Moderation

An Irons in the Fire Project

June 15, 2023 @ 6:30pm
NYC Seminar and Conference Center - 71 West 23 Street, 9th Floor, New York, NY

Written by Lily Akerman
Directed by Lily Kanter Riopelle
CW - mentions of suicide, graphic violence, and disturbing imagery

Synopsis

A team of content moderators working for a tech behemoth sift through flagged content online, classifying it by clicking Accept or Reject. Some of the content is traumatic, and our moderators cope with that trauma through smoking weed, playing video games, (very) dark humor, and most importantly: friendship. As their bosses become more demanding-- and as content and trauma accumulate-- it gets harder and harder to cope. Some become disillusioned, others become extremists.

Performed By

Michael Crane
Ethan Dubin
Amara Granderson
Cesar J. Rosado
Nicole Rodenburg
Madeline Seidman

Stage Manager: Hannah Sgambellone

Playwright

LILY AKERMAN [she/her] is a playwright from New York.  Recent work includes The Commons at 59E59, and The Stalls at Cork Opera House (nominated for Best Opera by the Irish Times). Her work has appeared in the Dublin Fringe Festival, Cork Midsummer Festival, and Dixon Place. It has been developed with The Hearth, Clubbed Thumb, the Bechdel Project, and the New Theatre in Dublin. Her play Hedgehog Years was a winner of Playing-On-Air’s 2018 James Stevenson Prize and her play Hippo was a Finalist for the Leah Ryan Prize. She’s a Fulbright scholar and a New Georges affiliated artist. MFA: Hunter College, under Annie Baker and Branden Jacobs-Jenkins.

Director

LILY KANTER RIOPELLE [she/her] is a Brooklyn-based director of new plays, musicals, and reimagined classics. She is an alumna of Clubbed Thumb’s Directing Fellowship and the Williamstown Theatre Festival’s Directing Corps, a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and a New Georges Affiliated Artist. She was recently a Directing Fellow at Manhattan Theatre Club, where she served as the assistant director on the Broadway revival of How I Learned to Drive. She is a founding co-artistic director of Two Headed Rep, a company that commissions new plays written in response to classics and produces the old and new works in rep. She studied Theatre and Computer Science at Williams College and attended the National Theatre Institute’s Directing Program. When she’s not directing plays, Lily spends her time building web applications and making wheel-thrown ceramics out of a community studio in Brooklyn. lilyriopelle.com

Poster Art by Sean Devare
Photos by Valerie Terranova