A fisherman in a small coastal town dreams of mass marine extinction, and hauls in empty traps each day. A prodigal son returns, looking for answers. Three young women are beginning to change form, and nobody is talking about it. And yes, some time in the past, on a particularly cold midnight, a woman walked into the sea. It has happened before.
Hi folks! We’re Emily, Emily, and Jenna, and we are raising funds to produce the world premiere of SOMETHING FOR THE FISH.
SOMETHING FOR THE FISH is a play about people on the verge of enormous change, set in a small coastal town rocked by the sudden disappearance of the sea life it depends on. It is both a climate change parable and an intimate look at the transformative (and transfiguring) power of grief, featuring music, visual art, extreme weather, and a little magic.
We are so excited to be producing a fully realized premiere of this play at CPR - Center for Performance Research in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, this August 9 - 12!
A New Take on an Old Form
The earliest spark for this play came during the Start From Scratch retreat with feminist theater company The Hearth in April of 2017. SOMETHING FOR THE FISH brings a new sensibility to the classic narrative of the “community in crisis.” Performed by a cast of women and non-binary artists, this play challenges stereotypically “male” roles such as the Prodigal Son and Community Leader. Our production diverges from the traditional makeup of the American play to put onstage people who have often been left out of these stories, and our commitment to lifting up underrepresented artists extends to our entire creative team.
A Little More About Us
Emily Krause (playwright): Emily Krause is a Brooklyn-based playwright, actor, and occasional songwriter originally from Portland, Oregon. As a writer, Emily most enjoys reveling in sound and rhythm. She can often be found carving out small human stories, then pitting them against larger-than-life circumstances--natural disasters, sentient old growth forests, 72-hour funerals...things like that. Other plays include: Provenance, a tree play,
t h r o u g h o u t i v e n e s s, We Were Always Our Own Thing, POSITIVE, and Sarah. Recent collaborations: playwright on Exquisite Corpse Company's A Ribbon About A Bomb and songwriter on Ran Xia's Pomegrenade for IRT's 3B Developmental Series. She has had readings of her plays with Exquisite Corpse Company, The Playwriting Collective, and The Bechdel Group. She is an alum of the National Theater Institute at the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center. BA: Whitman College.
Jenna Rossman (director): Jenna is an NYC based director. She is interested in plays centered around the stories of women and putting onstage what we do not see in the everyday world. Jenna’s work often features music and magic. Recent Directing: Dog Ears by Madison Pollack (Triskelion Arts Center), The Colchester Thunder by Anya Richkind (24 Hour Plays, Nationals). Jenna was the Associate Director for the world premiere of Safety Net, written and directed by Young Jean Lee. She has also worked with Kip Fagan, Annie Tippe, and Whitney White as an assistant/associate. Jenna is an alumna of NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Emily Caffery (producer) is a theater artist and producer of primarily experimental and ensemble-based new work. She is the associate producer with The Assembly, whose latest premiere SEAGULLMACHINE ran at La MaMa this April. Previously the assistant line producer of The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, she has assisted the development of new work with The Team, Dave Malloy, and Superhero Clubhouse Big Green Theater. She is the co-founder of the leastaways, a collaborative theater ensemble that performed the original play with music in living rooms across the country. She is an alumna of Wesleyan University, the Eugene O'Neill Theater Center's National Theater Institute.
A Brief History of This Project
Jenna and Emily met through friends in the summer of 2016, first collaborated on a reading of Emily’s play t h r o u g h o u t i v e n e s s that fall, and have since dreamed of taking their creative relationship to the next level. Emily started writing SOMETHING FOR THE FISH in the Spring of 2017 while on a writing retreat with The Hearth, and brought the first draft to Jenna early that fall. Jenna led a workshop of the play in December, which sparked big rewrites and a brand new draft. At the end of May, Emily will be taking SOMETHING FOR THE FISH to the Great Plains Theatre Conference in Omaha, where it will be one of 20 plays selected out of 1000 submissions to receive a public reading, dramaturgical support, and feedback from renowned guest artists. What better way to launch this play into its NY premiere! We can’t wait to share this fresh piece with you all…
But we need your help to make that happen!
Why We're Fundraising
We’re starting from scratch! It’s a big endeavor, and we’re determined to give this play the resources it needs to be fully realized. So here’s where the money is going:
- RENTING THE SPACE. Performance and rehearsal spaces in NYC are ~pricy~ but they also bring so much to the table! We’re beyond excited to be producing this show at CPR - Center for Performance Research, a beautiful venue with a lovely staff and the technical resources this play is begging for.
- DESIGN. SOMETHING FOR THE FISH is a highly visual and atmospheric piece with a couple of key design elements (no spoilers here!). Giving our designers the tools to fully realize the world of this play will be instrumental in continuing the development of the play.
- PAYING OUR ARTISTS. This is everything to us. We believe in properly compensating our designers, actors, and production team for the work they do in making this dream a reality! Oh, and elevating the work of an entirely non-cis-male team of artists?? YES PLEASE.
Something for the Fish is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of Something for the Fish must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
