THE IMPACT RESIDENCY

a partnership with LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC)

Vasilia Drebova and Vincent Santvoord performing in "Under Water", a co-production between Built4Collapse and Studio Theatre Vox Populi supported by The Drama League, in its premiere at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center, 2016. 

The IMPACT RESIDENCY is the only program in North America that exclusively supports directors whose work takes place inside the frame of an ensemble company, using a devised methodology to create new works for the stage. 

The Impact Residency gives the director time, space, financial resources, and technical support to create a new devised work with the ensemble.  A partnership with the LaGuardia Performing Arts Center (LPAC) in Queens, the residency offers:

REHEARSAL SPACE: Up to 120 hours of rehearsal and up to 30 hours of tech time at LPAC.

RESIDENCY STIPEND: The director will receive $10,000, which can be used to cover expenses related to the residency.

PROFESSIONAL MENTORSHIP: The artist will receive periodic mentorship from LPAC and Drama League artistic staff.

WORK-IN-PROGRESS SHOWINGS: The work will receive full tech work-in-progress showing at LaGuardia Performing Arts Center.  There is also the possibility of staging the premiere of the work at LPAC.

If you have questions about which residency is most appropriate for your project, please call (212) 244-9494 to discuss options in depth.  We are happy to speak with you!

2017 IMPACT ARTIST IN RESIDENCE: Michael Levinton / Little Lord

Michael Levinton is a writer, director, performer, and creator of original work for the theater. As Founder and Artistic Director of Little Lord, he has developed and premiered ten original productions at venues throughout NYC. His work has been seen at Abrons Arts Center, Bushwick Starr, Chocolate Factory, HERE Arts Center, Incubator Arts Project, OHIO Theatre’s Ice Factory, Judson Church, Dixon Place, Target Margin Theater, and UNDER St. Marks. Bridging mainstream, narrative-driven theater and formally challenging performance art, Levinton’s work with Little Lord has been praised as “eerie and dangerous,” “a beautiful, uncomfortable, hallucinogenic ride,” and “a fever dream that straddles the line between ecstatic and tragic.” Levinton is also a producer, curator, and non-profit management consultant, and has worked with dozens of NYC performing artists and companies in generating and growing new artistic programs.

Levinton will be working with the ensemble of his company Little Lord during the Impact Residency. Little Lord is a Brooklyn-based company that creates vibrantly bawdy, irreverent, intelligent, queer, funny (and often musical) theater. Adapting classic, neglected, and found texts, Little Lord plunders the literary canon in order to forge new plays from old parts. Ultimately seeking to uproot “the familiar,” Little Lord holds a funhouse mirror up to our shared cultural memories in order to challenge and delight audiences with the possibilities of the theatrical form. Recently: “NOW IS THE TIME. NOW IS THE BEST TIME. NOW IS THE BEST TIME OF YOUR LIFE” (Abrons Arts Center, 2016); NYTimes Critics’ Pick “BAMBIF*CKER/KAFFEEHAUS” (The Brick, 2015); “Pocahontas, and/or AMERICA” (Bushwick Starr, 2013). www.littlelord.org

SKINNAMARINK is Little Lord’s exploration of education and indoctrination in America. Based on the simple yet rich language in McGuffey's Eclectic Readers -- a series of graded primers that were used as American textbooks from the late 19th to mid-20th century -- as well as V.C. Andrew’s Flowers in the Attic, the nonsense work of Edward Lear, ephemera of one-room schoolhouses and the children’s folk music of Sharon, Lois and Bram, SKINNAMARINK plays with ideas of language learning, society-building, groupthink, and discipline, in an effort to discover how we learned to hate, fear, and love in our post-fact/post-reason society.