The Goddamn Tooney Lunes
a visual concept album
created by J. MEHR KAUR
in collaboration with Rat Queen Theatre Co
AUGUST
THE DOWAGERS
Live theatre, in a garden
written by JUSTICE HEHIR
directed by JOAN SERGAY
SEPTEMBER
PLEASURE MACHINE
A nine-episode, interactive podcast
Conceived by TARA ELLIOTT & EMMA ORME
Written by DIANE EXAVIER, MAY TREUHAFT-ALI & PHAEDRA MICHAEL SCOTT
Directed by TARA ELLIOTT
NOVEMBER
MORE INFO:
The Goddamn Tooney Lunes, created by CoCo Resident Artist J. Mehr Kaur, Molly Bicks, Carsen Joenk in collaboration with Rat Queen Theatre Co. The Tooney Lunes were local heroes in central New England’s early 2000's DIY music scene, where young teens and grizzled punks hung out in packed basements and danced to weird music while drinking vodka-spiked convenience store slushies. Now, ten years after their breakup, the band reunites for one more glorious night of mosh pits, stick n’ pokes, and debauchery. But below the melodies of barely tuned guitars are the undertones of the unresolved grudges and unforgivable betrayal. All grown up, the Tooney Lunes must face their seemingly glamorous teen years through adult eyes.
The Goddamn Tooney Lunes is a new musical, expressed virtually through a collection of songs and videos, that explores spaces where misfits go to understand themselves and find community.
the dowagers, by Colt Coeur company member Justice Hehir & directed by Joan Sergay. Salome, Tara, and Nick share an apartment building and a system for navigating the unspeakable. A pandemic-era play about neighbors, proximity, and the many permutations of care, the dowagers is a meditation on loss and lust - set on a single stoop.
An outdoor, socially distanced workshop presentation.
PLEASURE MACHINE, conceived by CoCo Resident Artist Tara Elliott and creative producer Emma Orme, is an interactive audio thriller, adapted from Sophie Treadwell’s Machinal and informed by adrienne maree brown's Pleasure Activism. Part narrative thriller about the effects of capitalism and patriarchy on the female body, part guided embodiment experience, PLEASURE MACHINE seeks to explore how, in the midst of such constant threats to safety and freedom, we might reconnect with our bodies to find grounding, joy, and agency.
The podcast tells the story of H, a black millennial femme working a temp job at an ad firm to support their budding career as a creator of audio care kink. When Kane, a big client, offers H the chance at a lucrative (if morally questionable) contract, she must ask herself how much agency she is willing to sacrifice for capital gain. Weighing the competing pressures of patriarchal capitalism and self-preservation, H makes a choice that sends her tumbling into a relentless, noisy tunnel of oppressive forces.
A nine-episode, interactive podcast, written by Diane Exavier, May Treuhaft-Ali, & Phaedra Michelle Scott, and directed by Tara Elliott.
Supported in part by Venturous Theatre Fund, a fund of Tides Foundation.
BIOS
Tara Elliott (PLEASURE MACHINE Director & Conceiver, she/her) is the director of critically acclaimed shows Burq Off! and Not the One and a producer of the Gotham Award-winning web series Shugs & Fats. She translated and directed the workshop premiere of prize-winning Chilean play Las Analfabetas. Her production of La Cantante Calva en McDonalds was the recipient of HOLA, ACE, and ATI awards. She has developed new plays with Clubbed Thumb, Pipeline Theater Company, LaMicro Theater, Teatro LATEA, BAX, Goethe Institut, Exquisite Corpse Company, KOFest, and The Barn Arts Collective. Her work has been seen internationally in London, Seoul, Edinburgh, Toronto, Vancouver, and Santiago, and in NYC at The Public, The Cherry Lane, The New Ohio, HERE Arts, and Walkerspace among others. 2019/2020 Directing Resident with Colt Coeur. 2018 Drama League Directing Fellow. MFA Directing, Brooklyn College.
Emma Orme (PLEASURE MACHINE Creative Producer, she/her) is a Brooklyn-based performer and producer with a focus on new theatrical work. She is currently the Artistic Producer at VoxLab and about to begin her work as Producing Director of Hypokrit Productions. Producing credits include: Time Out Critics' Pick Brief Chronicle, Books 6-8 (i am a slow tide); NYT Critics’ Pick Red Emma & The Mad Monk (The Tank); Polylogues (Dixon Place, Colt Coeur [upcoming]); NYT Critics’ Pick AGNES (Lesser America); and workshops of new plays by Sunita Prasad, Justine Gelfman, and more. Performance credits include: The Daughters and Black Dick [readings] (New York Theatre Workshop); Tongue Depressor (Weasel Festival @ The Public Theater); Bad Penny and LOCKED UP BITCHES (The Flea); Napoli, Brooklyn [reading] and Song For A Future Generation (Williamstown Theatre Festival); and The Bacchae (LaMama Experimental Theatre). She has served as the BOLD Associate Producer at Northern Stage, the Grants Manager for Williamstown Theatre Festival, and a video producer for The New York Times and the documentary The Kleptocrats. BA: Dartmouth College.
Diane Exavier (Pleasure Machine Writer, she/her) is a writer, theatermaker, and educator who creates performances, public programs, and games that invite audiences to participate in a theater that rejects passive reception. With a point of departure located in the Caribbean Diaspora, Diane explores what she calls the 4L’s: love, loss, legacy, and land. Intersecting performance and poetry, her work has been presented at BRIC Arts, Brooklyn Poets, The Bushwick Starr, Sibiu's International Theater Festival in Romania, Bowery Poetry Club, Dixon Place, and more. Her writing appears in The Atlas Review, The Racial Imaginary: Writers on Race in the Life of the Mind, and Staatstheater Hannover Magazine, amongst other publications. Her play Good Blood received a 2017 Kilroys List Honorable Mention. Her hybrid poetry collection The Math of Saint Felix is forthcoming from The 3rd Thing Press in 2021. Diane is a 2021 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow Finalist, as well as a Virtual Realm member of The Playwrights Realm 2020-2021 season. Diane holds an MFA in Writing for Performance from Brown University. She lives and works in Brooklyn.
Justice Hehir (the dowagers playwright, she/her)is a playwright whose work explores sexuality, feminism, and the formation and rupture of human bonds. She is a company member of Colt Coeur and is the recipient of a 2021 Individual Artist Fellowship from the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation. She is currently commissioned by George Street Playhouse and is an alumna of the 2020 Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group. Other recent projects include “true believer”, published this year by Table Work Press, and “freeplay”, under development through a 2020 EST/Sloan Project commission. MFA: Hunter College, BA: Rutgers University. She lives in Newark, NJ.
J. Mehr Kaur (The Goddamn Tooney Lunes creator, she/her) is a director, producer and curator of live & multimedia performance. She adapted and directed Kultar’s Mime, which toured internationally across the US, UK, Canada, India and Malaysia. Recently, Mehr collaborated with Chakram on the animated short When Planets Mate which was accepted into 15 film festivals including AMDOCS & Cinequest, directed the NY premiere of Madhuri Shekar’s “Queen” (APAC) and produced Rat Queen Theatre Co’s “Judy Doomed Us All” (New Ohio's Ice Factory). Mehr is the assistant director for the new musical “Other World” (Book by Hunter Bell, Music & Lyrics by Jeff Bowen and Ann McNamee). She is an MFA Candidate at USC School of Cinematic Arts' Peter Stark Producing Program and a graduate of Smith College; WTF Directing Corps member, MTC Directing Fellow, Colt Coeur Resident Artist; Recipient of a Fulbright-Nehru Directing Grant.
Phaedra Michelle Scott (Pleasure Machine Writer, she/her) is a playwright and dramaturg based in New York City. Her play, DIASPORA! was a commissioned work through SpeakEasy Stages’s The Boston Project. She is a past resident at SPACE on Ryder Farm for her play PLANTATION BLACK, and is currently a member of the obie-award winning playwriting ensemble, Youngblood at Ensemble Studio Theater and Pipeline Theater Company’s PlayLab. Her play GOOD HAIR, is a recipient of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Grant. Scott has been commissioned by University of Massachusetts, Sparkhaven Theater Company and Dramatic Question Theater. She has been an arts and culture journalist for wbur, Boston’s NPR station; a content developer at the USS Constitution Museum where she made maritime history accessible through storytelling and media. She is the resident dramaturg of New Harmony Project and is VP of Programs for the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA). Scott has received a Bly Creative Capacity Grant for her work as dramaturg for Black Theater Commons as well as the recipient of the Frederick Douglass Fellowship for her research on August Wilson's Pittsburgh Cycle. She is a crocheter, horror fan and obscure history enthusiast. She/Her/Hers. www.phaedrascott.com
Joan Sergay (the dowagers director, she/her) is a Brooklyn-based director of new work, originally from Washington, D.C. She has worked at Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, Vineyard Theatre, The Play Company, Primary Stages, The Flea, The Tank, Two Headed Rep, and Dixon Place. She has also worked regionally at Actors Theatre of Louisville, The University of California San Diego, Studio Theatre in Washington, D.C, and Chicago Shakespeare Theater, Rivendell Theatre, Citadel Theatre, and Piven Theatre in Chicago. Joan is a former Directing Fellow at Clubbed Thumb, Playwrights Horizons, Manhattan Theatre Club, and Actors Theatre of Louisville. BA: Northwestern University www.joansergay.com
May Treuhaft-Ali (Pleasure Machine writer, she/her) is a playwright and new-play dramaturg. After graduating from Wesleyan University, she completed an M.Phil in Theatre and Performance Studies at Trinity College Dublin on a George J. Mitchell Scholarship. She is a Writing Fellow at The Playwrights Realm, a 2021 Visionary Playwright at Theater Masters, an alumna of Clubbed Thumb’s Early-Career Writers’ Group, and a recipient of two commissions from Adventure Theatre MTC. She has worked as a dramaturg at Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Ars Nova ANT Fest, and Haven Theatre Chicago. Her dramaturgical essays have been published in Playwrights Horizons’ Almanac and Table Work Press’ Two Plays. May is currently the Literary Fellow at Playwrights Horizons.