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Faye Chiao and Anton Dudley. Photo credit: Liz Maney.
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David Rockefeller Creative Arts Center at Pocantico
Tickets: $10 (+$1.75 ticketing fee) for adults; children 12 and under are free. Every attendee must register prior to attending.
Bringing kids to the arts and the arts to kids since 1995, New Victory Theater has become a standard-bearer of quality performing arts for young audiences. Reflecting and serving the multicultural city it calls home, New Victory is committed to arts access for all communities of New York. This workshop invites audiences to provide feedback as LabWorks, a branch of New Victory, debuts its new musical, Home.
Home is its new musical for ages 5+ told from a child’s perspective, using a blend of music, performers, and puppets to illuminate the experience of emigrating to a new community. The show moves like a pop-up book, blending the humor of Vaudeville with the emotion of realism, and lives like an afternoon spent with good friends in both play and heartfelt discussion. If you’re feeling lost in life, place, community, or self, this new musical will take you on a ride of discovery.
Our protagonist Yu is brought to a city in which he does not speak the language or recognize the environment; all they have of their previous life is the broken branch of a tree. This flowering branch, named Home, is Yu’s only friend. Then, one day, Yu loses Home. A wild adventure throughout the city ensues, leading Yu to the park, where he finds the flowering branch in the hands of the precocious Gabby. Though Yu and Gabby do not speak the same language, they find they can communicate through Home. Together, they plant Home in the park, and as the branch starts to grow, so do the roots of friendship between Yu and Gabby. Disorientation, Isolation, and Dreaming are fully explored in this new musical and give way to an understanding of the power of friendship and what it means to find home. Join us in helping the creators of this new musical by watching a workshop of the full 45-minute musical and sharing your reactions.
This event is presented in partnership with the RBF Culpeper Arts & Culture program.
Following the performance, there will be a reception with special access to the DR Center gallery, currently showing Inspired Encounters: Women Artists and the Legacies of Modern Art.
Faye Chiao
Faye Chiao is a composer and performer of theater, opera, and concert music. Chiao’s work has been commissioned, produced, and developed by Houston Grand Opera, Two River Theater, Syracuse Stage, Kenyon College, Prospect Theater, The Playwrights Realm, and The Z Theater. Chiao is a member of Theatre Now New York's Musical Writers Lab and holds degrees from The Peabody Institute of Johns Hopkins University.
Anton Dudley
Anton Dudley’s plays, musicals, and operas have premiered off-Broadway at Playwrights Realm, Second Stage, Cherry Lane Theater, and Theater Row, as well as Signature Theater, LaJolla Playhouse, Williamstown Theater Festival, Houston Grand Opera, and Walnut Street Theater. He has commissions from Manhattan Theater Club, Williamstown Theater Festival, Baryshnikov Arts Center, and Houston Grand Opera, and was named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in LGBT Drama. Anton performs drag cabarets as the Duchess Carpathia Bouffray.
New Victory LabWorks
In an effort to diversify the field of performing arts for young audiences and the productions seen
on stages across the nation, New Victory LabWorks supports adventurous performing arts
that amplify a multitude of voices for family audiences. In particular, LabWorks commits to
welcoming and uplifting artists of color, as well as artists of color who identify as LGBTQ+ and
disabled. As an artistic home for artists of all disciplines, LabWorks reimagines what theater for families can be.