SEASON EIGHT COMMISSIONS & DEVELOPMENT
So much happens behind the scenes at Trademark. Each of these adventurous new works has been granted resources and critical artistic support in Trademark’s eighth season. Stay tuned for future updates and special showcases of these new works.
THE MEASURES
Book by Kira Obolensky
Music and Lyrics by David Darrow
Based on the “21 Grams Theory” and the bizarre experiments conducted by Dr. Duncan MacDougall in Haverhill, Massachusetts in 1907, this new musical follows a young nurse’s search for purpose as she aids an eccentric doctor in weighing patients as they die to prove the human soul has physical weight. Weaving between the memories of the sick and dying and a peculiar man battling his own grief, THE MEASURES traverses the gap between what we leave behind and where we might go beyond our final breath.
THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY
Conceived and Adapted by Tyler Michaels King
Adapted and reimagined as an intimate and visceral stage production, THE PICTURE OF DORIAN GRAY paints a vivid and grotesque portrait of the effects of influence, desire, indulgence and corruption on one young man’s soul. This classic and darkly twisted morality play is given vibrant new life in a production that combines Oscar Wilde’s brilliant characters with modern staging, movement, and paint… lots and lots of paint.
WORKSHIFT
By Tyler Mills
A new worker starts a job, and a new cast member starts rehearsal, and they are the same person. The settings are a theater and an office, and they are the same place. The play is about unions, but not everyone is a member. WORK SHIFT challenges the idea that it is possible to separate work from art or life and wonders what it might look like to ask for everything.
THE FOX SISTER AND OTHER GUILTY PARTIES
By Eric Sharp
She did it. She killed her father/she didn’t. She has no father. Adopted at 6 months and more recently convicted of murder, Paula has 48 hours to set the record straight. Not to the law (whatever that is), but to her Korean ancestors (whomsoever they may be). Nayoung is a mugyo (Korean spirit worker) in training, hired by Paula’s court-appointed psychiatrist to get a statement before the press pounces. Performed on a split stage and accompanied by classical Korean musicians (drunk on soju? ), The Fox Sister opens a window on the untelegenic adoptee experience and flings open doors to an afterworld that refuses to stay silent.