital Asuleen
Associate Producer:
TORI CROW
HUNTER BELL (GUEST MODERATOR)
Actor/Writer- Earned an OBIE Award, a Drama League nomination, and a Tony nomination for Best Book of a Musical all for the original Broadway musical [title of show]. Other credits include [title of show], Silence! The Musical, Bellobration!, Villains Tonight!, Now. Here. This., The Great American Musical. He is a co-creator of the web series the [title of show] show and recently co-created and co-wrote the pilot “Glass Houses” for ABC Studios/Television and Cherry-wind Productions. Hunter has developed new works at the O’Neill Center, Ars Nova, PS 122, weston Playhouse and the Manhattan Theatre Source. As an actor, he has appeared on and off Broadway and around the country in numerous regional theatres, as well as in the films The Men Who Stare at Goats and Goodbye Baby. He is a distinguished alumnus of Webster University, a proud member of WGA, the Dramatists Guild, and a MacDowell fellow.
FullOut Creative:
KYLE BECKLEY + SANDY SHELTON
FEATURED CHOREOGRAPHERS
ANGELA PATMON
(Francois and the Rebels)
Angela Nicole Patmon grew up in Columbus, OH dancing from a young age. She is a proud alum of Ohio University where she was a Templeton Scholar on full scholarship and graduated with honors earning her BFA in dance performance, choreography, and pedagogy with credit from Ailey/Fordham. Patmon was a swing in The Jungle Book under Tony Award winners Christopher Gattelli and Mary Zimmerman, and danced with The Metropolitan Opera Ballet, Jazz at Lincoln Center, and Central Park Summer Stage here in New York, as well as New Jersey Performing Arts Center and Jacobs Pillow. She danced as a soloist for Deeply Rooted Dance Theater for several years, and as a guest dancer for Wideman/Davis Dance, Elements Contemporary Ballet, Oui Danse, and Eisenhower Dance Ensemble, in addition to performing as a backup dancer for Peaches, Fabulous, and Christina Milian. Other credits include Detroit Opera’s production of Pearl Fishers, and commercial dance work for MAC Cosmetics, Hermès, Apple Watch, Wolford, and New York Fashion Week. Patmon also danced in Bollywood hit film Dhoom 3, appeared in STARZ Network’s Flesh and Bone, and as Alicia Bloom in Elementary. Patmon was on faculty at Marymount School, Mile Square Theater, and Broadway Dance Center. She has choreographed several films and musical productions including Annie, Wizard of Oz, Mulan, Into the Woods, Beauty and the Beast, Shrek, Cinderella, and Freaky Friday. Her choreography has been performed throughout NYC and was selected to be presented as a part of Emerging Artist Theater's New Work Series. Patmon is currently on faculty at the Horace Mann School in the Bronx, and serves as the director and choreographer of her company, Patmon Dance Project.
Angela will feature work from
FRANCOIS AND THE REBELS
ByJaime Cepero
Francois and the Rebels is a punk rock telling of the 1791 Haitian Revolution. With a pulsing punk rock score, and a story pulled from historic events full of love, loss, and deception, Francois and the Rebels tells an important and often forgotten black history through the lens of an immersive high energy rock and roll experience.
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Francois and the Rebels was featured in Musical Theatre Factory’s 4X15, Joe’s Pub New Works concert program, and in NYTB’s 2020 Virtual New Works Series.
Zanza Steinberg is a Director, Choreographer, and Creative in NYC. She served as the Founding Artistic Director of ALMA NYC Dance Company for ten years. Zanza’s choreographic work spans from directing and choreographing concert dance at Alvin Ailey’s Citigroup Theater and The Paul Taylor Studios, immersive theater direction at Norwood Club, to commercials for V8 Energy, Studio Atelier, and Alembika clothing lines. Her choreography has opened runway shows at New York’s Couture Fashion Week over 5 seasons, and has served as the associate choreographer for The Time Machine development lab at NYMF. She has lectured at Lincoln Center’s Mentor-Linc on Arts Entrepreneurship, and created work for the United Nations’ Sustainability Summit in collaboration with Merit 360. She is proudly represented by LDC Artist Representation and is grateful for the opportunity to work with the New York Theater Barn! All glory to the dancers who have lost hope in her counting a single count.
ZANZA STEINBERG
(Perpetual Sunshine and The Ghost Girls)
Zanza will feature work from
PERPETUAL SUNSHINE AND THE GHOST GIRLS
Words by Sara Cooper
Music by Lynne Shankel
Perpetual Sunshine & the Ghost Girls is an all-woman+ through-composed musical theatre piece about the capitalist exploitation of workers’ bodies and rights in the face of a national public health crisis. Featuring an original 1920s-2020s mashup score, the show is based on the true story of the women who worked in the factories and were knowingly poisoned by the United States Radium Corporation, and who fought back, changing United States labor laws forever.
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Perpetual Sunshine & the Ghost Girls has been developed with The Beck Center for the Arts, Baldwin Wallace University and is a recipient of the National Alliance for Musical Theatre’s (NAMT) 2020 inaugural 15-minute musical competition. The show was featured in NYTB’s 2021 Virtual New Works Series.
Courtney Laine Self is thrilled to be working with Sarah and Rob on this exciting piece! Pre-pandemic, she directed/choreographed the regional theatre premiere of Fun Home at Millbrook Playhouse and directed the world premiere of the new play Sheila and Moby in DC. She assistant directed the New York Theatre Workshop/Audible Theater Off-Broadway production of Proof of Life and directed a Samuel French Off-Off Broadway Short Play Festival winner. As a creator, she was a Resident Artist at 92Y where she created two full-length theatre dance pieces and directed a workshop of new musical Bisland & Bly at The Redhouse.
Courtney Laine Self
(Experience Marianas)
Courtney will feature work from
EXPERIENCE MARIANAS
By Rob Rokicki and Sarah Beth Pfeifer
Experience Marianas is a wild sapphic rock musical adventure about one woman’s journey to escape an oceanic cult. The piece is a high-octane, darkly comedic examination of systems of control and how we struggle to define our identities within them. Set aboard a ship, the show immerses our audience into the Marianas Institute, an aquatic ‘healing center’ founded by Dr. Davis “Daddy” Johnson. We are indoctrinated into the group in real-time. “Informational sessions” start off completely plausible but get progressively wilder and more fantastical, complete with pyramid schemes, sex rituals, sea monsters, and eventually murder.
Experience Marianas was featured in Episode 1 of NYTB’s podcast “The Musicals of Tomorrow”.