Since launching at the beginning of 2023, Erica Wray and Morgan Grambo of The Interstitial have produced three unique theatre events across three different boroughs of NYC. We are thrilled to announce we will finally bring You Must Wear a Hat by C. “Meaks” Meaker to the stage in October 2024!

Meaks’ You Must Wear a Hat is a touching play long overdue for staging in the NYC community. If we haven’t previously talked your ear off about it, the play tells the story of Tuesday and Weeks, who make hats on the Great Barrier Reef waiting for the world to end. Erica and Morgan were introduced to the work in 2018 at the University of Iowa, and their long-standing dedication to its story and ultimate production will be fully realized in October 2024 at Theatrelab (357 W 36th St, 3rd Floor). We hope you can join us! We will release ticket information when available on www.theinterstitialnyc.com.

The Interstitial intends to use the funds raised in this campaign, first and foremost, to pay the actors, stage manager, playwright, and designers for You Must Wear a Hat. A portion of the remaining funds will be used for production expenses. We are mindful of creating an environmentally conscious production, so while our production budget prioritizes the collaborators over single-use, extravagant elements, etc., certain expenses (for example, rehearsal space in NYC) are essential. We are the recipient of a grant from the Puffin Foundation and are working with other like-minded arts organizations to bridge budget gaps with resource-sharing. Your support for this project will bring us over the finish line!

The past year and a half has been filled with tremendous experiences and new work. In February 2023, we presented Eric Marlin’s Denial in A.R.T./New York’s Dark Night Series @ the Gural to bring the acclaimed play to New York and in front of a public audience for the first time.

The Interstitial welcomed audiences for our inaugural (and sold-out!) production in August 2023 to witness and partake in Charles Green’s In the Castle of Eternal Sunset: A Module for Ten 0th Level Characters at Brick Aux in Brooklyn. Thanks to generous support from our community, we created a captivating experience for audiences that changed every night. 

At the beginning of 2024, Morgan Grambo and The Interstitial received an opportunity from the Queens Arts Fund: New Work Grant to develop a new work in Queens. We welcomed Minneapolis-based theatremaker Jarek Pastor to the neighborhood to further develop their new piece ward. The Interstitial brought together 10 actors, a designer, and the creative team at Court Square Theater in Long Island City to create a night of theatre that presented the piece with a complete soundscape, a fully realized musical number, puppets, and a space designed to more-than-suggest at the physical world of ward. Receiving the New Work Grant allowed us to explore the critical area of our mission to embrace works at in-between stages of their development. Working on ward with Jarek and the team offered a glimpse into the discoveries made outside the traditional new play development structures.

C. “Meaks” Meaker (they/them) is a playwright, essayist, and teacher whose work often explores queerness, monstrosity, 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 (Seattle), Hub Theater (D.C.), Fat Theater Project (Chicago), and About Face (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. It’s still staged nationally and internationally today with writers adding their own contributions to the material.

 

They are a former Jerome Fellow at the Playwrights’ Center, an alumna of Seattle Repertory Theatre’s Writers Group, and former Walter E. Dakin Fellow at Sewanee Writers’ Conference. They’re a two-year finalist for the Dramatist Guild National Fellows program and a recent finalist for the Jerome Hill Theater Arts Fellow. Their essay “S(wallow)” won the Editor’s Prize at Porter House Review and they’re a 2024 Lambda Literary Fellow in creative nonfiction.

They received an MFA in Playwriting from University of Iowa’s Playwrights Workshop.  

To stay in contact with The Interstitial, learn about our past projects, and keep in touch about our upcoming projects, please visit theinterstitialnyc.com or follow us on Instagram: @theinterstitialnyc