Cutting Ball is bringing you a fresh line-up of workshops!
Why workshops, you wonder?
Before a production gets its polish, there's process: the vigorous, messy playground of the imagination, where you’ll find artists at their most expressive. This February and March, Cutting Ball welcomes you to splash about it in this exuberant pool of process, too — with an electric mix of classics, unfamiliar tales, and new plays — all presented virtually.
SINGLE TICKETS: $10
Admission is FREE for All-Access Season Passholders
pipin' hot New plays
Got a taste for in-progress plays? Take part in the creative process with two virtual staged readings of unproduced, unpublished plays by emerging playwrights.
The Natural Horse FEB 19 @ 6PM
by T. Adamson
A new play about modernist architecture, immigrant life, familial relations, Russian folklore, and a giant pooping horse puppet.
T. ADAMSON (he/him)
is a Tex-Mex writer and theater artist based in NYC. Plays include Usus (Clubbed Thumb Winterworks), The Straights (JACK, BAPF finalist), and Endless Summer (Hunter College). He is an alumnus of Fresh Ground Pepper NYC’s Playground Playgroup and Clubbed Thumb's Early Career Writers' Group. Heideman Award Finalist, Irv Zarkower Award, Rita and Burton Goldberg Playwriting Prize, Falco/Steinman Commission from Playwrights Horizons. Record collector, board-game enthusiast. MFA: Hunter College.
when we breathe MAR 5 @ 6PM
by Jaisey Bates
A new play about two twins, their mother, and their cross-species sibling, set in an imaginary adjacent dimension to the contemporary Navajo Nation where the winds speak silenced stories across worlds and time — the air is impossibly thick grief strata’d — and every instant of humor heart hope communication connection — every. single. breath. — is a riot of Beauty — a revolutionary act of courage grit grace faith fire.
JAISEY BATES (she/they)
writes, directs and performs with The Peoplehood. A Princess Grace Award and O’Neill National Playwrights Conference finalist and a Kilroys List honorable mention, Jaisey is a recipient of the Emerging American Playwright Prize from Marin Theatre Company and of Judge’s Choice/Featured Play from the Oklahoma City Native American New Play Festival.
classics from 'round the world
Travel through Zoom! Immerse yourself in the seminal stories of global cultures with three virtual staged readings, centering classics from China, Nigeria, and Egypt.
Madmen and Specialists MAR 19 @ 6PM
by Wole Soyinka // directed by Rotimi Agbabiaka
Pitting a "madman" who leads a cult of beggars against his son, a former doctor turned army intelligence specialist, Nigerian playwright and Nobel Prize Winner Soyinka uses black humor and absurdism to reflect the inhumanity and corruption in our power structures.
ROTIMI AGBABIAKA (he/she/they)
is an actor, writer, and director who uses humor, glamor, and drama to upset the status quo. He most recently originated roles in House of Joy (California Shakespeare Theater) and If Pretty Hurts Ugly Must Be a Muhfucka (Playwrights Horizons). Acting credits include Tom Waits’ Black Rider (Shotgun Players), Bootycandy (Brava Theater Center), runboyrun (Magic Theatre), and several shows with the Tony Award-winning San Francisco Mime Troupe. Rotimi penned the plays Type/Caste (Theatre Bay Area Award), MANIFESTO, and Seeing Red and has graced nightlife stages around the world as his alter ego Miss Cleo Patois. www.rotimionline.com
Carnal from The Carnal Prayer Mat MAR 25 @ 6PM
by Li Yu // devised and directed by May Liang
co-devised by Rinabeth Apostol, Leon Goertzen, Ogie Zulueta
co-produced by Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company
A devised work based on the controversial, long-banned Chinese text 肉蒲團 (or, The Carnal Prayer Mat), a novel about sexual defiance and freedom.
MAY LIANG (she/her)
is a stage director and theater artist of color based in the San Francisco Bay Area, and is the Artistic Director of Ferocious Lotus Theatre Company. She has worked with many local theaters including American Conservatory Theater, California Shakespeare Theater, and Crowded Fire Theater — where she is a Resident Artist.
Night Traveller MAR 26 @ 6PM
by Salah Abdul Saboor // directed by Sivan Battat
Salah Abdul Saboor’s absurdist classic (1969, Egypt), in translation by M. M. Enani. In a night train heading to nowhere, a passenger — or you, or me — hurtles into the barrenness of a meaningless existence.
SIVAN BATTAT (she/they)
is an Iraqi-Jewish theater director, cultural worker, and educator based in New York City. Recent credits: Who the Fuck is Ahmed by Michael Zalta (Rough Draft Fest, LPAC), Raphael Khouri’s She He Me (National Queer Theater), Coexistence My Ass by Noam Shuster (Harvard University/Tour), Pie Shop Play by Alice Pencavel (Corkscrew Festival), East o’, West o’! by Michelle J. Rodriguez (ANTFest, Ars Nova). As a cultural worker, she has worked with Jews for Racial and Economic Justice in numerous capacities, and recently curated Salon al-Mahjar, a performance salon for queer and trans MENASA artists. Sivan leads ancestral storytelling workshops within queer and Middle Eastern communities, is an active community organizer, and serves on the board of Ammud: the Jews of Color Torah Academy. www.sivanbattat.com
Admission is FREE for All-Access Season Passholdrs