Meet Jay Stull and Keenan Tyler Oliphant and learn more about The Singularity Play! On Mon Nov 7 from 6-7pm Stull and Oliphant will lay out their vision for The Singularity Play. They will discuss their history as collaborators, their methods and practices, their plans for the Production Studio Course, and will answer questions about how to best prepare for their auditions, or otherwise get involved.

RSVP here. Dinner is provided. Students only.

CALLING ALL ACTORS!

TDM is looking for a diverse cast of actors to perform in their spring production of Jay Stull’s The Singularity Play, directed by Hadestown Associate Director Keenan Tyler Oliphant. In the play, a director, a writer and performers meet in a room to rehearse a play created by an unknown entity, later discovered to be an Artificial Intelligence – an experience that ultimately asks: how do we perform our selves? Our genders? Our very consciousness? What constitutes the boundaries of human-ness? What do we make of our bodies when we return from immersion in the metaverse?

Casting: Casting will happen through auditions which will be scheduled during course preview week – January 13-19^th (dates TBD). Students cast in the production can receive course credit by enrolling in TDM Production Studio 90BR (course description below).

Schedule: In recognition of student’s many interests and obligations, we have devised a graduated rehearsal schedule, which starts with weekly class meetings/rehearsals, and slowly increases in intensity as we approach our production period (full schedule TBD – coming soon!).

PRODUCTION STUDIO TDM 90BR: The Singularity Play
Instructors: Keenan Tyler Oliphant, Jay Stull

This course leads students through a new play development process, culminating in a fully rehearsed and designed production of "The Singularity Play" written by Jay Stull and directed by Keenan Tyler Oliphant. In "The Singularity Play" a director, writer and performers meet to rehearse a play created by an unknown entity - an endeavor that brings with it questions of existence and humanity. The course is primarily focused on performance with a full premier production component and seeks serious actors with intrepid ambition to work with seasoned professionals on the development of this exciting form-bending work. Students with interests in playwriting, directing, or theatrical design are also welcome, although enrollment in the course will necessarily involve performing of some kind. Questions guiding our explorations in performance are spurred by the preoccupations of the play itself and the director's vision for the production: what is the performance of consciousness? Of embodied existence? Of proscribed gender? and how this relates to the physical body. How does a virtual world (a Metaverse) affect behavior in the actual world? What constitutes the boundary of human-ness and how does proximity to that boundary affect behavior, performance, and power?

Enrollment in the course will be via audition. Students should read the full play, prepare for performance the sides provided in Courseworks, and be prepared to discuss their interests in themes of performance and embodiment/disembodiment.

Keenan Tyler Oliphant (director) is a Theatre-maker and Director from South Africa. Keenan’s work is in the lineage of the communal theatre-making and storytelling traditions of South Africa. As a theatre-maker he recalls his traditional Southern African storytelling lineage by simultaneously exchanging with histories and futures to create spaces of healing, investigation, mourning and celebration through performance. Keenan has worked in various Broadway, off-Broadway and downtown spaces in New York as well as creating work in South Africa. Credits include the US premier of Will You Come With Me? (PlayCo), Associate Director of Hadestown (Broadway), Oratorio for Living Things (Ars Nova) and Bengson's work in progress OHIO. He has served as second assistant director to Rachel Chavkin (Moby Dick; A.R.T Cambridge 2019), Raja Feather Kelly (We’re Gonna Die Second; Stage Theater New York 2020). He is a Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow (2020-2021) and a Drama League Directing Fellow (2021-2022). Keenan has an MFA in Directing for Theatre from Columbia University as well as Bmus Honours in Jazz Vocal Performance and BA in Drama, English Literature and Jazz from the University of Cape Town. www.keenantyleroliphant.com

Jay Stull (Playwright) is a theater maker whose work has been produced by or developed with Ars Nova, The Alliance Theater, Bloomington Playwrights Project, NY City Center Off Center, Joe’s Pub, The Gym at Judson, Roundabout, and The Tank. He is an alumnus of the Lincoln Center Directors Lab, The Civilians R&D Group, and the Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellowship. He is the 2022 NYSCA/NYFA Artist Fellow in Playwriting and he was an artist-in-residence and visiting lecturer in the Theater, Dance, and Media concentration at Harvard College in 2020, and collaborated with students to create and perform the student production NAME:_____________ . MFA: Columbia. www.jaystull.com