PO Box 15392 Washington, DC 20003 • 202.873.5330 •
Next up!
The Incident Sound
New Choreography by our very own Erin Mitchell Nelson
featuring company members Safi Harriott, and Katie Murphy, with Katie Harris Banks, and Chloè Richier
with live and original music by Amy Farina, and interactive visual art by Rania Hassan.
September 2, 10:15am
Yes, that is 10:15 in the morning
Tickets are free (first come/first serve)
Talkback immediately following
at The Reach: Skylight Pavilion
at the Kennedy Center
Fresh from the Taffety Punk Generator
Join us for the world premiere of
Buy Tickets now
for the world premiere of
La Salpêtrière
Select how many tickets you want first, then click “checkout” to choose which show you want to see.
We know that’s a bit wonky; we didn’t design it. 😉
A 19th century hospital, La Salpêtrière, became famous as a center for the treatment of hysteria. Women were sometimes treated in demonstrations that were open to the public. Noted “treatments” included hypnosis and punching women in the uterus.
Kelsey Mesa's play follows a new patient from her mysterious arrival in the hospital through the many absurd practices by its doctors, to her ultimate fight to reclaim her life.
More Works from our Company members:
Taffety Punk & Mudroom Films present
The Surround
Directed by Emily Marquet, Movement directed by Erin Mitchell Nelson
Performances by Omar D. Cruz with Ben Ashworth, Sam Boo, De”R”ray “Ravo” Brown, Erika Brosnihan, Omar D. Cruz, Rafael A. Escobar, and Adrian Kamal. Choreography by Erin Mitchell Nelson with Omar D. Cruz. Music by Ryan Nelson. Director of Photography: Emily Marquet, 1st Assistant Camera: Jack Salmon, Gaffer: Colegrove Heller,Key Grip & Colorist: Peter Chun. A massive thank you to Andy and Amy Neal, and to Ben Ashworth and Finding a Line.
a short film by Emily Marquet & Erin Mitchell Nelson
The Surround
Blue Period
by Beauty Pill
Limited Edition Gatefold 2xLP
• • • • • •
Record/Vinyl + Digital Album
digital album releases January 20, 2023, item ships out on or around January 19, 2023
Ernest Jenning Record Co. and Beauty Pill are pleased to announce Blue Period, a double LP compilation including the band’s complete Dischord recordings from 2003-2005. This deluxe vinyl double album includes both of the band’s releases from this time, The Unsustainable Lifestyle LP and You Are Right To Be Afraid EP, as well as a full side of previously unreleased outtakes and demos. This is the first time this music is available on vinyl.
Blue Period is presented over two 140 gram LPs in a gorgeous foil stamped gatefold jacket featuring previously unseen band photos and stunning artwork from original designer and band member Ryan Nelson.
Includes digital pre-order of Blue Period. Order today and you get 1 track now (streaming via the free Bandcamp app and also available as a high-quality download in MP3, FLAC and more), plus the complete album the moment it’s released.
Taffety Punk & Mudroom Films present
Beauty Pill
"At a Loss"
Official Music Video
Beauty Pill's Sorry You're Here LP available on Bandcamp.
Order your copy today.
Also available at at discerning record stores
and on most streaming and digital platforms
"At a Loss"
Music by Beauty Pill
Directed by Emily Marquet
Movement directed by Erin Mitchell Nelson
Performances by Safi Harriott and Kathryn Zoerb
Based on choreography originally created by Paulina Guerrero, Lise Bruneau, and Liz Maestri, with additional choreography by Erin Mitchell Nelson, Safi Harriott, and Kathryn Zoerb. Assistant Camera: Jack Salmon. Gaffer: Margaret Avery. Production Assistant: Linda Lombardi. Lighting Technicians: Chris Curtis, Katie McCreary, and Danny Cackley. Shot on location at the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop in Washington, DC.
Before the pandemic shut everything down, we presented our original dance play
suicide.chat.room
with the simultaneous release of Beauty Pill's
Sorry You're Here
Photos by Teresa Castracane
The source material for the show was taken from years of posts from internet groups focusing on suicide.
Please know you are not alone.
If you are having thoughts of suicide please call
the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
at 1-800-273-TALK (8255)
or contact the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741.
For more information on how to help yourself or a loved one please visit
https://suicidepreventionlifeline.org
or
https://afsp.org/find-support
Everyone in Beauty Pill and everyone in the Taffety Punk Theatre Company want you to live. Please live.
Director Marcus Kyd's liner notes to the LP, on why and how this show came to be:
This music is the heart of a show, a dance play called suicide.chat.room. It exists because of the hard work and generosity of many people.
We were alerted to the existence of internet suicide pacts and user groups in 2007. The news alarmed us. Our disquiet lead to questions. Our questions prompted us to work. At the time we could not accurately describe what we were making. We knew only that the subject was important to us. Almost everyone in the ensemble had lost someone they loved to suicide. Ultimately, we were driven to make this work to honor them.
As artists we often have to shine a light in dark places to find answers. We trusted we would find a story worth sharing—a story where music, movement, and text were intertwined. The goal always was to foster empathy and understanding through characterization, action, and catharsis. Maybe that is the goal of all theatre.
When we started the internet was a very different place, but it was full of just as much noise as now. We didn't need to create user accounts to see most of what we were looking for. The majority of the posts were just there, out in the open, surprisingly easy to find. And, because of the internet's propensity to throw nothing away, most of what we read was from the past. We found groups with short histories, groups with long histories, and groups that were forced to disband because they were overwhelmed by trolls. We found that no one used their real names and that they often posted via a means that blocked others from finding their location. In spite of such surface defenses, these virtual communities were above all very welcoming. Under the assumption that only those who had lost hope of ever having hope would enter such a group, the users had a profound openness to newcomers.
"Sorry you're here" was an honest way of welcoming someone in. It was a way to say, "You are not alone. And we will listen." If we were to reduce the motivations for making this show to one word it would be that.
Listen.
We wanted to amplify these words to help others listen.
We found words that were all too moving and even more that were wonderfully mundane. Our questions were endless, the answers elusive.
What is this space that is not a space? What is a voice in this silent medium? What is community when the members of a community are essentially anonymous?
At some point we separated selected posts from the original threads and removed the user names. We then had only a randomly assembled set of fragments. We matched fragments with others and scenarios emerged. As actors, we looked for motives and obstacles. As dancers we looked for the desires that lead to physical impulses. As musicians, we looked for the unutterable: life moving through time. The text in the show is essentially unaltered, but the characters and events in the show emerged from these experiments. Beauty Pill created environments entirely out of music for us, and we moved through this haunting sonic landscape.
As the words merged with the dance, and these merged with the music, we finally had a collection of vignettes: like staged songs. Each of these segments explored a possible thread and each felt like it had a beginning, a middle, and an end. Sequencing these into a story seemed utterly impossible until...
We found that Kimberly Gilbert's character, lostbooks, had the makings of a through line: a newcomer who finds her way into the group and navigates her way through the trajectory of threads. lostbooks is at once a witness and a participant. It was important to us and to this story that she survive. Her last monologue in the show, the only text from the play on this record, is a coda that honors all she has learned and all she has witnessed. It ends with that most important human question "What do you want?"
In the show, just after this monologue, her last action is to greet a newcomer who says he has nothing left to live for. She says, simply and generously, "Welcome. Sorry you're here."
Thank you for listening.
Marcus Kyd
Artistic Director, Taffety Punk Theatre Co
Washington, DC
Beauty Pill, Sorry You're Here
Taffety Punk #64
suicide.chat.room is a dance play conceived and directed by Marcus Kyd with choreography by Paulina Guerrero and Erin Mitchell Nelson, created with Elizabeth Abt, Tonya Beckman, Lise Bruneau, Chad Clark, Joel David Santner, Kimberly Gilbert, Gwen Grastorf, Paulina Guerrero, Micheline Heal, Paul Edward Hope, Emma Jaster, Liz Maestri, Erin Mitchell Nelson, and Matthew R. Wilson, and produced by Taffety Punk Theatre Company, 2010, 2012, and 2020.
Music written and produced by Beauty Pill founder (and Taffety Punk company member) Chad Clark, arranged/performed by Beauty Pill (Basla Andolsun, Chad Clark, Jean Cook, Drew Doucette, Devin Ocampo).
Special thanks to Caroline Borolla, Jason Aufdem-Brinke, Omar Cruz, Dischord Records, Josh Taylor, Ellen Houseknecht, Scott Hammar, Chris Curtis, Kelsey Mesa, Daniel Flint, Megan Rippey, Matt Tolf, Seth Rose, Sofia Scanlan, Ryan Carroll Nelson, Paola Rodriguez, the Capitol Hill Arts Workshop, the Mead Theatre Lab program at Flashpoint, Sarah Coleman, Emma Fisher, Jenny McConnell Frederick, Mark Ramont, Gregg Henry, Christopher Marino, Maia DeSanti, Laura Gamse, Mindy Woodhead, Sean Peoples, David Polk, Danisha Crosby, Blake Robison, Round House Theatre Company, Karen Bilotti, Andrea Locke, Mehdi Raoufi, The Capitol Hill Community Foundation, the Cafritz Foundation, the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, Jill Strachan, Kent Gay, Julia Strachan, Gary Logan, Amanda Barber, Jacob Janssen, Kris Swanson, Catherine Ichniowski, Liane Kerry, Josh Chapman, Lexa Rio, Bandcamp, and the good folks at Jimmy T's.
We have some social-distance friendly material, like this new Beauty Pill record which we released just before the pandemic began. Available on all media, but we prefer bandcamp, because the artists actually get paid. Check it out.
"Sorry You’re Here is that rare record that doesn’t merely live up to unrealistic expectations, but in its best moments, exceeds them."
—Nathan Leigh, AFROPUNK
There's a new way to give to the Punks!
Become a patron of the arts by joining our Patreon Community. Set up a monthly gift to keep these punks rocking throughout the year.
You can customize the amount
to any size you like —
from $5 to $∞.
As a monthly donor you will enjoy special messages from the punks, behind the scenes updates, and so much more.
"The record resists concise description, every song as eclectic as it is evocative, beauty brushing against brutality, the classical and the cutting-edge intertwined in infinite variations. "
—M. L. Rio, The Vinyl District
"Chad Clark reveals once again why he's one of the best composers working in DC, if not America, at the moment."
—Glenn Griffith, A Pessimest Is Never Disappointed
Company members Chad Clark and Erin Mitchell Nelson are featured on Bandcamp Daily. Read and listen here.
A comprehensive and thorough look at their work throughout the pandemic, Erin and Chad discuss Beauty Pill’s creative drive and last year’s three releases, including the score for Taffety Punk's dance play suicide.chat.room: Sorry You’re Here.
Please enjoy the video below.
This is a project we come back to from time to time. And it is a great preview for what is to come. Stay with us. There will be more and more soon.
Tulips
by Sylvia Plath
Read by Lise Bruneau
Choreography by Erin Mitchell Nelson
Music and sound by Marcus Kyd
Directed by Joel David Santner
Read Artistic Director Marcus Kyd’s appeal letter here.
You can help us keep these punks rockin’!
⇩⇩ Help us reach our end-of-year goal with these awesome choices ⇩⇩
Fundraising season is upon us
Take a class from company member Esther Williamson
July 17 — Sep 12, 2023
Dates
Mondays OR Tuesdays
Jul 17 — Sep 12, 2023
Times
7:00-9:30 pm EST
Where
Everywhere (Zoom)
For Whom
Shakespeare lovers, actors, educators, public speakers, anyone who likes words
Esther is delighted to offer another round of her popular Exploring Shakespeare series. This time it’s Exploring Shakespeare: Henry IV part one. In this nine-week Zoom-based class, participants will read the play aloud together, stopping along the way to investigate all of the tools that Shakespeare uses to communicate. We’ll look at rhythm, rhetoric, and hidden clues for actors. We'll dig into themes, character development, and production considerations as well. This class is intended for all types of language enthusiasts. Actors, playwrights, directors, educators, and free-range word nerds are all welcome.
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Taffety Punk Theatre Company
Theatre in Residence at the
A Place where the Arts Connect and Transform People
545 7th Street SE, Washington, DC 20003
© Taffety Punk Theatre Company
Logo by Ryan Nelson
Logo by Ryan Nelson