Dark Heart Program (Torn Page) | The Assembly Theater

The Assembly presents:

The Dark Heart of Meteorology

Created by Stephen Aubrey, Jess Chayes & Richard Lovejoy

Text by Stephen Aubrey

Directed by Jess Chayes

Performed by Richard Lovejoy

Scenic and Props Design by Nic Benacerraf

Sound Design by Asa Wember

Video Design by Simon Harding

Stage Manager: Devin Fletcher

Dramaturgy: Ben Beckley, Nic Benacerraf

Voice of Sarah: Paige Blansfield

Artistic Producer: Emily Caffery

Producing Director: Meredith Lucio

With thanks to collaborators from previous productions:

Stacey Boggs, Lighting Designer

Alex Koch & Daniel Brodie, Video Designers

Edward Bauer: Dramaturgy

Rachel Silverman, Stage Manager at UNDER St. Marks

Audrey Crabtree, Voice of Sarah

Developed in association with Horse Trade Theater Group, ‘Pataphysics (Flea Theater), Backyart, and Sticky at The Bowery Poetry Club. Performed in 2009 at UNDER St. Marks & the Philadelphia Fringe, and in 2019 at the So-fi Festival at Westbeth. The Dark Heart of Meteorology was rehearsed, in part, in New Georges’ workspace, The Room.

Special thanks to: Tony Torn, Ben Becher, Jose Scaro, and Paige Blansfield.

ARTIST BIOS

RICHARD LOVEJOY (performer) is an award-winning writer and actor. He has written several features, shorts, web series, and podcast. His feature film The Widowers was released in 2015 after winning multiple awards on the festival circuit. His short film Push Up has garnered international acclaim. Richard has appeared in The Americans, All My Children, Rising Up: The Story of the Zombie Rights Movement, The Scientists, Going Local, and more. Favorite theater credits include The Dark Heart of Meteorology, Three Sisters, The Intimacy Effect, and Adventure Quest (which he also wrote.) He created the podcast CoatlCast and wrote the Sci-Fi adventure/comedy audio drama 1918. He studied at Franklin and Marshall College and at The British American Drama Academy under Marsha Mason, Fiona Shaw, Mark Wing-Davey, and Dereck Jacobi.

STEPHEN AUBREY (playwright) is a Brooklyn-based writer and dramaturg and a co-Artistic Director of The Assembly. With The Assembly, he has written or co-written That Poor Dream; Home/Sick; The Dark Heart of Meteorology; What I Took In My Hand; Daguerreotype and We Can't Reach You, Hartford; as well as dramaturging all Assembly productions. Other writing credits include Mindcraft (Dixon Place) The Long Game (Tiny Rhino) and Brain Explode! (The Video Game Festival at The Brick Theater). His writing has appeared in Electric Literature, Publishing Genius, The Brooklyn Review, and Commonweal. He teaches literature and composition at Brooklyn College.

JESS CHAYES (director) is the BOLD Associate Artistic Director at Northern Stage as well as a founding co-artistic director of The Assembly, with whom she has co-created and directed ten original productions. Recent directing includes: Intelligence (Dutch Kills), Latter Days and The Providence of Neighboring Bodies (Dutch Kills), Half Moon Bay (Lesser America), I Will Look Forward to this Later (The Assembly), Primal Play (New Georges), The Bachelors (Williamstown Theater Festival), The Sister (Dutch Kills), The Netflix Plays (Ars Nova), and HOME/SICK (The Assembly, NY Times Critic's Pick). Jess is a New York Theater Workshop Usual Suspect, a co-founder of New Georges Jam artists' lab, and alum of the New Georges Audrey Residency, The Civilians R&D Group and the Soho Rep Writer/Director Lab. Associate Directing credits: Peter and the Starcatcher (Broadway and New World Stages) and Misery. Jess is the recipient of the 2017 Lucille Lortel Award from the League of Professional Theatre Women and the 2019 Collaboration Award from the Women in the Arts & Media Coalition.

NIC BENACERRAF (Scenic & Props Designer, Dramaturgy) is a scenographer, director, co-artistic director of The Assembly (SEAGULLMACHINE), and an academic who studies the social function of both theater and Public Relations. He has been honored to collaborate with Judith Malina (The Living Theatre), Trusty Sidekick (Lincoln Center), Waterwell (Under the Radar), Lars Jan (Center for New Performance), BAM Poetry (WORD. SOUND. POWER.), Meiyin Wang (La MaMa), Kristin Marting (HERE), and Goat in the Road (New Orleans). He is a graduate of Wesleyan, CalArts (MFA), and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Theatre and Performance at the CUNY Graduate Center. www.nicbenacerraf.com

ASA WEMBER (Sound Designer) has collaborated with The Assembly on Seagullmachine, HOME/SICK, I Will Look Forward to This Later, That Poor Dream, and The Dark Heart of Meteorology, and with Jess Chayes on Holidays/In, The Providence of Neighboring Bodies, Latter Days and The Sister. Other recent work includes Am I Dead with Flux Theatre Ensemble, Adam & Evie with SITILab, Temping with Wolf 359, Selkie and In Quietness with Dutch Kills, Wyoming with Lesser America, and Brownsville Song at LCT3/Lincoln Center.

SIMON HARDING (Video Designer) is an award-winning set and video designer for live performance, interested in modalities of performance that create a living space between objects and the body. He was a co-founder and the resident designer for SaBooge Theatre, designing all of their productions including the critically acclaimed shows Hatched, Fathom, and Every Day Above Ground.

DEVIN FLETCHER (Stage Manager) is a theatre artist from the wild coast of Maine, based in New York City. Recent credits include Ars Nova, Lincoln Center Education, La MaMa, The Assembly, Joe's Pub, Trusty Sidekick, Jazz at Lincoln Center, SubCulture, Joe's Pub, The New Victory Theater: LabWorks, Two River Theater Company, and Tiltyard. She is the co-artistic director of Bluelaces, with additional directing and SM projects including work with ArtsEmerson, Oregon Symphony Orchestra, Elm Shakespeare, IUGTE Austria, and Actors’ Shakespeare Project.

BEN BECKLEY (Dramaturgy) is a writer and actor. Writing credits include premieres with Fresh Ground Pepper, Blue Box Productions, F*It Club, Thirsty Theater/Northern Stage, and Dutch Kills/Ars Nova. Acting credits include Broadway's What The Constitution Means To Me -- for which he wrote and performed an Assembly-style personal monologue; Dying for It (Atlantic Theater Company); The World My Mama Raised (Clubbed Thumb); Goldor $ Mythyka (New Georges); The Cocktail Party (The Actors Company Theatre); King Lear and Jordan (Northern Stage); The Whistleblower (Denver Center); the first national tours of Small Mouth Sounds and Peter and the Starcatcher; four international tours with Temporary Distortion; and seven original projects as a co-artistic director of The Assembly. www.benbeckley.com

MEREDITH LUCIO (Producing Director) is a Tony award-winning producer who’s worked as an independent producer in New York City for almost 15 years. Her producing credits include as a Co-Producer of The Lightning Thief: The Percy Jackson Musical (Broadway, National Tour), The Gershwin’s Porgy and Bess (Tony Award), lead producer on Bedlam’s Hamlet and Saint Joan (OBA Best Revival Award), co-producer of The 39 Steps (New World Stages) and Rooms: A Rock Romance. She has served as a Program Director for Theatre Resources Unlimited’s Producer Development and Mentorship Program and has been a speaker about the business of producing to audiences of teachers, self-producing artists and students with The Commercial Theatre Institute, the Off-Broadway Alliance, Scottsdale Community College, the International Thespian Festival, the Educational Theatre Association and the Texas Educational Theatre Association. In 2014, Meredith was inducted into the Richland H.S. Hall of Fame alongside famed singer Gary Morris and U.S. District 91 Congressional Candidate Wendy Davis. Ms. Lucio holds a Bachelor of Arts from Texas Wesleyan University.

EMILY CAFFERY (Artistic Producer) is a producer, actor, and administrator. With The Assembly: The Dark Heart of Meteorology (So-fi Festival), Seagullmachine (La MaMa), HOME/SICK (JACK), and I Will Look Forward to This Later (The New Ohio), and the upcoming premiere of In Corpo (Theatre Row). Other producing/management: Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival, the PROTOTYPE Festival, Colt Coeur’s Eureka Day, Hypokrit Theatre’s Elements of Change, and Emily Krause’s Something for the Fish. NY acting includes: Seagullmachine (La MaMa), King Lear (Brick), The Tempest, Marat/Sade (Columbia). Select regional: Elektra (as Elektra), The Glass Menagerie, Steel Magnolias, all in S.E. Michigan. Alumna: Wesleyan University, National Theater Institute. emilycaffery.com

THE ASSEMBLY is a collective of multi-disciplinary performance artists committed to realizing a visceral and intelligent theater for a new generation. Assembly members unite varied perspectives in service of wide-reaching, unabashedly theatrical and rigorously researched ensemble performances, crafted to spark conversation with our audiences. Our work embraces the complexities of our present moment; it is a call for empathy and engagement. Embracing collaboration as the core of the creative process, the company chooses projects through consensus and develops text, action and design side-by-side within the rehearsal environment. From workshops to productions to post-performance discussions, The Assembly is dedicated to rooting its artists, audiences, and peers in a profound sense of community. www.assemblytheater.org

The Assembly is Stephen Aubrey, Ben Beckley, Nic Benacerraf, Emily Caffery, Jess Chayes, and Meredith Lucio

The Assembly’s Board of Directors: Nick Banner (chair), Nic Benacerraf, Susan Bernfield, Brad Burgess, Jess Chayes, Linda Hillman Chayes, Suzanne Miller-Halegoua, David Milch, and Meredith Lynsey Schade

INDIGENOUS LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Assembly acknowledges that the presentation of this play, as with most of our work, occurs on the Lenape island of Manhahtaan (Mannahatta) in Lenapehoking, the Lenape homeland. The Assembly pays respect to the Lenape peoples of the past, present, and future, and is committed to resisting colonialism by situating at the core of our work practices of inclusion, equity, and engagement with our responsibility to society and the environment.

UP NEXT

This Summer, The Assembly presents the Kitchen Sink Festival workshop production of

IN CORPO

By Nate Weida & Ben Beckley
Directed by Jess Chayes

July 16-18, 2020
Theatre Row, 410 W 42nd St, NYC

Drawing freely from works by Franz Kafka and Herman Melville, with an innovative electro-pop, folk/funk score, In Corpo is a new musical created by The Assembly about a dystopian corporate workplace in the near-future. When a stranger arrives at Sector 13-G, Corpo Corporation’s iron-clad, off-center authoritarianism begins to rupture.

Part of the 2019-2021 Kitchen Sink Residency

Thank you for joining us for The Dark Heart of Meteorology!

To learn more about The Assembly & support our work: www.assemblytheater.org

Join our mailing list or write to us