Press

"One of the most exciting and eccentric young theater companies in town."

Ada Calhoun, The New York Times

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“They have a keen sense of the absurd...clever but not smarmy or ironic. Their shows are done entirely without fear. They have total commitment.”

Vallejo Gantner, in The New York Times

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Description

Recently awarded the 2007 Spalding Gray award honoring innovative theatrical vision, the NTUSA is an ensemble theater company that democratically creates new works for traditional and non-traditional spaces. In the past seven years, their focus on theatrical environment has been matched by a devotion to the exploration of American history and the history of American entertainment. The NTUSA's theatrical creations are intensely visual and densely layered spectacles which are laced with the questions and arguments they bring to the exploration of each subject. This multiplicity of image and argument invites a complicit audience to engage with each piece as an active participant.

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NTUSA Biography

In 2007, the NTUSA received the second Annual Spalding Gray Award honoring innovative theatrical vision for a work in progress entitled The Chautauqua Lectures. The piece is derived from the lecture series of the same name traveling the country in the 1920's and 30's and will be presented at PS122, The Walker Center in Minneapolis and UCLA Live.

 

The NTUSA's 2006 premier of Abacus Black Strikes Now: The Rampant Justic of Abacus Black at PS122 earned them a Village Voice OBIE award. Additionally, an adaptation of Moliere's Don Juan, which was presented as a workshop to limited audiences at chashama's space in Long Island City, Queens, was also presented and will premier in early 2008 at the Chocolate Factory.

 

At The Stable in 2004, the company prepared its return to the ESB-Dublin Fringe Festival with Placebo Sunrise and work-shopped material for a new work. They also provided space for companies and individuals whose work went on to be seen at St. Anne's Warehouse, Symphony Space, the Brooklyn Museum, the Ice Factory Festival, and PS122.

 

In 2003, in residence at Nest Arts in DUMBO, Brooklyn, the NTUSA created What's That On My HEAD!?! Conceived as a theme park ride, the show's audience rode a mobile platform pushed and pulled through space, visiting sets on all sides. HEAD!?! explored multiple visions of the American Dream, alternate versions of accepted history and the culture's dual tendencies towards complacency and revolt. The show was extended twice and ran for ten weeks.

 

The NTUSA was awarded Arts International's DNA project Grant in 2002 and remounted Episode #23 at the ESB-Dublin Fringe Festival. The NTUSA also offered a one night only special presentation of Jack Russell's Superconfidence Seminar! at Galapagos in Brooklyn.

 

As chashama artists-in-residence, the NTUSA created Episode #17 of our Fathers, Garvery & Superpant$: Placebo Sunrise, converting a vacant storefront on 42nd Street into a 1950's era Havana-style nightclub in 2001. An audience of forty followed the amnesiac heroes from Episode #23 on a paranoiac holiday, sipping custom 'placebo' cocktails in vertical tiers of seating. The show ran for three and a half months to sold-out houses and was hailed as one of the years 10 best by Time Out New York.

 

During their inaugural year in 2000, the NTUSA launched their production Garvey and Superpant$: Episode #23, for which a lavish, miniature 1930's era vaudeville theater was constructed in the basement of a dilapidated deli in Times Square. The piece was a popular and critical success, and firmly established the company on the New York theater scene.

 

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