- Joey Merlo in Conversation with Jess Barbagallo in “The Brooklyn Rail
“It’s noir-shaped, but like all good noirs, there is more here than meets the eye—or ear. In Joey’s floridly contempo-queeny stylings, cliches meet cliches with cannibalistic ferocity, as the play’s quartet of queers—all played by the virtuosic actor-playwright David Greenspan—become exponentially queerer in their pursuits for one another.” – Jess Barbagallo for The Brooklyn Rail
- “On Set with Theda Bara” Theater Review in New York Magazine
“…in the tiny yet mighty Williamsburg venue The Brick, there is a solo performance occurring around a table on an otherwise empty stage… On Set With Theda Bara—written by Joey Merlo and performed by off-kilter-theater royalty David Greenspan—embodies exactly the kind of gutsy weirdness and rich, invigorating audience connection that can arise from the challenge of a limited set of tools.”
– Sara Holdren, Vulture
- Exponential Festival 2024: In the News
“…Those Moveable Pieces manages to leave a surprisingly delicate impression. In the center of it all is an attempt to redress, via two bodies sweating and connecting in space, three grave contemporary emergencies: ‘(1) A neglect of embodiment,’ says the voice-over, ‘(2) An abuse of narrative … (3) A crisis of imagination.'”
Sara Holdren for New York Magazine
“What will we preserve? What can we save from the wreckage? Going outside into the cold, I was almost surprised to find the world still there.”
And more!
Nicole Serratore for American Theater Magazine
Elisabeth Vincentelli for The New York Times
Joey Sims for Transitions - “On Set with Theda Bara” in Print in The New Yorker
“Joey Merlo’s On Set with Theda Bara, an eerie seance-play performed by David Greenspan, who channels multitudes.” – Helen Shaw
- Faust (The Broken Show) in The New Yorker
“Dyer is intent on a kind of holy failure: he runs technical cues from a cell phone, which he hands to the audience, encouraging them to whack away at the controls, and he tries to invoke a supernatural power by painting a pentacle, an effort that collapses mid-ritual. Is he talking metaphorically about success here? Is the Devil not taking his calls? Yes and yes.”
Read Helen Shaw’s full review of Faust (The Broken Show) in The New Yorker - Room Room Room… in New York Magazine / Vulture
“Room, Room, Room, in the many Mansions of eternal glory for Thee and for everyone is part concert, part queer church service, part rave, and all big, tender, welcoming energy.”
- David Greenspan Will Play 4 Characters in On Set With Theda Bara in Brooklyn
“On Set with Theda Bara uses the mythology of the silent film star and anti-hero Theda Bara as a metaphor for queerness,” says playwright Merlo. “I’m a lyrical playwright who loves the campy, surreal, and melodramatic. My plays explore the cracks between the boundaries of what’s ‘real’ and what isn’t—by fusing the two, I attempt to locate my own existence within the realm of the fantastic. Theda Bara was written in a fever-dream state, literally, as I was very sick at the time and mostly bedridden. From that state, I used a cinematically imagistic narrative to create a play that transcends the traditional theatrical experience and invites a collaboration between audience, performer, and text.”
- Bent Duo: Embodying Queer Sonics
“Bent Duo unsettles traditional notions of music making; nothing is taken at face (or ear) value. They shift the sonic field through what they call their “radical faerie dance,” communicating queer bodies in motion. What was under the surface becomes legible, and the more audible these queer sonics become.”
Read John P. Hastings full feature on Bent Duo on Brooklyn Rail.
- An Experimental Master Gets His Due Onstage in New York
“Anthony Braxton’s music is difficult to program even among forward-thinking institutions. Leave it to the scrappy companies to get the work done.”
- Make “Room, Room, Room” In Your Heart For the Public Universal Friend
“Room, Room, Room delves into the end of the world, expanding definitions of gender identity and what it means to create a utopian society. It also contemplates, death. “
- Hyperfantasia at The Brick Theater
“Our existence is an elaborate joke: a stroke of dumb luck, a glint in the universe’s eye. What better way to acknowledge that fact than through a psychedelic cabaret, guided by the blind prophet of the Underworld themself? Part musical and part otherworldly burlesque, Hyperfantasia served the wild, the wonderful, and everything in between.”
- HOUSECONCERT IS THE BEST AND WORST KIND OF PARTY, ALL HAPPENING AT ONCE
“Experimental company Object Collection has transformed The Brick into a madhouse of assorted knickknacks, like six different living rooms all happening at once.”
- Object Collection’s Automatic Writing in Brooklyn Rail
“At its core, Automatic Writing is a kind of ritual magic rendered on magnetic tape. Imbued with a sense of occult-like mysticism, it transforms sound and language into a surrealist psychological space.”
- Events Review: There’s Kool-Aid in the Water Cooler
“Bailey Williams’s comedy is a sharp-toothed, sometimes bewildering satire of all-consuming workplace culture.”
Read Lauren Collins-Hughes full review on the New York Times.
- A GAY ROAD TRIP COMES TO THE BRICK IN BROOKLYN
“The show is going to be zippy, moving, and a lot of fun,” McEntee says. “Cam is such a beguiling presence, so audiences can expect a magnetic performance as he takes us on the road but also on a journey of self-discovery — a path that’s anything but straight, which is to say it’s going to be a gay ole time.”
- The Ben Shapiro Project and Our bodies like dams
Exponential Festival; presented at The Brick; “Shapiro” created by Ella Davidson, “Dams” created by Sarah Finn
“The Ben Shapiro Project, which Davidson co-directed with Paul Levine, smartly explores the maddening traps set by well-dressed trolls like Shapiro. Ignoring them doesn’t work; but mocking them, Davidson notes, isn’t really effective either.”
Read Joey Sims full reviews of The Ben Shapiro Project and Our bodies like dams on his Substack.
- A NEW PLAY CENTERING ASIAN AMERICAN ASSIMILATION COMES TO THE BRICK
“Hillary Gao’s new play, would you set the table if I asked you to?, considers the cost of assimilation through a uniquely theatrical and culturally specific lens. Featuring an intergenerational cast of all Asian actors…as Hillary says, ‘This play is not setting out to solve assimilation or impart any broader insights into the Asian American experience.’”
Read Billy McEntee’s full interview with Hillary Gao on Greenpointers.
- Events World Premiere At The Brick Investigates Productivity Culture And Grief
“The play challenges the idea of productivity culture and investigates the power of grief – alternating between “wild hilarity and quiet devastation.” Williams wrote Events at the height of the pandemic after the sudden loss of a friend.”
- Screen Time: A Film Star Captivates
“David Greenspan gives a wild ride of a performance in On Set With Theda Bara.”
Read Lauren Collins-Hughes Full Review in the New York Times.
- “A New Year” Series Brings Nightmares, Isolation, and Jump-Roping Dinosaurs to The Brick Stage
by Joey Sims
photo credit Walter Wlodarczyk of Chris Ignacio
On Friday, a battle against nightmares. On Saturday, the struggle to accomplish one basic task. On Sunday, a dinosaur trying to jump-rope. And on Sunday, the crushing weight of depression. - Staying Alive, or Live Art in Odd Places
By Patrick Scorese
Exemplar of this is Pioneers Go East Collective and their episodic performance series Lucky Star. The most recent installment was live-streamed as part of Out of an Abundance of Caution (OOAC), a weekly series of avant-garde live performances curated by Lauren Miller, Jessica Almasy, and the Brick Theater’s Theresa Buchheister. - Former Notre Dame student creates online performance
By Sarah Yenesel
Former Notre Dame Regional High School student, Kate Zibluk, is co-curating and co-creating a performance based project called “Out of Caution: The Next Generation,” to be streamed online in conjunction with The Brick Theater in New York City.
Read the full article at semissourian.com - When Theatermakers Long for the Stage, Playfully
By Laura Collins-Hughs
The second short is at least as friendly as the first but far more aching. Told in flashback, it achieves something I had not seen in all the deluge of video that has come in these past 10 months. Largely through black-and-white rehearsal stills of Barbagallo, Davis and Kaminsky, shot at The Brick in Brooklyn, it captures what theater feels like — the everyday incantation of it, and how unreachably far away that seems now.
Read the full article at nytimes.com - LUCKY STAR: superstar at the (Online) Exponential Festival
By Dot Armstrong
Lucky Star: superstar works like a time capsule. The film holds past, future, and present in an intimate, luscious spacetime loop. Fact and fiction, inseparable, blur and tease. Cut to disco ball, still swinging. Slow down and watch the air sparkle. Time swirls here, queerly, as fabulous histories and alien futurities shimmy together in a pleasing confusion. - Theater to Steam: Festivals, Festivals, Festivals
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Buchheister was excited to link the writer-performer Jess Barbagallo and the musician Nathan Repasz. “Nathan did one of my favorite performances of 2020,” (Buchheister) said, “a percussion piece to Mitt Romney saying that hot dog is his favorite meat.”
Read the full article at nytimes.com - Brooklyn Rail: Brick by Brick – How a Small-Town Manhattanite Dude Judy Evolves with Brooklyn’s Theater Scene and Politics
By Charles Quittner
On January 1, Williamsburg’s The Brick Theater welcomed Theresa Buchheister as its new Artistic Director. Founded by Michael Gardner in 2002, The Brick has been North Brooklyn’s home for eclectic works and experimental plays—ones so unique they’ve even starred my dog. Since taking over, Buchheister has stepped up with bolder and more focused programming, but that all changed once COVID—and revolution—hit. Now, The Brick is an outpost for protestors and the houseless community.
Read the full article at brooklynrail.org - CultureBot: Out of an Abundance of Caution, Volume 27
By Dot Armstrong
Luckily, Out of An Abundance of Caution is here to challenge our collective attention span. Volume 27 offered three inventive, evocative works tracing the contours of bodies past and present, along with a running dialogue about the themes of the evening via Twitch’s live chat feature. Host Maya Sharpe expertly ran the livestream and infused the event with vigor, whimsy, and synonyms.
Read the entire article at culturebot.org - NY Times: New York’s Arts Shutdown
- Brooklyn Rail: Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? OZET Lands at The Brick.
By Adam R. Burnett
Here’s what we know so far…
In 1929, after securing approval from the Eurasian Confederated Socialist States (ECSS), 700 “pioneers” were relocated to passing Comet P41. Leading up to the deployment of the First Generation, the comet was prepared through missions that shaped the landscape for human use.
Read the rest of the article at brooklynrail.org - NY Times: Hungry for Some Unclassifiable Theater? Dinner is Served.
By Elisabeth Vincentelli
Read the full article at nytimes.com - American Theatre Magazine: Where Have All the Festivals Gone: A January Wrap-Up
By Nicole Serratore
More wackiness ensued in the comedic play, Jupiter (Exponential), written by comedy troupe Simple Town. They imagined what would happen if the police infiltrated a group of anarchists by literally embedding themselves in the walls.
Read the full article at americantheatre.org - Bigger and Better: Experimental Theater Festival Returns
By Kevin Duggan
And those in the mood for a lighthearted laugh should check out “Catches No Flies,” a comedic dance performance by Lisa Fagan, featuring bad ventriloquism, a dolphin trainer living her dream, inclement weather, and a sardine escaped from the can.
Read the full article at brooklynpaper.com - The Best Things To Do in NYC This Week
By Oriana Leckert
See the bleeding edge of theater at the Exponential Festival, a month-long extravaganza focused on emerging artists and experimental performance. Some highlights: Good and Noble Beings, an adaptation of Deleuze and Guattari’s poststructuralist text A Thousand Plateaus mashed up with memoir and radical reimaginings;
Read the full article at gothamist.com - WNYC: Review/Preview: January Theater Festivals
With Helen Shaw
Helen Shaw, theater critic at New York Magazine, joins for our ongoing “Review/Preview” series with a rundown of what to check out at the many theater festivals taking place in NYC in January.
Watch the full video on wnyc.org - CBS: NYC Things To Do This Weekend: Jokes, Experimental Theater And Bull Riding
With Will Gleason
Time Out New York’s Will Gleason highlights the start to a whole new year of NYC happenings, including the annual 50 First Jokes show, Brooklyn’s Exponential Festival and bull riding at Madison Square Garden.
Watch the full video on CBS - NY Times: 17 Plays and Musicals to Go to in N.Y.C. this Weekend
By Alexis Soloski
THE EXPONENTIAL FESTIVAL at various locations (performances run through Feb. 2). This monthlong festival lauding local artists returns to Brooklyn. Participating locations this year will include the Brick, JACK, the Doxsee Theater and Vital Joint, as well as a superstore that will play host, wittingly or otherwise, to an immersive, choose-your-own-adventure show.
theexponentialfestival.org - The Observer: What’s Ahead for Off-Off Broadway: The Most Vulnerable but Vital Spaces for Theater?
By David Cote
As the COVID-19 shutdown grinds on, countless questions about theater loom: When can venues reopen? Without a vaccine, will audiences gather in an enclosed space? Are shows canceled for the rest of 2020? But the most basic, existential query is the hardest to answer: Who will survive?
Read the full article at observer.com - Vulture: “There Is No ‘Surplus’ in Nonprofit”: How Off Broadway Is Coping With Closure
By Helen Shaw
When Governor Cuomo’s office announced that Broadway would shut down on Thursday, March 12, in the face of COVID-19, the emails started to come in. Uptown, the state had made the call. But downtown, that decision had to happen artistic director by artistic director — tiny spaces, seating sometimes as few as 40 people, choosing to close. There are a handful still open, some to finish a run or get in one last show, and at Radio City Music Hall, Riverdance still stomped last night. (So did Stomp, 26 years into its run at the Orpheum.) But the dominoes were falling all over the city yesterday — shows, seasons, festivals, rehearsals, auditions, designer meetings, rental business, the works.
Read the full article on vulture.com - Greenpointers: Thursday Spotlight: Meet The Brick’s New Artistic Director, Theresa Buchheister
By Billy McEntee
Theresa Buchheister is a successful artist because she is a generous one; through multiple festivals and off-the-beaten-path venues, clandestine locales and dive hives, she has created myriad opportunities for creators of various stripes to express themselves and their craft. How fitting that she should rise to be The Brick’s new Artistic Director.The Brick (579 Metropolitan Avenue) has long been a haven for comediennes, interpreters of classics, and everything in between. Now, Theresa — founder of the lauded and Brooklyn-based Exponential Festival — takes her vast producorial and artistic know-how to Williamsburg’s vital and ever-evolving destination for cutting-edge theatrical experience. Get to know this indefatigable artist in this week’s Thursday Spotlight!
- NY Times: Still Aiming to Confound, a Scrappy Venue Turns a Page
By Helen Shaw
A wedding-dress-wearing alien beams onstage. A robot D.J. visits from Planet Nubian. A man tries to sell us a baggie of sour cream. And a pop star strips off his Pierrot outfit — a backward suit jacket and a tulle ruff — and sings “Heeeey” over and over.Everything is heightened! But also confusing? That’s because you’re at the scrappy Brooklyn venue the Brick, watching the ?! New Works Festival — also known as Interrobang.