The Episodic Theatre Project
The Episodic Theatre Project (ETP) is a New York City-based collective that presents a serialized theatrical presentation each spring based on a different theme: one epic story told over five self-contained plays. ETP aims to create community amongst early-career artists and audiences by pushing the limits of the theatrical medium and reigniting a passion for live performance. It embraces and pushes the boundaries of how addictive theatre can be, and just like your favorite television show, have you coming back next week for more and wanting to watch the whole series.
Who We Are
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Who We Are *
photo by Samori Etienne
photo by Samori Etienne
A Letter From Our Founders
We are interested in pushing and reinventing the theatrical form and reigniting a passion for live performance and theatrical storytelling. As fans of soap operas and reality TV, our goal is to have the audience unable to resist the urge to see what happens next, and showcase the compelling nature of theatre. We hope to share with our audience our love for a form that is uniquely ephemeral and can captivate in a way that no other medium can.
During this unprecedented time in the theatre industry, we are witnessing a real threat to our art form. Post-pandemic, theaters are struggling to welcome back audiences and adjust their operating models to meet the rising costs of production materials, salaries, and venue costs. In order to survive, many theatrical institutions are turning to unconventional models and processes to reinvent theater, make it more sustainable and capture the attention of audiences once more. We want to ensure that the arts don't just survive, but flourish, and we do that by cultivating community, inviting in new audiences, pushing the boundaries of what theatre can look like, and supporting the underrepresented artists and stories that make the theatre so vibrant. We hope you’ll join our journey.
See you at the theater,
Lianna Rada-Hung and Melissa Lewyn
Mission
The Episodic Theatre Project’s mission is to provide professional opportunities for collaboration and risk taking for emerging artists, especially women and artists of color (the majority of our artists), and bring new audiences to the theatre.
Audiences have become less convivial- preferring to consume entertainment in their homes over participating in the unique shared experience that is theater. ETP fuses together the best parts of theater and television by presenting five plays in succession, creating a community of storytelling each week.
The five-week artistic process that precedes the actual performances is what makes the ETP experience unique. Five actors, five writers, and five directors collaborate over the course of a season to create the plays, with each director and playwright leading a different episode to showcase their unique styles and voices. The sparks from this incubation process result in the theater magic you see on stage!
THIS SPRING- SEASON 2: DON’T TURN AROUND NOW
SYNOPSIS:
Within the walls of Knife’s Point’s popular diner, secrets are brewing faster than a pot of Maxwell House. If charismatic millionaire Manny has their way, a new Arts District on Main Street will become the next big arts hub, overrun with artists, deep-pocketed tourists, magazine features... and murder plots? While locals are excited that their sleepy town will soon be revived, a few characters from Manny’s past will stop at nothing to prevent the Arts District plans from coming to fruition. Can Knife’s Point withstand the burden of small-town drama, or will their coffee cups runneth over?
CAST
Gabe Calleja as Orlando
Saidie Stone as Cleo
Walter Higginbotham as Manny
Aubree Chanel Dixon as Sabrina
Aditi Sanghavi as Dot
SEASON 1: BARDCORE (2024)
SYNOPSIS:
Trouble doth ensue at the Baltimore Area Renaissance Faire when the Monarch and Creative Director impulsively announces the fair is closing and she’s dumping all three of her polyamorous partners. Shocked and heartbroken, her fellow employees and lovers—a depressed jester, toxically chivalrous knight, and metaphysically troubled tarot reader—traverse the five stages of grief as they mourn their utopian summer and relationships, and prepare to re-enter the real world.
CAST
Alyssa James (mother / land at Theatre Row) as Monarch
Charlie Foster (THE GARCIAS on HBO) as Oracle
Leah Getz (World Premiere of LA COCINA) as Jester
Major Curda (KPOP on Broadway) as Knight
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Ep 3. BARGAINING
Director- Lee Melillo
Lead writers- Duncan Miller and Liv Wilson with contributions by Ben Holbrook
Thursday, May 2nd 2024
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Reviews
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“As a writer, opportunities to see your own work produced are few and far between. And yet, hearing work aloud is vital to understanding the way it functions in real time. It was such a gift to be able to work with stellar actors on very malleable material. Given the space and time to explore, we were able to make leaps we never would have reached strictly on the page.”
Liv Wilson (Season 1 Writer)
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"The multi-week nature of the process was a unique experience that both left me satisfied at the end of each episode and kept me coming back for more each week. Over the course of the project, I became invested in the characters' journeys and looked forward to diving deeper into the spotlighted character in each episode, coming back again and again to collect each piece of the full story."
Billy Issertell (Audience Member)
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