Sinking Ship & Theater in Quarantine present
based on The Star Diaries by Stanislaw Lem
Created by:
Director/Performer
Jonathan Levin
Playwright
Josh Luxenberg
Performer
Joshua William Gelb
What’s next?
The workshop ran from June 17 - 19, 2023.
We’re continuing development building on what we learned from this phase of the process, and will return with the finished version.
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He’s Back!
Sinking Ship and Theater in Quarantine reteam to bring you our latest science fiction adventure: The 11th Voyage of Egon Tichy. A follow-up to our critically acclaimed 2020 online production The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy, this in-progress showing will be live at the Connelly Theater. Come see us mash together live performance, puppetry, and ridiculous robot suits.
Based on the short story by Polish master science fiction writer and satirist of humanity, Stanislaw Lem.
A Work in Progress
We’d love for you to join us for this workshop presentation—not only to experience the new work, but also to share your thoughts and reactions. This is the first time this piece will be shared publicly, and your feedback is a key part of our process.
The story
Space traveler Egon Tichy just wants his new AI CabinBot to bring him coffee. But when he discovers that robots on Earth have become rebellious after receiving anti-human propaganda from a far-off star system, he volunteers to investigate. He discovers a planet populated entirely by human-hating robots, governed with an iron glove by a tyrannical supercomputer that started out as a simple academic AI model gone awry. Can Tichy, trapped undercover inside a suffocating robot suit, survive long enough to stop the impending revolt?
(Will our production computer crash before the end of the show as we push it towards ever more intensive tasks?)
Tune in to find out!
Adapted with permission from the estate of Stanislaw Lem.
Our co-producer
How can theater practitioners artfully push against these new boundaries of social distance to embrace the limitations of remoteness? Is it possible to make theater in a digital arena that doesn't sacrifice the act of collaboration or our shared theatrical values: feats of liveness, collective experience, ephemeralness, the protean empty space...
Theater in Quarantine is an Obie and Drama League Award winning performance laboratory dedicated to the exploration of the live theatrical experience in the digital space. TiQ has live-streamed dozens of visually distinctive, original works to its YouTube channel, working out of a closet in the East Village that's only 8 sq feet. Our digital and hybrid programming spans genres and styles, with world premieres of new plays, new musicals, adaptations of classic texts, dance, and site-specific art installations. The work has been called "Virtuosic" by Jesse Green in the New York Times while Helen Shaw in Vulture wrote that the closet “makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination.” TiQ has been presented by The Invisible Dog, New Georges, Theater Mitu, CulturalDC, Ann Arbor Summer Festival, The New York Public Library, and was a 2021 artist in residence at LaMama and CultureHub's Experiments in Digital Storytelling. joshuawilliamgelb.com
Graphic design by Josh Luxenberg, with illustrations by David Michael Friend.
Dates & Times
Sat. June 17 @ 7pm
Sun. June 18 @ 5pm
Mon. June 19 @ 7pm
About an hour. We think.
General admission
Connelly Theater
220 E. 4th St.
Btw. Aves A & B
New York City
[Map]
Tickets
$15 suggested
$8 subsidized ticket
$35 supporter's ticket
This is a work-in-progress showing, so the tickets are cheap at $15. If you can't swing that, we'll cover the difference. Subsidized tix are only $8. Of course, $15 tickets don't cover the cost of creating the show, so if you have the means and would like to support us and this project, there's a $35 ticket available as well. All tickets grant you the same access. Pick what works for you.
ARTISTIC TEAM
Directed by
Jonathan Levin
Written by
Josh Luxenberg
Performed by
Joshua William Gelb
Jonathan Levin
Production Design & Illustration
David Michael Friend
Video Design
Jesse Garrison*
Scenic Design
Peiyi Wong*
Original Music & Sound Design
M. Florian Staab*
Prop & Puppet Fabrication Jonanthan Levin
Puppet Consultation
Eric Wright*
Costume Fabrication
Serra Hirsch
Production and Stage Management
Devin Fletcher
*Sinking Ship Associate Artist
The 7th Voyage
You don’t need to watch The 7th Voyage to come see The 11th, but if you want to, it’s still available for streaming!
Praise for Sinking Ship and TiQ’s 2020 Production
The 7th Voyage of Egon Tichy
“A satire of the infinite human capacity for self-defeat... wonderfully apt for our social-distancing moment.”
“A truly impossible, impressive piece of quarantine theater... Work like ‘The 7th Voyage’ makes confinement a virtue, a prompt to imagination.”
This presentation of The 11th Voyage of Egon Tichy is made possible by funding from the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Kathy Hochul and the New York State Legislature
