Term of Art
Kate Kremer
Nonsense passes for sense and injustice for law in this theatrical Kafkaesque excavation of U.S. immigration and drone policy. Term of Art exposes the legal, linguistic, and bureaucratic mechanisms by which we seek control in our politics and our acts of care.
Kate Kremer: Playwright, director
Michael Costagliola: Sound designer
Anne Cecelia DeMelo: Associate director
Lance K Lewis: Lighting designer
Jeannipher Pacheco: Costume designer
Featuring: Ash Mayers, Bryce Payne, Rava Raab, Jorge Sánchez-Díaz, Isabella Sazak, and Jenna Zafiropoulos
Term of Art draws on (takes from, writes over) Supreme Court transcripts in which the justices wrestle with the question of how to police the borders of citizenship in order to deny rights that ought to be inalienable. Through a series of fugitive, fragmentary scenes performed by a cast of four performers moving through many voices, Term of Art disrupts assumptions about outlines, borders, boundaries, definitions, durations, laws, limitations—the mechanisms by which we seek to control space, meaning, time, and people in our politics and in our acts of care. Onstage each night, a transcriptionist struggles to do justice to the material of justice. As repeated brutalities become settled law, we are left asking: what can emerge from the inadequacies of love and art?
Collaborators:
Kate Kremer (playwright, director) is a playwright based in Brooklyn, NY and Wise, VA whose work explores past, present, and potential systems of oppression and care. Plays include In Some Conceivable World, or Tit Court (semi-finalist Clubbed Thumb Biennial commission and SPACE on Ryder Farm), Untitled trash collection (Figge Art Museum), Term of Art (Public Theatre Weasel Festival), Charlatans (finalist Princess Grace Award, Bushwick Starr Reading Series), Intimatics (SFX Fest, Dixon Place), Eye Heart Remote (finalist Dennis and Victoria Ross Foundation), Porch Play (Brooklyn College), kankedort (commission, Stagefemmes), and Undone (commission, the Motor Company). Kate received her MFA from Brooklyn College, where she studied with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney. She teaches playwriting at the University of Virginia’s College at Wise and is the editor of the experimental play publishing organization, 53rd State Press.
Michael Costagliola (sound designer) is a Brooklyn-based sound designer and composer. He studied music at Brown University, where he received the Weston Award for Music Composition. He is a Teaching Artist in Sound Design for the Roundabout Theatre Company and is the resident composer for the AntiGravity Performance Project. His work has been heard in New York at La MaMa, New York Theatre Workshop, The Public, Ars Nova, and Dixon Place among others, as well as at various theaters in the Northeast and across Europe and India. MFA in Sound Design, Yale School of Drama. michaelcostagliola.com
Anne Cecelia DeMelo (associate director) is a bilingual director, musician, and translator working across theatre, opera, and film. Recent work includes The Wagging Craze (Ars Nova's ANTFest), feminine octagon [or, aristotle can eat me] (LPAC), House of Karen (Signature Theater/Columbia University), and The Trojan Women (The Flea, Drama Desk Award nomination: Outstanding Adaptation). Assistant directing includes the world premiere/international tour of the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera Angel's Bone, and Taylor Mac's A 24-Decade History of Popular Music at St. Ann's Warehouse, as well as productions for BAM’s Next Wave Festival and Atlantic Theater Company. Anne is currently pursuing her MFA in Directing as a John Wells Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University.
Lance K Lewis (lighting designer) was born in Washington DC. He attended Duke Ellington School of the Arts, where he was nominated for a “Cappie Award.” He continued to work as a lighting designer in DC until moving to Oxford, PA to attend The Lincoln University, where he received his BFA. He received his MFA in lighting design from Brooklyn College and is currently based in New York.
Jeannipher Pacheco (costume designer) Selective credits: First Ladies (Ellie McPherson); Takeover (Market Road Films); The Weasel Festival (The Public x Brooklyn College); Raisin: The Musical (APAC); Welcome to the Doll Den (Electric- eye Ensemble); world premiere: Radium Now (Brooklyn College) Assistant design selective credits: Mrs. Murray’s Menagerie (Ars Nova); Surely Goodness and Mercy (Theatre Row); Desperate Measures (New World Stages); The Crusade of Conor Stephen (Snapple Theater Center); Back Home Again (Aruba); Doomocracy (Creative Time); The Offending Gesture (The Tank); Promising (InProximity). Costume Coordinator on CBS series, Tommy (2019). BFA in Theatre Production Tech and Design from Brooklyn College. More at JeannipherPacheco.com.
Bryce Payne (performer) is a hermit, a friend, a lover, and a fighter. When xe’s not singing into faces or exploring the feeling of xyr weight on the floor, xe is often singing into microphones, or struggling to survive; in fact, xe often sings into microphones about struggling to survive. It can all get very meta... Xe likes to think xyr work bridges heart-attack seriousness to a strong sense of irreverence, but ultimately xe would rather let you judge. Or really, xe would prefer you refrain from judging, but xe understands that no one is perfect.
Jorge Sánchez-Díaz (performer) is an actor from Puerto Rico living in Brooklyn. He has worked with Theatre for a New Audience (The Skin of our Teeth, dir. Arin Arbus), The Public Theater (world premiere of Tongue Depressor by Jerry Lieblich, dir. Tara Elliot), Lincoln Center Education (Trusty Sidekick’s Shadow Play), Shakespeare Theatre of New Jersey (Twelfth Night tour), Classical Theatre of Harlem (The Three Musketeers), INTAR (One Minute Play Festival, dir. Lou Moreno), Theatre Raleigh (Ayad Akhtar's Junk), and Exquisite Corpse Company (Water, Water Everywhere). MFA: Brooklyn College jorgesanchezdiaz.com
Isabella Sazak (performer) is a Philadelphia-based, Turkish-Colombian-American multidisciplinary creator, clown, painter, collaborative theater maker, singer-songpoet, director, and teaching artist. An intersectional ecofeminist, she seeks to create work that heals, empowers, provokes, inspires, moves, amuses, educates and decolonizes herself, her collaborators, and her audiences. Izzy holds a BA in Drama from The University of Virginia (’11), and an MFA in Devised Performance from University of the Arts/Pig Iron School for Advanced Performance (’18). She is an associated artist of Applied Mechanics Theater Company and has been lead vocalist for their house punk band, The Bandits, since 2014.
Jenna Zafiropoulos (performer): Born in New York, raised in Athens, Greece, Jenna Zafiropoulos received her Masters in Acting from Brooklyn College in 2016 after returning to her birth country to pursue her goals. Having played roles such as Desdemona, Alcestis, and the Lord of the Underworld in Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice, she now looks forward to discovering and exploring more women and more places and more ideas, and more of herself as she moves forward.