New Ohio Theatre presents Now In Process 2023

Now In Process is New Ohio Theatre’s free-floating, ad hoc, instant-gratification, impulse-driven, pop-up work-in-progress showing that offers NYC indie theatre artists the opportunity to flex their muscles, share their current thinking, and test their next great idea. Three works from the 2023 lineup comment on issues recently present in the public eye – war in Ukraine, race in America, and extinction of entire species of animals – while the fourth is a meditative musical about an iconic Persian woman of Sufi tradition. The shows, conceived and produced by a diverse group of NYC-based artists, are Untitled Ukraine Project by The Mill (Feb 1-2), Embodied by Jaime Sunwoo / Free Rein Projects (Feb 4-5), Rubalee by Caborca (Feb 8-9), and Longing Lights by Deniz Khateri and Bahar Royaee (Feb 11-12). Selected performances will also be available as live-stream videos at watch.eventive.org/newohiotheatre.

Untitled Ukraine Project is a stage adaptation of selected short stories from Lucky Breaks, written by Yevgenia Belorusets, reimagined by playwright Sara Farrington, directed by Jaclyn Biskup, and devised and performed by our ensemble of female actors (Monica Goff, Rachel Griesinger, Kara Jackson, Jennifer McClinton, and Aurea Tomeski). The stories are often bleakly comic, beginning and ending abruptly, depicting the haunting effects of the 2014 Russian invasion on the lives of civilian women.

Embodied explores how we perceive messages when they’re being delivered by people with different race and gender identities and how individuals experience race in America – a survey of reflections, desires, insecurities, fears, and defenses as people analyze their perception of self and others.

In the experimental musical Rubalee, featuring choral singers and black metal percussion, Rubalee, a young North Atlantic right whale, undertakes a migration across the equator to Eubalena, the legendary home of her endangered species. Now in Process audiences will see a 45-minute excerpt of this production.

Based on Tazkirat al-Owlia, a mystical book by the thirteenth-century poet Attar Neishabouri about the biographies of great saints and elders of Persian Sufism, Longing Lights tells the story of Rābiʿa, the only female Sufi in this book.