THE TANK SPACE FOR PERFORMING AND VISUAL ARTS

Funny, painful, and compassionate, THIS IS OUR YOUTH is a living snapshot of the moment between adolescence and adulthood when many young people first go out into the world on their own, armed only with the ideas and techniques they developed as teenagers—ideas and techniques far more sophisticated than their parents ever realize, and far less effectual than they themselves can possibly imagine.

-This Is Our Youth

Sometimes In Prague
A New Musical

Created by Joshua William Gelb and Stephanie Johnstone

A night's encounter in a Czech pub ignites a thrilling collision of rock and multi-media that pits cinematic realism against theatrical ingenuity to ask what, in our contemporary culture, is the most authentic way to love.

Every Sunday for four weeks (2pm-5pm)
Enrollment $100

This four-week course, taught by Kevin Laibson, gives experienced improvisers a chance to exercise their skills in a format outside the structural confines of long-form or short-form comic improv. Based in the work of Viola Spolin, Paul Sills, and Michael Gelman, this workshop is an exercise in improvisational theater, offering tools for the improviser/actor to get on stage with a partner and allow themselves to get out of their own way as they create a ten-minute play.

about Kevin Laibson

Kevin Laibson has taught workshops on improvisation, story theater, and Spolin technique all around the country for organizations such as the New York Film Academy, Second City, and the Boys and Girls Club of America. As artistic director of Full Circle Theatre Company, Kevin directed the twice-extended Off-Off-Broadway revival of Jeffrey, and the Off-Broadway debut of Marta Rainer's acclaimed Unaccustomed to my Name. Regionally, he has directed for the Village Productions, Exclamation Theater, and the Tri-Country Performing Arts Center in and around Philadelphia. In 2009, he directed Skyscraper National Park, an experimental improvisational theater troupe which performed on rooftops in Brooklyn. He is a graduate of the New Actors Workshop, where he studied acting and improvisation under Mike Nichols, Paul Sills, Rex Knowles, and Sherry Landrum, and studied at Second City under Michael Gelman, Mary Scruggs, Norm Holly, and Anne Libera. He currently teaches acting and improvisation at the New York Film Academy and performs with the National Comedy Theatre’s New York team.

The Former Waitress
A New Play in One Act
by Ryan Britt

At 32, Lil has worked hard for the good life. But despite having a great apartment, a successful boyfriend, and a powerful job at top cultural magazine, Lil finds herself missing an ingredient from her old life. She misses being a waitress. For reasons that even she herself cannot fully articulate, Lil finds herself waiting tables again, and on her only days off! Upon meeting a younger waitress named Shaun, Lil launches headlong into a sometimes comedic, sometimes heartbreaking competition to determine if this young woman is indeed and in fact a better waitress, or perhaps more accurately, a better person than herself.

Ryan Britt is a three-time SLAM Champion and most recently won with this play, The Former Waitress.

This one act play will run roughly 50 minutes and will be preceded each of its three nights by a different 5 minute opening play, each written by a different writer.

Ryan Britt's writing has been published with Clarkesworld Magazine and is forthcoming in Opium Magazine. He is an ongoing contributor to the web magazine Nerve.com. He has performed numerous non-fiction monologues with various NYC storytelling groups including The Moth, The Liar Show, and Heeb Magazine. Ryan has been a frequent participant and host of The Tank's SLAM Theatre series. In addition, his play "Encounter at Greenpoint" was produced in 2007 by the Longest Lunch Theatre Company in conjunction with Collective Unconscious. He lives in Brooklyn.

Stray presents "Blank Slate," an interactive theatrical event in which cast, director, and audience collaborate to create a completely new play each night.

Inspired by the South African form "No Agenda," director Randy Dixon of Seattle developed "Blank Slate" after workshopping with Johannesburg's Market Theater in Amsterdam in 1996. Stray is excited to join with New York audiences to create spontaneous theatre in this run of Blank Slate.

What do you get when you mix treachery, morality, wounds that won't heal, Heracles's bow and arrows, a chorus of sailors, and the fate of the Trojan War? The answer: a legend that three of the most celebrated Greek playwrights wrote about. After contracting an obnoxiously smelly snakebite on the way to Troy, Philoctetes finds himself abandoned by his shipmates en route. Ten years later, Odysseus returns with Neoptolemus to double down on his deceit by stealing Philoctetes's weapon, which Odysseus needs (according to prophecy) to win the never-ending war.

A deaf actor, director and playwright based in New York City, Garrett Zuercher's work has been seen around the world on stages and screens, both big and small. As a director and playwright, his primary goal is to develop new and innovative methods of combining spoken English and American Sign Language in theatrical works accessible to both hearing and deaf audiences.

Presale tickets are available at http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/121148

"Ugly Hell, gape not! Come not Lucifer! I'll burn my books!-O Mephistophilis!" So ends what is regarded as the first ever dramatization of the Faust legend and possibly the most notorious tale about the appeal of sin. True, Faustus meets a dismembered end, but for 24 years he was the most powerful magician on Earth. Sure, according to Marlowe, the Doctor regrets his fateful choice, but this is Public Domain! So, was the deal worth it? What's more important: your soul or your fun?

Andrew Scoville is a Brooklyn based theater director, installation artist and video designer. For the past couple of years he has been fostering his relationship with technology in his theatrical work. Artistically he has relied heavily on movement, music and media, but still finds fascination in the complexities of human language. He strongly believes that theater is ultimate collaborative art and the most effective way to engage with artists of every medium at the same time. That is why he does it.

Presale tickets available at https://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/121150