Orchard Project forward week is proud to connect our supported artists and projects with others in the industry at large. For a sampling of the projects taking part in the week, see the short descriptions below. Longer descriptions are available after registering for Orchard Project Forward Week, which you can do here.
Performance Projects at a Glance
Pascale Armand
$#!thole Country Clapback
$#!thole Country Clapback is a personal response backed by historical information to Trump's incendiary statement about black and brown countries in 2018, specifically Haiti.
Neena Beber and Jessica Hecht
A Mother
A Mother is a radical adaptation of Brecht's The Mother, the story of a mother who become radicalized for/by her son. Set in 1980s Miami it combines personal and social history, disco and gospel.
Kate Douglas and Grace McLean
Against Women & Music!
An absurdist-horror Victorian chamber piece about a widow trying to save her child from the piano lessons that have mysteriously possessed her into the cult of femininity.
Mai Khoi
Bad Activist
Bad Activist is Mai Khoi’s story from rural life to pop-stardom to political awakening. Her social activism and meetings with figures like Barack Obama find her banned from performing in Vietnam.
Johnny G Lloyd
baldwin[GIOVANNI]brando
baldwin[GIOVANNI]brando is an immersive multi-media performance poem loosely based adaptation of Baldwin’s 1956 novel Giovanni’s Room.
Sinking Ship Productions
Cassandra
What do you do when you can foresee impending disaster, but you’ve been cursed and no one ever believes you—not even your mother? A wild, frightening, comical, absurd take on the story of Cassandra.
Krista Knight & Jill Sobule
Crimson Lit: Scarlet Letter Setlist
A riot grrrl musical that's part Scarlet Letter adaptation, part queer romance.
Kristoffer Diaz, Rona Siddiqui, Jaime Castañeda
Expect Victory
A new musical about college basketball, advanced mathematical analytics, and revolutionary thinking.
Ariel Estrada
Full Contact
FULL CONTACT interrogates Filipino American writer/performer Ariel Estrada's experiences as a 20-year martial arts cult survivor and his coming-of-age as a gay man at the height of the AIDS crisis.
SEVAN
Gorgonae
Inspired by female freedom fighters in the Middle East and the mythical Gorgon sisters, this hybrid theatre play examines the current crises through the eyes of those living it on the front lines.
Julia Blauvelt
Hoo Ha Jedi Mindf&&k
At the end of high school and the beginning of the real world, Sally's secret existence of ritual, punishment and promise boils over when she is forced to consider her future in an urgent way.
Rajendra Ramoon Maharaj
I DON’T HAVE A GUN, STOP SHOOTING! An American Tragedy
Bearing witness to two moments that birthed the current Black Lives Matter Movement, the murders of Trayvon Martin and the Mother Emanuel Nine, this is their story of love, joy, hope, faith, and loss.
stephen h belber
JAMAL SAVIO REAGAN SHAKUR
Tracks American “radicalism” over of 3 decades through the life of Jamal Joseph, who joined the Black Panthers at age 15, spent much of the 70’s in prison, and is now a professor at Columbia.
Nelson Diaz-Marcano and Rebecca Aparicio
Once Upon A Tra’ In Puerto Rico
A coming of age tale that relates the birth of Reggaeton with the decolonization of a whole generation of Puerto Ricans.
Alex Bechtel, Eva Steinmetz, Brenson Thomas
Penelope
An experimental solo musical adaptation of The Odyssey. Penelope sings a set of songs about her life as she waits for Odysseus to return home.
Mike von der Nahmer
SHIMMER
SHIMMER is a children’s music theater work with dance suitable for opera, ballet, or experimental theater about coherence: being different, feeling wrong, and finding communal transcendence anyway.
Adrienne Mackey
TrailOff
TRAILOFF is an immersive audio storytelling app that puts audiences in the center of the drama! Using smart phone GPS tracking narratives sync to viewers as they walk along a trail.
Benjamin Viertel
Untitled Immigration Project
An investigative theater work which reveals intimate stories of those affected by the US immigration system, through interviews with immigrants, ICE agents, deported people and my personal narrative.
Winter Miller
When Monica Met Hillary
WHEN MONICA MET HILLARY Girl meets boss. Boss seduces girl. Girl loses everything. Monica and Hillary have never met...Until now.
Directed by Margot Bordelon
Premiering Miami New Drama, February 2022
Episodic Projects at a Glance
Aizzah Fatima
A.S.S. Crawler
A struggling actress from Saudi Arabia gets tapped by the NYPD A.S.S. (Arab Secret Surveillance) unit to spy on a local mosque if she wants to stay in the country and pursue her dream acting career.
Shannon TL Kearns
Family Unit
A transgender couple creates a family home for trans and nonbinary teens. And at night they fight crime.
Talya Mar and Tara Amber
Good Grief
A dark comedy about the members of a NYC pet loss support group struggling to cope with the loss of their beloved animals and navigate the more challenging (human) relationships in their lives.
Kelsey Fox
Humanoid Resources
In a universe far beyond our own, millions of lightyears away, an HR department fights to create a "safe space"... literally.
Alexandra Ann Spieth
Immaculate
In this half-hour comedy, a middle-aged GameStop employee learns that she will bear the Second Coming of Christ in the year 2022 AD.
Desdemona Chiang
Made in USA
When a mild-mannered casino executive is fed up with being overlooked and underappreciated, she turns to the underground world of birth tourism to uncover her ambition and power.
Anthony DeSimone and Marie Cheng
Mix-Matched
In this sketch rom-com, an independent Asian American woman and a nurturing, supportive white man struggle to navigate the complex world of modern dating, gender roles, and racial perceptions.
Liz Fields
SAVAGES
An unflinching young journalist is sucked into the world of SAVAGE, an edgy and ethically dubious new media company, while reporting on the story of a lifetime in Myanmar.
Trish Harnetiaux
The MS Phoenix Rising
After an industry wide hiatus, the front office of an American cruise ship preps for relaunch with zero ability to manifest the revolutionary guest experiences they promise.
Tyler Rivenbark
The Suck
THE SUCK is an anthology series that chronicles the effects and trauma of war on a group of people from the front lines to the home front, from America to Iraq, and from the living to the dead.
Seth Bockley
Wilderness
WILDERNESS is a workplace drama following twenty-something field guides working in a Wilderness Therapy program in southern Utah as they care for troubled teens and come to understand themselves.
Audio Projects at a Glance
Mason Rosenthal
How Do You Jew?
A public-access TV show based on original research about the little-known Jewish history of the American toy industry. Hosted by Geoffrey Giraffe and featuring Mr. Potato Head as foul mouthed co-host.
Rosie duPont
Kiki & Modo Crash Manhattan!
When two aliens crash into Zuri’s lonely 13-year old life, they drag her into a wild engineering project and misadventure around Manhattan, opening her eyes to new frontiers inside herself and beyond!
Katherine Craft
PRESS 1 FOR HORROR
A scripted narrative podcast about the quest to find a popular teen girl in 1996 who disappears while playing a mysterious choose-your-own-adventure touchtone phone game.
Real Time Interventions
The Angelmakers Podcast
A musical true-crime podcast that uses original songs about female serial killers as a structural touchstone; ten songs = ten episodes = ten discussions about female power, race and rage.
Crystal Skillman
The Magician’s Magician
A queer YA author, unknowingly manifesting magic, is set on a quest alongside her greatest fan to heal our dying world, all the while grieving her lost lover… until she discovers there may be a way to bring her back.