Inspired by the legend of Tristan and Iseult, Shipwreck is a dance-theater, shadow-puppet exploration of unrequited longing and unintended consequences. Uniquely staged at the beautiful Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn, Shipwreck features New York City’s poignantly distant skyline, as heartbreaking and unattainable as each character’s desire. Told almost entirely without words, Shipwreck is a play about what remains unsaid in even the most intimate relationships, how lonesome our elaborate inner worlds can be, and what it takes to reach out for what is always tantalizingly out of reach.
Presented at Triskelion Arts in Brooklyn, NY – December 2009
Featuring: Lauren Ford (Iseult), Lucien Lewin (Tristan), and puppeteers Jenn Ifill, Mary Notari, and Eva Perrotta.
Created/Directed by Alexis Macnab
Original Score by Scavenger Quartet
Lighting Design by Andy Dickerson
Puppets and Choreography by Alexis Macnab
Dark Space is the story of one woman’s personal metamorphosis told in lush puppet spectacle and theatrical installation in chashama’s completely transformed 42nd Street storefront theater. From the confines of her domestic setting, the woman dreams of winged freedom and struggles toward her final release. With breathtaking imagery and innovative staging, Dark Space explores that liminal place where everyone must shed his or her old self and sit, bodiless and indistinct, before moving forward to embrace a new identity.
Presented as part of the Performing Arts Residency @ chashama 217 – February 2009.*
Featuring: Kate Brehm – The Girl/Caterpillar; Sarah Engelman, Serra Hirsch, Kirsten Kammermeyer, Miyu Leilani, Mary Notari, Sophia Remolde – puppeteers
Co-created by Alexis Macnab & Kate Brehm
Written and Directed by Alexis Macnab
Visual Design and Lead Performance by Kate Brehm
Sound Design by Sxip Shirey
Light Design by Lee McCall Terry
Stage Managers – Megan Pardo, Caity Grand
Technical Director – Mike Kerns
*The Performing Arts Residency @ chashama is a program granting four NYC-based contemporary performing arts companies 6 weeks of dedicated performance and rehearsal space in the same location. Made possible in part by a grant from the National Endowment for Arts.
Visually inspired by the collage boxes of Dada artist Joseph Cornell, Ralph & Isabel sets its characters in a world of elaborate frames and unspoken desires. Newly orphaned Isabel, a young and charming American woman, is brought to England where she meets, and enchants her infirm cousin Ralph. Blinded by his tacit love, Ralph becomes responsible for Isabel’s meteoric rise in European society – and ultimately her downfall.
Presented at Dixon Place Puppet BloK Performance Series – November 2008
Featuring Felipe Bonilla, Alexis Macnab – actors; Ethan Gould, Sarah Lannon, Marina Libel, and Miyu Leilani – puppeteers
Designed, Directed and Adapted by Alexis Macnab
Adapted from The Portrait of a Lady by Henry James by Alexis Macnab
Told in rich soundscape and dreamlike images, Trigger Happy Jack is the story of a girl determined to survive in the Large, Large, Large City in the Sky. Armed with barking spiders and her painted bottle caps, the girl grows up but never old.
Presented at The American Living Room Festival at HERE Arts Center – August 2007
Written by Timothy Braun
Sound Design by Jeremy Wilson
Light Design by Chris Brown
Video Design by Josh Higgason
Featuring Alexis Macnab, David Matrenga – actors; Lindsay Abromaitis-Smith – crew and builder (doll puppets)
Visual Design and Direction by Alexis Macnab
A day in the life of Leopoldo, a lonesome vagabond living on a floating island of ocean refuse. Letter from Rubbish Island is a glimpse into the mind of this bashful drifter, and catches him in a private moment of longing as he sends out a silent missive to his absent love.
Presented at The First Annual Clown Theater Festival at The Brick Theater – September 2006
Conceived by Jenny Sargent and Alexis Macnab
Written, Designed and Performed by Alexis Macnab
Night Fractal’s narrative weaves together creation myth, chaos theory, cosmology, and intimate memory to tell the story of beginnings, both epic and mundane. Using story-theater, modern dance, puppetry and performing objects Night Fractal shows that although there are many different ways to describe a pattern, they all tell the same tale.
Presented at Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH – February 2001
Remounted at The Performance Loft, Chicago, IL – February 2003
Designed, Choreographed, Adapted and Directed by Alexis Macnab
With writing by Abby Geni
Music by Corey Dargel and Stefan Tcherepnin
FOXFIRE – original adaptation, directed a staged reading at The Flea Theater, 2007
Abingdon Square – Assisted Jessica Thebus (dir.) at The Piven Theater, 2003
River Project – created original site-specific outdoor piece for Redmoon Theater, 2001
Outside Over There – original adaptation and direction, presented at Oberlin College, 2000
