We are raising funds for the 2025 premiere of Susannah Yugler's new play, CASSANDRA at the The Brick Theater as part of the acclaimed Exponential Festival CASSANDRA previewed in May 2024 and has since developed significantly. We can’t wait to share this reimagined adaptation with you in January. We are raising $5,000 to pay our cast, crew and collaborators who have dedicated their time and talent to this work over the past year. All funds will go directly towards the artists. Below you can read more about the play, the festival, and offers available to our generous donors. If you contribute one of the gift amounts listed, we will be in touch via email to establish the details of the offers you qualify for.

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The cursed Cassandra, a true prophet that no one believes, desperately tries to save what's left of her home from self-obsessed siblings, a depressive mother and the machinations of the gods. Wavering between 12th century B.C. and 2024 A.D., CASSANDRA reimagines Euripides' "The Trojan Women" as a phantasmagoria of comic selfishness and horror.

Using a pre-recorded script and a cast of dancers, dialogue acts only as a score for the movements, gestures, and tableaux vivants on stage, illustrating multiple parallel narratives: of a women-led talent agency, of ancient war, of corporate America, and of the delusions that sustain them.

The January cast will include: Nick Alselmo, Josie Bettman, Joel Dean, Robin Denzer, Aimee Grumbach, Ellie Quiring, and Vita Taurke

with original music performed by Devin Shaffer

view an excerpt from our May preview here

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This team’s first time working together was for “The Company” in 2023, performed at Worthless Studios in Bushwick and again at SARA’S in Manhattan. "The Company" was funded by the Sachs Program for Arts Innovation in Philadelphia and The Weitzman School of Design at UPenn over the course of its development (from Philadelphia to NYC) and cost $10,000 to produce. We are hoping to raise at least half of this amount from individuals in our community and are seeking the rest of our funding from state and local grants. For CASSANDRA, I have supported the cast & crew thus far entirely from my own (dwindling) income. Your contributions will help this work come to fruition, and raise it to a higher caliber with much needed resources.

A $25 donation = (1) lottery entry for a painting by artist Joel Dean (multiple entries are welcomed and encouraged)

Donate $75+ and opt to receive a one-on-one studio visit / feedback session on a work in progress with Susannah (virtual or in-person NYC)

Donate $100+ and be listed in the show’s program notes as a donor

Donate $200+ and take a four week workshop with Susannah - absolute beginner ballet OR intro to choreography (in-person NYC)

Donate $350+ and take both workshops (in-person NYC)

Donate $500+ receive access to all offers above, plus two tickets to a show of your choosing, and a hand-written thank you letter

Donations can be tax deductible through our fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas. Please inquire if you'd like to make a tax deductible contribution.

ABOUT

Susannah Yugler is a director, choreographer and playwright working across theater, dance, and video. Contemporary tropes, purgatorial spaces, and states of anxiety are constructed and deconstructed in her work through the interplay of gesture, language, and desire in order to illustrate the social relations and historical failures of late capitalist culture. Her work has been presented in various spaces including La MaMa Galleria (NYC), P.A.R.T.S./Rosas Studios (Brussels, BE), The English Theatre Berlin (Berlin, DE), SARA’S (NYC), and The Fisher Center for the Performing Arts (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY). She has performed at the Hessel Museum of Art / CCS Bard (Annandale-on-Hudson, NY), The Kunstverein Hamburg (Hamburg, DE), The Unge Kunstneres Samfund (Oslo, NO), Judson Memorial Church (NYC), Triskelion Arts (Brooklyn, NY), and ACUD MACHT NEU (Berlin, DE) amongst others. She has guest lectured in the Theater and Performance program at Bard College and taught Performance Composition at The University of Pennsylvania. She is a 2024 artist-in-residence at Baryshnikov Arts Center and lives in New York City.

website

Trailer by Skye Richter, featuring: Nick Alselmo, Josie Bettman, Joel Dean, Aimee Grumbach, and Ellie Quiring.