top of page

IN CORPO (in development)

Production Timeline

2017 - Workshop

2018 - Residency at the Atlantic Theater Company

2018 - Work-in-progress showing at Judson Church

2019 - Work-in-progress showing at WP

2020 - Work-in-progress showing at Theatre Row

2020 - Script workshop on Zoom

2021 - Design/music workshop at ART/New York

2022 - Work-in-progress showing at Theaterlab

2023 - Planned world premiere at Theatre Row

Creative Team

Created by Ben BeckleyNate Weida

Music & Lyrics by Nate Weida

Book & Additional Lyrics by Ben Beckley

Directed by Jess Chayes

Music Direction by Dante Green

Scenic Design by Nic Benacerraf
Sound Design by Asa Wember

Costume Design by Kate Fry

Dramaturgy by Stephen Aubrey

Choreography by lisa nevada

Stage Managed by Allison Raynes

Produced by Emily Caffery & Meredith Lucio

 

Produced in association with Dutch Kills Theater (Alley Scott, Artistic Director; Allison Raynes, Managing Director)

Developed with D’Asia Brunson, Adrian D. Cameron, RJ Christian, Mark DeLucca, Kelechi Ezie, Cam Franklin, Jessica Frey, Laura Galindo, Sam Gonzales, Neal Gupta, Monica Ho, Lena Hudson, Anna Ishida, Jax Jackson, Lucy Jackson, Christian Jiménez, Angel Lin, Melissa Mahoney, Emil McGloin, Jared McNeill, Andrew Mueller, McLean Peterson, Ronald Peet, Sam Pinson, Fred Rice, Brett Robinson, Kris Saint-Louis, Sasha Schwartz, Kuhoo Verma, Jeanette Oi-Suk Yew & Wesley Zurick.

IN CORPO is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.

                                                        This production is                                                              supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department

of Cultural Affairs in Partnership with the City Council.

Funding has been made possible by the Puffin Foundation.

In Sector 13-G of Corpo, the world’s final corporation, employees no longer look at each other when they communicate. Corpo’s three distinct communications systems are driven by technology and created to maximize efficiency and profit. They're also, as our show opens, on the fritz, after a recently thwarted act of resistance. IN CORPO is a musical about communication--its limits, possibilities, and perils. How do we behave within an oppressive system--and what happens when that system breaks down? 

IN CORPO draws freely from Franz Kafka’s unfinished novel The Castle, Herman Melville’s classic short story "Bartleby the Scrivener," and the artists' own experiences negotiating hellish bureaucracies and corporate “day jobs.” The common thread: a deep interest in the individual’s relationship to forces that curtail autonomy and limit self-expression, as well as the ways employees adapt to and against these forces through coping strategies and methods of resistance.

The show's near-futuristic office culture is defined in part through electronic music and the musical harmony of employees at work, while individual arias offer cathartic expressions of rage or hope. These songs invite us to dive into the fantasies that the characters harbor for their liberation, which eventually lead to an onstage revolt against impossible odds. As the system breaks down, the instrumentation transforms from electronic to acoustic. Throughout the show, we riff on the weird, dark humor of Melville and Kafka, as well as the autocratic absurdities of modern-day America.

 

Learn more about the project by watching our Kickstarter video:

bottom of page