Kitchen Sink 2009-10

The Kitchen Sink series provides a venue for emerging regional theater artists to develop work through staged readings and informal performances of works-in-progress.

Two Plays by Nathan Hilgartner - December 14 & 15, 2009 at 7:30pm

All seats $5!

	A staged reading of two short plays by Nathan Hilgartner. "Just Talk," directed by Margarett Perry, features Stephen Nunley and Brian Dykstra as two men with relationship trouble; both are attached to women who are just plain uncommunicative.
"Cain v. Abel" is an irreverent retelling of the biblical story, featuring Nathan and his siblings, Erin and Kevin Hilgartner.

Nathan, a 12th grader at Ithaca High School, has been writing plays since elementary school. His plays have been produced in the Hangar Theatre Young Playwrights Festival and Kitchen Theatre Company’s Teen Extreme Playwriting Contest. He contributed a monologue to the KTC production of The Odyssey Part II and co-authored Adventure in Apartment G Sharp with Rachel Lampert. Most recently, he was part of the team that created Park Play, contributing both lyrics and music. Nathan also acts and has performed at the Kitchen, the Hangar, Ithaca High School, Running to Places, the Palo Alto Children’s Theatre, and Shakespeare in the Basement, where he is also Artistic Director.

This season we are also offering three short-run works we are calling SINK SPECIALS:

HO by Brian Dykstra - December 9 - 20, 2009
The Kitchen’s fastest talking, most irreverent playwright and poet takes on the subject of Christmas in a new piece—one that’s not likely to be the next Hallmark holiday special.

LA VOIX HUMAINE by Francis Poulenc - March 17, 18, 20 & 21, 2010
Opera in the Kitchen! La Va Humaine is Poulenc’s haunting one-act opera for solo soprano based on text by Jean Cocteau. Guest artists singer Deborah Lifton, director David Lefkowich and pianist Brian DeMaris will fill the theater with music and this emotional story of love and loss.

LOSING MYSELF by Rachel Lampert - May 26 - June 6, 2010
From playwright/performer Rachel Lampert, author of THE SOUP COMES LAST, comes a new piece. Together with a multi-generational cast, she tells a story about gaining and losing all sorts of things—keys, years, and pounds.

Earlier this season:

BOP: the North Star - October 25, 26 & 27, 2009

“BOP: the North Star” is a theatrical critique on identity in a racialized America, a journey in finding one’s voice within and against several deep seated archetypes from Harriet Tubman to Scarlett O’Hara. BOP is based on the work of local poet and Cornell professor Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon. The poems used in the show are from Van Clief-Stefanon’s new book “Open Interval”, which was recently short-listed for the National Book Award. BOP is written and directed by Ithaca-based artist Emilie Stark-Menneg in collaboration with the performers, Enlylh King, Lori Parquet, Kellie Ryan and Carolina Osorio Gil. Banjo players Chad Crumm and Stephanie Jenkins create a whirl of surround sound with Cosmo Alpern as the ghost piano player and Alx Colonado on the upright bass.

Performances are October 25th at 8:30pm* and October 26th and 27th at 8:00pm. Tickets are $10 and be purchased by phone at 607-273-4497, online (click below), or at the box office half an hour before performances. This project was made possible with a grant from the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County.

*Stark-Menneg and Van Clief-Stefanon will lead a talkback after Sunday’s performance.