For sixteen years, The Civilians’ R&D group has fostered bold new works of investigative theater. This year’s festival journeys from the fallout of Fukushima to the dance floors of 1979 Chicago, from the South Korean adoption industry to looming climate catastrophe in the Pacific Northwest. Across six works-in-progress, writers, composers, and theatermakers transform interviews, research, memory, and lived experience into urgent new performance.
Join us this June at ART/NY for a series of free public readings exploring disaster, joy, surveillance, family, extinction, forgiveness, and survival.
HAIMES STUDIO
ART/NY, 520 8th Avenue, 3rd floor.
JUNE 1ST
SAVED
by Jesse Jae Hoon (윤재훈)
1PMPart 1: The Girl In The Sky
7PMPart 2: Thanksgiving
* This reading will be held at:
Mabou Mines, 150 1st Avenue
SAVED is a two-part drama about the South Korean adoption industry, from its Cold War origins to its transformation into a lucrative business empire built by systemic fraud and negligence. Three epic stories spanning six decades across Oregon, Washington DC, Vermont, Seoul, and Jeju Island, Saved explores what happens when we kill the parents and raise the children.
Run times:
PART 1: 3h30m, including 2 intermissions.
PART 2: 3h40m, including 2 intermissions.
JUNE 8TH @ 7PM
THE FLUBBERMUSTED
by Nazareth Hassan
In London, Jane is on her way to work, and she likes to be seen. In New York, Phil is late to work, and he is invisible. On the Internet, a group creates a plan. The Flubbermusted is a fugue in 3 variations, exploring surveillance, labor, information, and extremism.
Approximate run time: 40 minutes.
JUNE 9TH @ 7PM
JUMPERS
by HyoJeong Choi
JUMPERS is a theatrical investigation of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster told through the overlooked lives of contract workers cleaning the site. At its center is Astro Girl—a cartoonish, trickster narrator who disrupts the action with unreliable commentary and shifting genres. Blending documentary and absurdity, the play exposes the human cost of technological progress while questioning how disasters that are ongoing, politicized, and obscured can ever be fully represented.
Approximate run time: 110 minutes
JUNE 12TH @ 3PM
JANUARY IN NEW YORK
by Andromache Chalfant
Music by Robert Johanson
January in New York is a love story. Newly settled in 1970s Manhattan, Ted, a sculptor, and Lee, an aspiring actress, pursue creative lives that threaten to tear them apart. Cycling between scenes past and present, monologues plucked from interviews, and in songs, the play traces two lives spent apart and together. Regret gives way to dignity as marriage tests one couple’s capacity for love and forgiveness.
Approximate run time: 90 minutes
JUNE 15TH @ 7PM
FORCE MAJEURE
by Jeanine Oleson
At some unknown point, the geological activity in the Cascadia Subduction Zone of the Pacific Northwest will trigger large tsunamis that will devastate the region, which is already suffering from droughts and fires caused by climate change. The impact on vulnerable communities will be staggering and longer-term issues with nuclear and toxic afterlives will be a certainty. How do we live with this and other past/current/future catastrophes?
Approximate run time: 45 minutes
JUNE 18TH @ 7PM
DISCO DEMO
by Adam J. Rineer
& Jason Aguirre
An explosion. A riot. A dance floor. A love story. On July 12, 1979, Chicago erupted in what some call “the day disco died”. At Comiskey Park, the “Disco Sucks” movement’s record torching publicity stunt turned into a riot, destroying thousands of disco records. Across Chicago, in the more than 100 active discos, black, brown, and queer people gathered to dance, celebrate, and fight to survive as the city’s cultural fabric was torn open. Despite this event, they found love, release, and escape. DISCO DEMO is an interview and research-based musical that shifts the spotlight from the spectacle to the people who lived it and found solace in a genre that championed joy and liberation asking, what does it mean to seek joy in the face of hatred?
Approximate run time: 60 minutes