Stage Voices

(via Patrick Leonard/Blake Zidell & Associates)   

This Is My Office is set in a disused office that becomes a character unto itself. One night, hunkered down in the office provided to him by an arts grant, eating his way through a box of donuts and battling intense writer’s block, protagonist Andy Bragen (played by David Barlow) discovers an old photograph that spurs a revelation: the very office he currently inhabits was once that of his father. As Andy delves deeper and deeper into his complicated and conflicted relationship with his recently deceased father, strange things begin to happen to him in the space as family and writing take on a symbiotic relationship. The office bridges the two Bragens’ lives, and ultimately becomes an epic symbol of redemption, faith and love. 

THE PLAY COMPANY BEGINS 2013-14 SEASON WITH
WORLD PREMIERE OF ANDY BRAGEN’S THIS IS MY OFFICE,
NOVEMBER 5—DECEMBER 8 AT CHASHAMA

Performances:
November 5–8, 11, 13–15, 18, 20–22, 25–26, 29 and December 2, 4–6 at 7:30 p.m.
November 9, 16, 23, 30 and December 7 at 4:00 p.m. and 8:00 p.m
November 10, 17, 24 and December 1, 8 at 3:00 p.m. & December 1 at 7:00 p.m.
Press Previews: Saturday, November 9 at 8:00 p.m. and Sunday, November 10 at 3:00 p.m.
Official Opening: Monday, November 11 at 7:30pm.

chashama (210 E. 43rd Street)
Tickets: $30-40 at playco.org or 866.811.4111; due to the intimate space, tickets are extremely limited.
85 minutes, no intermission

The Play Company (PlayCo) will launch their season of new theater with the world premiere of American writer Andy Bragen’s This Is My Office, November 5–December 8. Directed by Davis McCallum (Water by the Spoonful, The Whale), this site-specific, solo performance by David Barlow (The Film Society, The Castle, and, with PlayCo in 2003, Smashing) unravels a guided tour through an empty office that becomes the unexpected portal to a forgotten New York, and a father’s legacy.

Performances of This Is My Office will take place at chashama (210 E 43rd Street) November 5–December 8. Tickets are, $30-40, can be purchased at www.playco.org or 866.811.4111. Critics are welcome as of Saturday evening, November 9 for an official opening on Monday, November 11.

This Is My Office is a ghost story for the theater, set in a disused office that becomes a character unto itself. One night, hunkered down in the office provided to him by an arts grant, eating his way through a box of donuts and battling intense writer’s block, protagonist Andy Bragen discovers an old photograph that spurs a revelation: the very office he currently inhabits was once that of his father. As Andy delves deeper and deeper into his complicated and conflicted relationship with his recently deceased father, strange things begin to happen to him in the space as family and writing take on a symbiotic relationship. The office bridges the two Bragens’ lives, and ultimately becomes an epic symbol of redemption, faith and love.

The not-for-profit chashama nurtures artists by transforming unused property into 'space to create'. Davis McCallum’s production uses the empty storefront space on East 43rd Street to create a unique and unexpected world for the play. David Barlow performs the role of Bragen. The design team includes Andrew Boyce (set), Kaye Voyce (costumes), Tyler Micoleau (lighting), and Peter John Still (sound).

This Is My Office received workshop productions at Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep in July 2010, and at Studio Roanoke in April 2011.

About the Artists

Andy Bragen (Writer) is a New York-born playwright and musician, and a graduate of Brown University’s MFA Program in Literary Arts. His plays include The Hairy Dutchman, commissioned by the University of Rochester and performed in 2009; Spuyten Duyvil, developed at the 2004 Seven Devils Playwrights Conference and produced by Brown/Trinity Playwrights Rep. in 2008; Greater Messapia for Queens Theatre in the Park in 2004; and Ranch Home, originally commissioned by Clubbed Thumb and under development with New York based Tiny Dancer Films. Also a translator, Bragen’s adaption of Vengeance Can Wait was workshopped at the 2006 Playlabs Conferences in Minneapolis, produced at PS122 in 2008, and recently published by Samuel French.

Bragen was a 2009-2010 Workspace Resident with the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council. Other honors include the Clubbed Thumb Biennial Commission, a Tennessee Williams Fellowship from Sewanee: The University of the South, a Jerome Fellowship, a New Voices Fellowship from Ensemble Studio Theatre, a Dramatists Guild Fellowship, and residencies at Millay Colony and Blue Mountain Center. He is a member of New Dramatists, and a core member of The Playwrights’ Center.

Since 2007 Andy has collaborated with the jazz saxophonist and composer John Ellis. Their first work, Dreamscapes, appeared at The Jazz Gallery in 2007. Their second work, an hour-long chamber piece entitled The Ice Siren, premiered in 2009, while Mobro, their third work together premiered at the Jazz Gallery in 2011.

Davis McCallum’s (Director) directorial credits include Quiara Hudes’ Water By The Spoonful (Second Stage, 2012 Pulitzer Prize); Sam Hunter’s The Whale (Playwrights Horizons; 2013 Lucille Lortel Award for Best Play); Gabe Kahane and Seth Bockley’s February House (Public Theater); Sarah Ruhl and Todd Almond’s Melancholy Play (13P); Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part One (Pearl Theater Company); Hunter’s A Bright New Boise (Partial Comfort; Drama Desk Nomination) and Five Gencoides (Clubbed Thumb); Greg Moss’s punkplay (Clubbed Thumb); Chuck Mee’s Queens Boulevard (Signature Theater), Quiara Hudes’ Elliot: A Soldier’s Fugue (P73; Pulitzer Prize Finalist); Henry V (New Victory); and Jane Eyre, The Tempest, The Turn Of The Screw (The Acting Company). He has also directed shows at the Guthrie, the Old Globe, Humana, Hartford Stage, Long Wharf, Oregon Shakespeare Festival, Williamstown, Alliance, Chautauqua, the O’Neill, Playmakers Rep, Two River, New York Stage & Film, others. McCallum is a Drama League Alum, a past participant of the NEA/TCG Career Development Program, the recipient of a Boris Sagal Fellowship, and a Princess Grace Honoree.

David Barlow (Performer) is an American actor who received his MFA in Acting from NYU. He last performed for The Play Company in Brooke Berman's Smashing. Barlow has also performed in The Film Society (Keen Company); The Castle, Serious Money, Victory, Scenes From An Execution (PTPNYC); Horizon (New York Theater Workshop); Oroonoko, Andorra, Saved (Theater For A New Audience); Romola And Nijinski (Primary Stages); Perfect Harmony (Theater Row); Mycenaean (BAM); and The Seagull (Roundtable Ensemble). His regional credits include Pericles (Berkeley Rep); Venus In Fur (Portland Center Stage); Oleanna (Bristol Riverside Theater); The Tempest, The Crucible (Hartford Stage); The Hour Of Feeling (Actors Theater of Louisville); King Lear (Kansas City Rep); This Is Our Youth (Philadelphia Theater Co); and On The Jump (Arena Stage). Internationally, David has performed at the Festival d'Avignon, BITEF in Belgrade, Theater Garonne in Toulouse, and in David Levine's Bauerntheater in Germany.

Barlow’s original show LA PARTY, directed by Phil Soltanoff, has been performed at the Public Theater's Under The Radar Festival, PS122, The Fusebox Festival in Austin, and the Hopkins Center and Flynn Center For Performing Arts.

About The Play Company (PlayCo)

The Play Company is an OBIE Award-winning Off Broadway theater production company. Now in its fourteenth season, PlayCo has produced 22 new plays from the United States, Germany, Romania, Poland, Sweden, Japan, India, Mexico, France, Northern Ireland, Scotland, and England. PlayCo develops and produces adventurous new plays from the U.S. and around the world, advancing a dynamic global view of contemporary theater and expanding the American theater repertoire.

As the only New York company regularly producing outstanding contemporary plays from around the world alongside new American work, PlayCo’s distinctive international programming links American theatre with world theater, American artists with the global creative community, and American audiences with a whole world of plays.