Jubilee at Mercury Store is a window into process; drafting in three dimensions. Fourteen artists making twelve new pieces - all in varying stages of earliness.
Thank you for joining us.
PROGRAM 1
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Daniel Aukin is exploring Anton Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard using an exercise that invites discovery and boredom. Enough of the former to compensate for the latter most of the time.
Daniel Aukin was the director of David Adjmi’s Stereophonic, the most Tony-nominated play in Broadway history. Other credits include Sam Shepard’s Fool for Love as well as the world premieres of Melissa James Gibson’s [sic], Joshua Harmon’s Bad Jews and Amy Herzog’s 4000 Miles. He is the director of Untitled Elizabeth Taylor Film, currently in development, starring Rachel Weisz. He was Artistic Director of New York’s Soho Rep. (1998-2006) one of the most excellent homes for ground-breaking, new American theater over the last several decades.
Other honors include Tony, OBIE, Callaway, Drama Desk and Drama League Awards.
Daniel is a New York-based director and was raised in London and Leicester.
Collaborators:
Jenny Bacon, Glenn Fitzgerald, Chris StackMercury Store Actors:
Vann Dukes, Keeley Miller, Evie Schuckman, Felix Teich, Amy WebbMercury Store Stage Manager:
Gloria Gomez -
shayok.misha.chowdhury@gmail.com
Othello
Performed By Hindoo Amateurs
At The Oriental Theatre
No. 268, Gurranhatta, Chitpore Road, Calcutta
On Monday, the 26th September, 1853
Inspired by a real historical production—the first ever performance of a Shakespeare play by an all Indian cast—we’ve spent this week at Mercury Store exploring how Shakespeare’s language rubs up the music of Bengali-inflected English.Shayok Misha Chowdhury is an Obie and Whiting Award-winning writer and director. His playwriting debut, Public Obscenities (NYT Critic’s Pick; Soho Rep, NAATCO, Woolly Mammoth, TFANA), was one of three finalists for the 2024 Pulitzer Prize in Drama. His most recent play, Rheology (Bushwick Starr, HERE, Ma-Yi), a collaboration with his physicist mother, was honored with an Obie Award for Performance, with encore runs at Playwrights Horizons and REDCAT. Recent directing includes Jordan Tannahill’s Prince Faggot (NYT Critic’s Pick; Lortel Award for Outstanding Play and nomination for Outstanding Director; Playwrights Horizons, Soho Rep, Studio Seaview), Jesse Eisenberg’s The Ziegfeld Files (Studio Seaview), and a revival of Lee Breuer and Bob Telson’s Gospel at Colonus (Little Island). Upcoming: Miranda Rose Hall’s Work of Devotion (Second Stage). Misha’s many-tentacled practice, spanning theater, music, poetry, and film, has earned him the Relentless Award, the Mark O’Donnell Prize, a USA Fellowship, a Princess Grace Award, a Jonathan Larson Grant, two Sundance fellowships, and a Fulbright Fellowship. BA: Stanford. MFA: Columbia.
Collaborators:
Desdemona - Komolika Basu
Brabantio & Emilia - Golam Sarwar Harun
The Duke & Cassio - Gargi Mukherjee
Othello - Sajal Mukherjee
Roderigo & Lodovico - Suman Mukhopadhyay
Iago - Debashis Roy ChowdhuryMercury Store Stage Manager:
Huai Huang -
War and Peace. Places of War. is a theatre performance after Tolstoy’s War and Peace and in dialogue with Piscator’s stage adaptation. Rather than retelling the story, it follows war as a force that continually shifts in shape and scale through different performance and movement forms such as ensemble narration, game and sports, object performance, and fragments of characters. It also zooms in on specific human situations and finds cracks in time and space.
Jing Dong is a theatre maker based in NYC. As a generative artist, she directs, writes, and facilitates devising processes. She makes performances that create space for people to gather, connect, and reflect on life experiences and the world’s current issues. Her theatre projects take various forms such as devised experimental theatre, ethnotheatre, community-based performance, participatory performance, audio theatre, and object theatre. Her works have been presented in theaters and non-theater spaces in the US and China. Current projects include War and Peace. Places of War., A Bird Piece, and what a shame I became verbal. Her projects have been supported by Mercury Store, LMCC, NYSCA, The Laundromat Project, Korean Art Forum, Yangtze Rep, and Performance Project. She is part of The Tank’s TAG, and a member of the 2026-28 WP Theater Lab.
Collaborators:
Hao BaiMercury Store Actors:
Elizabeth Berkman, Amanda Centeno, Nile Harris, Simon Henriques, Jesse B. Koehler, Matthew Korahais, Ali Arian Molaei, Anula Navlekar, Monica Sanborn.Mercury Store Stage Manager:
Erica Schnitzer -
Stories from the Texas home front trace the loss of language and the reclaiming of language through my late father’s neurodegenerative condition and my brother’s early childhood brain injury, respectively. Centered around my family’s deep love of all things aviation.Emily Davis is an actor, writer and producer who splits her time between New York City and Texas. Theater credits this year include NYTW's Tartuffe (opposite David Cross and Matthew Broderick) and the critically-acclaimed Well, I'll Let You Go at Studio Seaview (Drama Desk Nomination). On TV she can be seen in recurring roles in Widow's Bay (Apple TV), Tulsa King (Paramount +), The Patient (FX), The Servant (Apple TV), American Rust (Showtime), and High Maintenance (HBO). Next up, she will be seen in the Netflix feature The Cackling of the Dodos for director Jason Bateman, the independent feature TALK TO ME LIKE A PERSON for director Casimir Nozkowski, and the independent feature FROGS, written by her frequent collaborator Robin Schavoir. Davis headlined the critically acclaimed Broadway production of Is This a Room, for which she earned the prestigious Obie and Drama Desk Awards for her starring performance as ‘Reality Winner’ at the Vineyard Theater Off-Broadway. She recently produced the feature film The Misconceived which premiered at the Rotterdam Film Festival in January. Additionally, she has worked with the theatre company Half Straddle for over a decade, performing in the U.S. and abroad in their original plays.
Collaborators:
Jess BarbagalloMercury Store Stage Manager:
Angie Salazar
PROGRAM 2
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ethan.philbrick@gmail.com
nriseley@gmail.comTherapist is an in-progress play with music by the band DAYS (Ned Riseley and Ethan Philbrick). Kate, a disillusioned therapist who sees patients in her apartment on the Upper West Side, meets an infuriating new patient, Ray. Ethan and Ned play a cellist and an actor who live in the neighboring apartments on either side of Kate’s. When an unexpected and ambiguous emergency strands Ray in Kate’s apartment, therapist and patient must go beyond the bounds of a session, neighbors must knock on each other’s doors for the first time, and eventually, Kate’s free-spirited sister will arrive. Developed over the course of a week at the Mercury Store in August, this early experiment explores what gets spoken and overheard in analysis, in the artistic process, and in interpersonal relationships.
DAYS is a band and a theatrical project. Ned Riseley and Ethan Philbrick write plays that bring music and narrative together in dynamic, unexpected ways. Their music merges voice and cello to explore intimacy, theatricality, and everyday mysticisms. Their play, Internal Audit, premiered at The Kitchen in March 2026. Their EP, “Do I,” was released in 2024 and produced by Kyp Malone.
Ethan Philbrick is a cellist, artist, and writer. In addition to participating in a variety of collaborative performance projects and being part of the musical-theatrical project DAYS, Philbrick is currently making interdisciplinary works that cluster around three different conceptual threads: 1. experiments in music and theory on the nature of instruments and the politics of instrumentality; 2. compositions for vocal collectivities that investigate the contested history of anticapitalist critique; and 3. collaborative research projects that inquire into alternative relationships between music and dance. He is currently curator-in-residence at The Poetry Project and a member of the curatorial collective for Offerings. In 2023, Philbrick published Group Works: Art, Politics, and Collective Ambivalence with Fordham University Press. He has taught at Pratt Institute, Muhlenberg College, New York University, Wesleyan College, Yale University, Sarah Lawrence College, and The New School.
Ned Riseley is an actor and writer. Selected performing credits include: Internal Audit (The Kitchen), Fashion (Exponential Festival), Everything Must Go (Chocolate Factory), Six Degrees of Separation (Broadway) and Poster Boy (Williamstown). He is half of the band/theatrical project DAYS, and the comedy duo Friends Who Folk.
Collaborators:
Ethan Dubin is a Brooklyn based actor and artist. He is an affiliate artist with Clubbed Thumb where he most recently appeared in The Family Dog by Bailey Williams. Broadway: The Ferryman, Tony Award Best Play. Off-Bway: Antigone: A Play I Read in High School (Public Theater); Bobbie Clearly (Roundabout); Rancho Viejo (Playwrights Horizons). Some Film&TV include: “Elsbeth”; “Poker Face”; "Fallout”; the Coen Brothers’ “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs"; “Mike”; and “Inventing Anna”.Jennifer Ikeda is a performer based in Brooklyn. Upcoming work includes The Executrix by Emma Horwitz, and Petra with Half Straddle, directed by Tina Satter. Originally from Oakland, CA, Jenny is a graduate of Juilliard.
Mercury Store Stage Manager:
Gloria Gomez -
nazarethhassan@gmail.com
Emotes is a dance in four movements exploring mundanity, avatars, and the theater of the uncanny.
Nazareth Hassan is an interdisciplinary writer, director & musician. Their play Bowl EP was a 2026 Pulitzer Finalist and won the 2025 Obie Award for Outstanding New Play. Other performance and theater works include Practice at Playwrights Horizons, Untitled (1-5) at The Shed (text published by 3 Hole Press), VANTABLACK at Theatertreffen Stückemarkt in Berlin, and Memory A at MUAC in Mexico City. Their first book of poetry and photography, Slow mania, was published in December 2025 by Futurepoem. In 2022-23, they were the dramaturg at Royal Court Theatre. They are a 2026-27 Hodder Fellow at Princeton University.
Collaborators:
Ryan Gamblin, Dyer Rhoads, Joelle SantiagoMercury Store Actors:
Karina Curet, Rina Dutta, Danyel Geddie, Stanley Andrew Jackson, Malcolm Minor, Rahmell Peebles, Robbie Tolentino, Jes WashingtonMercury Store Stage Manager:
Huai Huang -
amessageforwilliam@gmail.com
This is William Inge's Picnic.Picnic is my favorite play.
I've been thinking about a production of this play for many years, and over that time I have discovered that this play is an absolutely surreal and sublime nightmare about how we keep each other down. I love it.
In this little sharing, I am running a gesture sequence through a few different theatrical circumstances. The sequence is 15 individual, unique shirt-folding phrases that I built with this company of performers. I've spent my Mercury Store time focused on proof of concept for this idea. My hunch is that a durational, endless task might beautifully reveal the power of the language in this play, the covert, shameful feelings these characters have about their desires, and the rabid policing and surveillance that define the deceptively quaint little world of this backyard.
As a director and choreographer, Will Davis’ work has been seen Off-Broadway at Signature Theatre, Encores!, Roundabout Theatre, MTC, MCC, Playwrights Horizons, Clubbed Thumb, and Soho Rep. Regionally, his work has been seen at Williamstown Theatre Festival, La Jolla Playhouse, Baltimore Center Stage, Shakespeare Theater Company, Long Wharf Theatre, and ATC in Chicago, where Davis previously served as Artistic Director. He received a Helen Hayes Award for Best Direction for his work on Colossal at the Olney Theatre Center, was nominated for a Lucille Lortel Award for his direction of Men on Boats at Playwrights Horizons, and is the recipient of a Princeton Arts Fellowship. Davis is the Artistic Director of Rattlestick Theater.
Mercury Store Actors:
Sarah Bitar, Vann Dukes, Ekemini Ekpo, Delaney Feener, Mia Fowler, Sam Langshteyn, Keeley Miller, Ali Arian Molaei, Anula Navlekar, Erin Noll, Reed Northrup, Felix Teich, Eli Wassertzug, Ema ZivkovicMercury Store Stage Manager:
Erica Schnitzer -
hannahmkallenbach@gmail.com
A disembodied head performs “stand up” comedy for the first time.
The piece includes a hot sauna that seats 4 audience members. The recommended time inside a hot sauna (105 degrees Fahrenheit) is 20 minutes, but audience may come and go as they please. When a seat opens up inside the sauna, anyone may enter.
Content warnings: Panic attacks, nudity, and BDSM. If you need to excuse yourself at any point, don’t hesitate.
The piece runs for 30 mins. Please do not touch the performers. Thank you.
Hannah Kallenbach is a Brooklyn-based actor and performance artist whose work takes many forms in various mediums, from durational site-specific installations to multi-media devised works to solo experimental theater shows. She has performed original pieces at venues such as Ars Nova, LaMama, Triskelion, JACK, Collapsable Hole, The Brick, Life World, The Church of Saint Mary the Virgin-Offerings Series, and Dixon Place. She has participated in festivals such as The Noorderzon Festival, Williamstown Theater Festival, Exponential Festival, Radical Acts Festival, The Prelude Festival, ?!:New Works, and SalOn!. Hannah runs a free monthly workshop for devising artists at Mercury Store. The workshop allows artists to experiment with portions of new works on their feet, bypassing “opening act” performances as the only way to gain audience feedback. BFA NYU.
Created by Hannah Kallenbach
Directed by Dan Hasse
Featuring Kelpy Cathedral, Hannah Kallenbach, and Molly Lang
Scenic Design by Zipporah Norton
BDSM by A.E. Portia
Portable Sauna Design by Michael Glen
Additional Writing by Tony GraysonMercury Store Stage Manager:
Angie Salazar
PROGRAM 3
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cryptochrome (2025 Kilroys List) is a sonic odyssey across the animal kingdom that invites audiences to imagine themselves in the sensory worlds of other living things. For the Mercury Store Jubilee, Tiresias collaborates with Mizu Issei, Concrete Husband, and Tristan Allen on new musical arrangements for cello, flute, and electronics.
Evan Silver aka Tiresias is a hybrid writer, director, composer, performer, puppeteer, mythmaker, shapeshifter, drag-thing, songbird, and ritualist. Called “a rara avis of experimental theatre” by The New Yorker, their work explores queer ecologies, weird mythologies, and speculative futures. They are the 2026 Jim Henson Foundation Puppetry Resident at the O’Neill Theater Center, the Inaugural Artist in Residence at the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin (2026), and an Inaugural 2025 Princess Grace Artist Fellow. They have received fellowships from Ucross, MacDowell, Millay, Bogliasco, Sitka, Monson, Luce, Marshall, Fulbright, and elsewhere.
https://www.instagram.com/whoistiresias/
Collaborators:
Mizu Issei, Carlos Aguilar (Concrete Husband), Tristan AllenMercury Store Stage Manager:
Gloria Gomez -
Simon from Brooklyn is an adaptation of Shakespeare's play Timon of Athens. In the tough streets of NYC, Simon is Lord. Simon helps his friends, gives many gifts, and holds many dinners and parties. After ignoring his true friends/brothers warnings, Simon runs out of money, and none of his "Brothers" will help him. He runs away to an abandoned factory where he curses humanity, finds drugs, and funds someone to destroy NYC, and dies.
Modesto “Flako” Jimenez is a Dominican-born, Bushwick-raised, multi-hyphenate artist. As a poet, playwright, educator, actor, producer, and director his work exists in and explores the intersections of identity, language, mediums, cultures, and communities found in his personal life and beyond.
Actors:
Noble Lord Simon - Jesus Martinez
Lord Flavio - Ivan Goris
Lord Lucky - Malcolm Minor*
Soldier Flaminio - Samuel Taveras
O.G Bushwick - Ronald Emile*
Noble Lord Varro - Elias Viñoles
Lady Cathy Stylez - Frankie Placidi*
O.G. Queens - Olander ‘Big O’ Wilson
Lady MC Isadore - Mickey Tropeano*
Noble Lord Lucullu - Rahmell Peebles*
Lady Lucy - Rina Dutta*
Noble Lord Venti - Francisco Arcila*
Noble Lord Simpronio - Jorge Sanchez Diaz
Soldier Graff - Robbie Tolentino*
Duquesa Fortaleza - Karina Curet*
Lady Timandra - Maia Novi*
Lady Phyrinia - Paola Soto*Mercury Store actors
Collaborator:
Jose EsqueaMercury Store Stage Manager:
Huai Huang -
onehittwonder@gmail.com
ani.niemann@gmail.comUntitled (Ball x Dance) is a 60-minute, raucous collision between dance and arguably the greatest sport of all time: basketball. Fueled by the adrenaline of a sporting event and the virtuosity of highly trained dancers + players combined, we go rogue with new rules to the game you thought you knew. The heat of a live game punctuated by triumphant replays and ferocious dance breaks unfolds before the audience - with a different outcome each time.
Sunny Min-Sook Hitt is a NYC-based Choreographer/Director whose work crosses the boundaries of dance, theater, opera, and commercial entertainment. She currently serves as Associate Director for Oh, Mary! (Broadway), and most recently choreographed The Seat of Our Pants at The Public Theater. Her work has been presented at Manhattan Theatre Club, Classic Stage Company, Soho Playhouse, The Tank, Mark Morris Dance Center, Mannes Opera, and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. Her durational work On View: WFH was presented in 2020 with support from Exponential Festival and The Foundation for Contemporary Arts emergency grants. In 2021 Sunny created Body of Work with Ani Taj as an exploration of dance + economics, including the release of three dance NFTs. Sunny was part of the 2023 Makers Ensemble cohort at Keshet in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she began working on this project. @sunnyminsookhitt // sunnyhitt.com
Ani Taj is a Tony-nominated choreographer of musicals, parties, films + founder of The Dance Cartel. Recent thrills include Richard O’Brien’s The Rocky Horror Show (Broadway at Studio 54); Dead Outlaw (Broadway/Audible); La Cage aux Folles (Pasadena Playhouse); Hedwig and the Angry Inch (Olney); Liz Swados’ Runaways (Encores!); Todd Almond’s I’m Almost There (assoc. for dir. David Cromer, BAM Fisher, Audible). Film: Neon’s The End starring Tilda Swinton; Runnin’ (VR, Sundance). Taj co-created Untitled DanceShowPartyThing with Sam Pinkleton for Virgin Voyages and has choreographed music videos for Yoko Ono, Reggie Watts, Vic Mensa, Shura.
Collaborators:
Lee Kinney - Sound Design
Stivo Arnoczy - Video Design
Alexandra Albrecht - Performer
Eriko Jimbo - Performer
Brian Dejesus - Performer + Basketball Consultant
Cam Gradel - Performer
Seven - Performer
Ariel AKA Blackwood - Performer
Ryan Vasquez - Performer
Johnny Gaffney - PerformerMercury Store Stage Manager:
Erica Schnitzer -
In her latest artist lecture, Suzanne Bocanegra examines motherhood as a political state of being, shedding light on topics often deemed taboo: the history of infanticide, the creation of orphanages, the politics of infertility, feminism, nuns. It is the fifth work in a series of pieces that transform the artist lecture into a personal, researched, theatrical event. Presented with actor Judah Lang (Bocanegra's son) performing as the artist.
Suzanne Bocanegra is the recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts grant, a Guggenheim fellowship and a Rome prize.
A major show of Bocanegra's work titled "Poorly Watched Girls " was presented at the Fabric Workshop and Museum. Her solo show “Wardrobe Test” was the inaugural exhibition at Art Cake, in Brooklyn. In 2027 Bocanegra’s video installation “Valley” will be exhibited at the Walker Art Center and her video installation “How to Survive” at the Fabric Workshop and Museum.
Bocanegra’s performance “Honor, an Artist Lecture by Suzanne Bocanegra starring Lili Taylor," was commissioned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and traveled to LAMoCA, ICABoston, the Holland Festival and the Walker Art Center. Upcoming performances are at Theatre for a New Audience and La Commune Theatre in Paris.
Previous performances traveled to UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance, The Next Wave Festival at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, the Wexner Center for the Arts and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation among others.
Collaborators:
Jecca Barry, Jillian Jetton, Judah Lang, Joey Wolfslau, Claudia ZelevanskyMercury Store Stage Manager:
Angie Salazar
STAFF & CREW
WILL FREARS
DIRECTOR
CLAUDIA ZELEVANSKY
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
JOHN DEL GAUDIO
PRODUCER
MEGAN PATTERSON
GENERAL MANAGER
ANTHONY SERTEL DEAN
FACILITIES & PRODUCTION MANAGER
MANUEL ORTIZ
ASSOCIATE PRODUCER / CO-LEAD OF DIRECTOR TRAINING
MAYA LOPEZ
ASSISTANT GENERAL MANAGER
NYEDA STEWART
EXECUTIVE & PROGRAMS ASSISTANT
GLORIA GOMEZ
STAGE MANAGER (STUDIO A)
HUAI HUANG
STAGE MANAGER (STUDIO B)
ERICA SCHNITZER
STAGE MANAGER (STUDIO C)
ANGIE SALAZAR
STAGE MANAGER (STUDIO D)
HAZE HERNANDEZ
MERCURY STORE CREW
GIA RAMOS
MERCURY STORE CREW
CARTER OWEN JONES
MERCURY STORE CREW
POP UPS
TAROT READING
Rebecca Hart (actor, writer, musician)
@rebeccahartworld for artistic inquiries including about the solo show “How to Read Tarot Cards”.
@cleartarotnyc for private readings or events.
TATTOO ARTIST
Cierson Zambo
ciersonzambo.com
ig: @honeypokes
UNCLE LOUIE G’S
Italian Ices and Ice Cream
unclelouiegee.com