THE EXPONENTIAL FESTIVAL

In every woods, there is a box. The box is full of lesbian erotica. We are going to read some for you.

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Written and Performed by Emma Horwitz and Bailey Williams

Directed by Tara Elliott

Sound design by Johnny Gasper

Lighting design by Josiah Davis

Stage manager: Allison Raynes*

Production assistant: Jaden Tyler Urso

Design Consultant: Normandy Sherwood

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We definitely know what we’d like to do, but nobody knows you like your sister. Let’s slip into something more comfortable for this next part. A dude ranch, an upstate diner, the grossest go-go bar in New York City, the— Shhhhhh… this is the library. Settle down. A pair of knitting needles, a wildlife camera, motorcycles, obviously. Rusty, Dusty, Patsy, Mickey, Harley, Bailey, Emma, you, the librarian. Click clack, click clack. She’s coming. There are a few different ways this could go down. Two Sisters Find a Box of Lesbian Erotica in the Woods is an intimate theatrical experience.

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cw: sexual content - 18+

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*AEA

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Find them: baileywilliams.live, emmahorwitz.com

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In Collaboration with New Georges

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EMMA HORWITZ is a writer from New York City, who was born during a cold month in the year 1992. Emma’s plays have been supported by The Playwrights Realm (2023-2024 Page One Fellow w/ Mary Gets Hers; 2021-2022 Writing Fellow), Clubbed Thumb (2022-2023 Early Career Writers Group), New Georges (2022-2023 Audrey Resident w/ Bailey Williams, Affiliated Artist), Williamstown Theater Festival (2020 “Playwright-in-Residence”), Two Headed Rep (Reno & Moll), New York Theatre Workshop, The Brick, Dixon Place etc. Work in fiction and comics has been published in print and online at Joyland Magazine, Two Serious Ladies, Vol. 1 Brooklyn's Sunday Stories, Spiral Bound, Moon Missives, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, etc. Residencies include Erik Ehn’s Stillwright, Arts Letters & Numbers, and CAMP (Collaborative Arts Mobility Project). Winner of the 2022 Chelsey/Bumbalo Playwriting Award for The Executrix. Emma has taught playwriting at the Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University and Mount Holyoke College. BA: Bard College, Written Arts. MFA: Brown University.

 

BAILEY WILLIAMS is a writer of plays and fiction. Past productions: Coach Coach, dir. Dara Malina, Clubbed Thumb’s Winterworks 2023. Events, dir. Sarah Blush, The Hearth at The Brick, December 2022; I thought I would die but I didn’t, dir. Sarah Blush, The Tank, May 2019; Buffalo Bailey’s Ranch for Gay Horses, Troubled Teen Girls and Other: a 90 Minute Timeshare Presentation, The Exponential Festival, January 2018. She was a 2022 MacDowell Fellow for Fiction and a member of the 2021-2022 Clubbed Thumb Early Career Writers Group and Ars Nova’s 2022-2023 Play Group. She is a New Georges affiliated artist and recipient of the 2022 Audrey Residency with Emma Horwitz. MFA: Brooklyn College.

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TARA ELLIOTT (she/they) is a director, choreographer, and producer for stage and screen. She won Best Short Director at the LA Independent Women Film Awards for short film Untidy and was a writer/producer of Gotham Award-winning web series Shugs & Fats. She is the recipient of a Venturous Theater Grant for development of experimental audio drama Pleasure Machine and a Tow Travel Grant for research in Cuba. She has developed new plays with Clubbed Thumb, Colt Coeur, Pipeline, Fresh Ground Pepper, LaMicro Theater, Teatro LATEA, Goethe Institut, Downtown Art, and the Exquisite Corpse Company among others. Her work has been seen in London, Seoul, Edinburgh, Toronto, Vancouver, and Santiago, and in NYC theaters including The Public, The Cherry Lane, The New Ohio, HERE Arts, and Walkerspace. Inaugural Directing Cohort at Mercury Store. 2021 Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow. New Georges Affiliate Artist. 2019/2020 CoCo Resident with Colt Coeur. 2018 Drama League Directing Fellow. MFA Directing, Brooklyn College. She currently teaches Directing at NYU Tisch: Playwrights Downtown.

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Jaden Tyler Urso is a current senior at New York University pursuing degrees in English, drama, and creative writing. She is an alumna of Playwright's Horizons Theater School. 

 

Allison Raynes* (Production Stage Manager) NYC: Grief Hotel, Bodies They Ritual (Clubbed Thumb); Actors Studio Drama School Repertory Festival 2023; Bruise & Thorn (Pipeline Theatre); The Antelope Party, Intelligence, Selkie, The Providence of Neighboring Bodies, Latter Days (Dutch Kills); 17 Minutes, Perp, A Walk In The Woods, The Thing With Feathers, Muswell Hill, Expecting Isabel, Abigail's Party (The Barrow Group); Half Moon Bay (Lesser America); Pass Over [Mentor Project] (Cherry Lane); Trump Lear, Connected (Project Y). Regional: The Antelope Party (Oklahoma City Repertory). Edinburgh Fringe: 17 Minutes (2023), Yoga With Jillian (2023), Intelligence (2022), Solitary (2019), Trump Lear (2018-2019), The Providence of Neighboring Bodies (2018), The Sister (2016). Allison also runs her own producing company, A/Park Productions, focused on bringing great works to the Edinburgh Fringe.

 

JOSIAH DAVIS  (he/him) is a multi-disciplinary artist. A director, choreographer, designer and actor, his work intersects expressive movement, live music, emerging technology, and ritual to breathe new life into storytelling. Asking, how do we create space for people to be in alignment while being pulled apart by invisible systems? He is a graduate from the UCLA School of Theater, Film, Television and Brown/Trinity MFA Directing 2020. He is a NYTW 2050 fellow, National Black Theatre Soul Directing Resident, Clubbed Thumb Directing Fellow, and Associate Artistic Director of On The Verge Theatre Festival in Santa Barbara. Selected credits: Mary Gets Hers (Playwrights Realm/MCC) Omar Offrendum’s Little Syria (BAM), Lessons in Survival (Vineyard Theatre), Amani (Rattlestick/NBT) Clyde’s (Alabama Shakespeare Festival/Arkansas Rep), Mr. Saturday Night (Broadway).

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Normandy Sherwood is a theater maker who has been building worlds in NYC for two decades. She is a writer, a director, a costume and scenic designer and occasionally a performer. Her shows include PSYCHIC SELF DEFENSE, Beast Visit, Madame Lynch, Tiny Hornets, Permanent Caterpillar, and The Golden Veil, and they have been presented by The New Ohio Theatre, Rubulad, HERE, The Kitchen, The Brick, The Public Theater and more.  She and Craig Flanagin make no-wave music-driven spectacles with their theater company, The Drunkard’s Wife and their band God Is My Co-Pilot. From 2001-2017 she was a core collaborator in The National Theater of the United States of America (R.I.P.) and with this company she toured the U.S., won an OBIE award and published a book called A New Practical Guide to Rhetorical Gesture and Action (53rd State Press). As a costume designer she has worked with Faye Driscoll, Tina Satter/ Half Straddle, Young Jean Lee, Rachel Chavkin/Anne Washburn and Kristin Marting. She recently was scenographer/co-creator of Theater in Quarantine’s Nosferatu, a 3-D Symphony of Horror. She has been an artist in residence at HERE, MacDowell, Yaddo and Millay Arts. She is a Clinical Associate Professor in Expository Writing at NYU and has an MFA in playwriting from Brooklyn College.

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​John Gasper is a sound designer, musician and performer. He has made sounds and performed with Elevator Repair Service, Royal Osiris Karaoke Ensemble, David Neumann’s Advanced Beginner Group, Bailey Williams, Sarah Blush, Sibyl Kempson’s 7 Daughters of Eve, New Saloon, Lisa Clair Group, Karinne Keithly Syers, Salon Seance, and more. His work has been seen and heard at Playwrights Horizons, The Bushwick Starr, Abrons Arts Center, NYU Skirball, The Chocolate Factory, The Brick, and theaters around the country. His music for theater has been released by Kapha Selections, and the experimental birdwatching podcast with Sarah Blush “On the Trail with Dwayne & Courtney” can be found at category-other.com. MFA: PIMA, Brooklyn College.