The America Experiment

An Irons in the Fire Project

April 2, 2018
Superhero Supply Co.

Conceived and Written by Elizabeth Kenny
With additional text from Marinda Anderson, Juanita Castro, Shelley Fort, Stefani Kuo, and Kelly McAndrew
Directed by Caitlin Ryan O'Connell

Seating is extremely limited.
E-mail info@faultlinetheatre.org for more information or to reserve a seat

Synopsis

It is a regular morning, on the regular streets of NYC, when the most un-regular thing happens to 4 very regular women. Lightning strikes and they begin to float, then hover, then fly up and up and up only to crash into each other on the roof of a building in Manhattan. Pinned to their clothes is a note that reads “You are now Super Heroes. These are your co-workers. Things have not been going well. It’s time to figure out if we should call it on the American Experiment. You have a yet to be determined amount of time. Get to work. The world is counting on you.” Our heroes fight with the present and wrestle with the past to determine the possible future - all while history is raining down... and if they don’t all learn to fly, they may never get off this roof.

Performed By

Marinda Anderson
Juanita Castro
Shelley Fort
Stefani Kuo
Kelly McAndrew
Sarah Ann Murphy (stage directions)

Playwright

Elizabeth Kenny is a New York City-based actor, playwright, teacher, and lecturer. Elizabeth has been working in the professional theater since 1993 and became an Artistic Associate at New City Theater in 1998, working as a generative collaborative artist under the direction of John Kazanjian. Elizabeth and Kristen Kosmas founded Shady Lane Productions in 2007 which focuses on the development of new work that is intimate, immediate, and provocative. Past writing includes Sick (New City Theater - Gregory Award nominations for best performance, best new play and best production and The Gypsy Lee Rose award in excellence of production, performance and playwriting) and These Streets (ACT Theater, MeowCon, and Neumo’s 20th Anniversary). www.elizabethkenny.com

Director

Caitlin Ryan O’Connell is a theatre director and teaching artist focused on creating work that reflects the immediacy of our current social, cultural, environmental, and political life. Her work attempts to excavate the collision of all the minds and bodies in the room to generate a collective story. Originally from Waterville Valley, New Hampshire she now lives in Brooklyn, New York. Caitlin has worked with Ars Nova, Signature Theatre, LCT3, The Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Trinity Repertory Company, and Clubbed Thumb. At Brown/Trinity Rep Caitlin directed Timberlake Wertenbaker’s The Love of the Nightingale, Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, William Shakespeare’s Cymbeline and Will Eno’s GNIT. She also served as one of the founding creative producers for Brown’s graduate student theatre collective Romp of Otters where she directed, wrote, and performed in many late night new works. Caitlin is a 2017 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow and a former Directing Apprentice at Actors Theatre of Louisville. She has trained with the National Theater Institute, St. Petersburg Theatre Arts Academy, The Royal Shakespeare Company, Simon McBurney’s Complicite and the NY Neofuturists. She is a teaching artist with The International Theatre and Literacy Project and works in Rwanda to devise theatre with Rwandan youth. In 2010, she conceived and directed A World of Girls, an original play based on interviews with teenage girls from twenty-two countries worldwide. Caitlin is an alumna of Wellesley College and a graduate of the Brown/Trinity Rep MFA Directing class of 2016. www.caitlinryanoconnell.com

Poster Art by Sean Devare