About this Event
On May 6 at 6:30p.m. at (435 West 22nd Street), Karin Coonrod passes the "crown" to the next generation of theatre makers, Colombari’s Artistic Associates: Rory Pelsue (recipient of the 2023 NYSCA Support for Artists Theater Commissions Grant), Jesse Rasmussen, and Jacob Basri. Each of them will present selected scenes from classical productions in development.
The theme of the evening is a cheeky reference to Coonrod as King Lear and the Artistic Associates as Lear’s three children in anticipation of Colombari’s world premiere of the play for five performances from June 14-16 at the in New Haven, Connecticut.
Celebrate Colombari's 20th Anniversary Season and meet the team who will follow in Artistic Director Karin Coonrod's footsteps and forge their own paths as they look toward the next 20 years of Colombari's tradition of generating spectacle in unusual places and deconstructing to reconstruct classic texts and spaces.
About Compagnia de' Colombari's Artistic Associates:
is an Obie-winning director of new and classic plays, operas, musicals, and live-stream performances. He is the Resident Director of Fake Friends, where he has helmed This American Wife and Pulitzer Prize Finalist and Drama League Nominee Circle Jerk. His work has also been seen at Primary Stages, Ars Nova, The Mercury Store, CultureHub, Southcoast Repertory Theater, Ojai Playwrights Conference, Portland Stage, Boise Contemporary Theater, Northwestern University, Quinnipiac University, Queens College, and the Yale School of Drama, among other venues. rorypelsue.com
(she/her/hers) is a writer, director and lyricist from Australia, currently based in Massachusetts. Jesse received her MFA in Directing from the Yale School of Drama and has directed works by Jeremy O.Harris, Tori Sampson and Sarah Mantell at Ars Nova, PSNY, the Yale School of Drama and Yale Rep. Jesse is a founding member of LA-based avant-garde opera company Four Larks, and collaborated with the company on numerous projects as writer, librettist and lyricist on works staged at the Getty Villa, The Wallis Annenberg Center and The Malthouse Theatre (Australia). Current directing projects include contemporary adaptations of Medea and Macbeth with composer Lukas Papenfusscline and a baroque pop cabaret based on the works of Anais Nin with composer Ellen Warkentine. Jesse is also co-creator with Beth Dinkova on the feature film project Syrena, supported by the Midnight Oil Collective/Tsai Center for Innovation at Yale.
is a director originally from Berkeley, California. His work has appeared at Rattlestick, The Flea, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Columbia University School of the Arts, Sarah Lawrence College, Wow Haus, Bedlam, Williamstown, Yale Summer Cabaret, and the Yale School of Drama. He is an alum of the Lincoln Center Director’s Lab, Williamstown Theatre Festival Directing Corps, and the 2017/2018 Van Lier directing fellow at Playwright’s Horizons. Jacob has had the pleasure of assisting several directors, including David Cromer, Rebecca Taichman, Pam MacKinnon, and Lila Neugebauer. Jacob is the directing fellow at Rattlestick and is directing a production, Fun Home, for YMTC+. He holds a BA in theatre from Sarah Lawrence College and an MFA in directing from the Yale School of Drama, where he was awarded the Julian Milton Kaufman Memorial Prize in directing.
About Compagnia de’ Colombari:
Compagnia de' Colombari is an international collective of performing artists, generating theater in surprising places that springs from the vision of director Karin Coonrod. Colombari intentionally clashes cultures, traditions and art forms to bring fresh interpretations to the written word. It is founded on the twin principles that the magic of great theater can happen anywhere and be accessible to everyone. Compagnia de' Colombari was born in Orvieto, Italy, in 2004, when the company re-imagined medieval mystery plays and performed them in the streets and piazzas. Having revitalized the theater tradition during Orvieto's annual Corpus Christi Festival, Colombari launched a parallel theatrical experience in its New York City home base called Strangers & Other Angels. Since 2008, the company created and performed More Or Less I Am (from Whitman's "Song of Myself"), Everything That Rises Must Converge (from Flannery O'Connor’s short story), The World Is Round Is Round Is Round (based on Gertrude Stein's story); Andras Visky's Giulia; Monteverdi's Orfeo; Karin Coonrod's texts&beheadings/ElizabethR; Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice in Venice, Italy; WoW! (Whitman on Walls!) a hybrid of the More Or Less I Am films with local active poets reciting their work around the country and worldwide, King Lear, debuting in 2024, Il Mostro Turchino (The Blue Monster, by Carlo Gozzi), in development in Venice, Italy for a 2026 premiere.
Compagnia de' Colombari's 20th Anniversary Season programs are made possible in part by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA), The Eucalyptus Foundation, and the generous support from other funders and donors.
Event Venue & Nearby Stays
Torn Page, 435 West 22nd Street, New York, United States
USD 0.00
