Throughout the twelve-month pandemic shutdown of live theater, beginning with the closure of all Broadway performances a year ago today, artists have been creating innovative and experimental work outside of their usual situations and genres. This month, you can experience an inter-dependent sequence of short pieces from off-off-Broadway’s Hunger & Thirst Theatre, which will keep you connected in our times of social distancing.
Inspired by the children’s game of telephone, Hunger & Thirst – dedicated to fostering a warm and welcoming space where the hunger and thirst for collective illumination can be satiated through the art of storytelling – commissioned four individual artists to create, sequentially, a short digital performance within a two-week period. Artist number one was given a quote from the 1920s poem “Your Songs” by artist and chronicler of the Harlem Renaissance Gwendolyn Bennett, “For silence is a sounding thing/To one who listens hungrily.” The draft of her resultant script was passed on to the second participating artist in the series, to serve as the inspiration for that piece, created over the next two weeks, which was, in turn, sent to the third, and hers to the last of the four. Each was paired with a company member (Patricia Lynn, Jordan Kaplan, Natalie Hegg, and Emily Kitchens), serving and supporting the artist as needed.
The project, In One Ear, culminated in a film shoot of all four commissions at the West End Theatre on New York’s Upper West Side (the company’s home for the past few years), following all COVID-19 protocol and without an in-house audience. The complete sequence – featuring the short films Hairy Black Hole by actress and writer Christina Liang and All Men Are Clowns by multidisciplinary artist C.Bain, the stop-motion animated short Ricki Martin by actor/creator Ashley Grombol, and the music video I Had A Dream by singer-songwriter, composer, and musician Naeemah Maddox, with Philip Estrera serving as Creative Director for the series – can now be viewed for free at on the company’s website and YouTube channel through Sunday, March 21.
For a full explanation of the creative concept from Estrera and Lynn (HTT Executive Producing Manager), you can watch their video here:
