Six years into collaborating as a director-dramaturg pair, Erica and Morgan are bringing their producing experience to underserved new work creators. Our inaugural production will be Charles Green’s In the Castle of Eternal Sunset: A Module for Ten 0th Level Characters presented at Brick Aux in Brooklyn from August 9 to 13, 2023. We are also beginning to raise funds to pay the artists for The Interstitial’s forthcoming production of the incredibly touching play You Must Wear a Hat by C. Meaker, a piece long overdue for staging in the NYC community. 

The Interstitial’s Mission: As new work producers, Erica and Morgan are embracing the in-between. Collaborative, creative projects can often flounder in the spaces that exist between generation, exploration, and presentation. We are interested in providing resources to embrace these interstitial moments in artistic development and support the artists that find themselves in these unmoored periods in a project’s lifespan. In February 2023, we launched our efforts with a staged reading of Eric Marlin’s Denial in A.R.T./New York’s Dark Night Series @ the Gural to bring the play, a recipient of acclaim and decoration since 2021, finally in front of a public audience. 

The Interstitial believes in compensating artists fully for their efforts in production. The funds raised in this campaign will be, first and foremost, set aside to pay the actors, stage manager, and designer for In the Castle of Eternal Sunset. A portion of the remaining funds will be used for production expenses (for example, one hour of rehearsal space costs $12). As the piece follows a D&D campaign to its conclusion: we’re creating a world of two 14-year-olds playing D&D! This includes costumes, props (hello, D&D snacks!), and equipment rentals. One of the truly exceptional elements of In the Castle of Eternal Sunset is the memories read aloud by the audience, prompted by the dice rolls within the game. As there are MANY possibilities for the outcome, an essential expense of the production is printing the customized pamphlets distributed to the audience holding the memories of the boys’ friendship. Inspired by Dungeons and Dragons pamphlets of the past, these pamphlets will bring to life all of the unspoken life outside the game.

 

 

As mentioned, we are also starting to fundraise to bring on board the artists for our forthcoming production of C. Meaker’s You Must Wear a Hat. This piece will require significantly more personnel than our upcoming collaboration at Brick Aux. As we continue to seek co-production for You Must Wear a Hat, bringing to the collaboration a portion of the funds to pay the artists will bolster our ability to bring C. Meaker’s powerful play to fruition in the way it deserves after years of development around the country. 

Tell me more about…In the Castle of Eternal Sunset: A Module for Ten 0th Level Characters:  A play that changes with each performance–based on the roll of the dice–In the Castle of Eternal Sunset follows two teenage boys as they play a game of Dungeons & Dragons on an autumn day in 2004. As the teenagers roll to see what happens next, their different possible futures slowly unfold—both in, and outside, the game.

During the play, audience members will be prompted to read aloud fragments of text from their seats, determined randomly by the fall of the dice. The texts contain the hundred different possibilities of how the boys’ lives might unfold. Their fates, then, are never set—until the die rolls, each performance, set them on their path—and the audience speaks their futures into being.

For tickets to In the Castle of Eternal Sunset: A Module for Ten 0th Level Characters, visit https://ci.ovationtix.com/122/production/1169006 before we close on August 13, 2023.

Charles Green is a poet and playwright. His works include P o l a r i s (a tragedy expansion pack) [National New Play Network/Kennedy Center – MFA Playwrights Workshop], Genocide: A Love Story (Theater 503 New Play Contest, London— Semifinalist), The Dybbuk of Dachau (The O’Neill Center’s National Playwrights Conference— Semifinalist), American Zion (Finborough Theatre, London— Finalist), Death in Texas (USC Outstanding Drama Award), The Angel & the Icebox (Manhattan Repertory Theater), Mrs. Marlboro (Pittsburgh New Works Festival— Finalist), and A Desert Fugue (City Garage Theatre). Charles is an MFA graduate of the Iowa Playwrights Workshop and is currently pursuing a PhD in Theatre and Performance at Columbia University.
 

Tell me more about…You Must Wear a Hat: Tuesday and Weeks make hats on the Great Barrier Reef waiting for the world to end.

You Must Wear a Hat is a play for two and a rabbit puppet. The play has received readings and workshops at Hub Theatre, Kitchen Dog Theater, the NNPN/Kennedy Center MFA Workshop, and the University of Iowa–where Erica and Morgan first encountered the work and began their long-standing dedication to its story and ultimate production.

C. “Meaks” Meaker (they/she) is a playwright and screenwriter whose work often explores queerness, feminism, and the end of the world. Their plays have been performed and developed across the United States, including the Kennedy Center, Seattle Repertory Theatre, San Francisco Playhouse, Annex Theatre in Seattle, and About Face in Chicago. They are a Stranger Award Genius Nominee (That’swhatshesaid), and Gregory Award Outstanding New Play Nominee (The Lost Girls). Their play That’swhatshesaid garnered international attention for using the female dialogue and stage directions of the most-produced plays in America (reported by Theatre Communications Group in American Theatre Magazine) as its inspiration and source material. They are a former Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, an alumna of Seattle Repertory Theatre’s Writers Group, and a former Walter E. Dakin Fellow at Sewanee Writers’ Conference. Their nonfiction won the Editor’s Prize at Porter House Review (2023). They received an MFA in Playwriting from the University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop.
Instagram: @cmeaksmeaker / Twitter: @cmeak 

To stay in contact with The Interstitial and our upcoming projects, please visit theinterstitialnyc.com.