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BRIAN'S HOUSE

by Lupine Performance Cooperative

From emerging theater company Lupine Performance Cooperative comes a new devised work. Drawn from the ensemble's personal experiences, Brian's House asks you to observe the inner workings of a growing cult. We need your help for its final development.


 
 
Who are we?
 
We are Lupine Performance Cooperative, also known as Tenara Calem, Linnea Bond, Sarah Gardner, Krista Thorp, Braxton Crewell, Devin Preston and Jenny Ruymann. We've come together under a shared organizational umbrella that presents our artistic collaborations. LPC's mission is to enrich the cultural lives of our local community through equitable and justice-focused live art. We value artistic sustainability and work on a project-by-project model to support our artists and collaborators. Our work aims to complicate intellectual understanding of the world around us, without denying the political nature of our environment.
 
 
What are we doing?
 
We are fundraising to cover the costs for our upcoming June 2020 show, Brian's HouseBrian's House is a new, original play - about cults. Well, it's about power. Brian's House follows a community living in a West Philly commune dedicated to digital de-toxing. For the residents of Brian's house, smartphones, Apple, Facebook, Google, Instagram, Tiktok, Pinterest, and Reddit are simply doing more bad than good for their brains. Brian and his faithful lieutenant Julie have a convenient de-programming regimen to wipe the slate clean. As control coalesces in the leadership of the house, the audience is invited to reflect whether hierarchy and power are inevitable in the search for utopia. The Brian's House team has made this play collaboratively, devising through improvisations, co-writing methods, and movement.
 
Brian's House will perform at the Art Church of West Philadelphia (5219 Webster St) on the following dates:
 
June 18th at 7:30
June 19th at 7:30
June 20th at 7:30
June 21st at 2:00
 
All tickets are Pay What You Can. No one will be turned away for lack of funds!
 
We're raising $8,000 to fund this production. Help us by donating today!
 
 
WHY YOU SHOULD DONATE
 
Roughly 2/3rds of our budget goes to people (for more info on those people, see below!). This reflects LPC's organizational commitment to artistic sustainability. By keeping our production costs low, we can ensure that our artists benefit directly from our fundraising, and participate in an artistically rigorous process that doesn't burn us all out. In donating, you'll also be supporting an emerging performance collective committed to art that bakes equity and sustainability right into its' process. You're supporting work that responds to systems of power - work that seeks to shake our comfort like a snow globe.
 
 
Who's who?
 
Lupine Performance Cooperative has assembled an incredible team to put on this show. Below you will find who directly benefits from your contributions, and what role they play in Brian's House.
 
 
Paloma Irrizary (Talia): Paloma is a Philly-based theatre artist whose work invites audiences to explore the elements of her identity that confound her the most. Recent performances include I See you See Me, a solo piece looking at the difference between objectification and sexual empowerment, MJ Kaufman's premiere of Destiny Estimate and La Fabrica's Azul. She is also a Theatre of the Oppressed facilitator and has collaborated on several workshops including "Unpacking Race" and "Borderlands: Boundaries and Intersections." 
 
 
Nate Alford-Tate (Anthony): Nathan Alford-Tate is a devising artist from Detroit, MI. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Western Michigan University and a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of the Arts / Pig Iron School. Credits include Rachel at Quintessence (2020), Cat in the Hat at the Arden Theater (2020), Male Tears: A Clown Castration for the Philadelphia Fringe Festival (2019), and Fly Eagles Fly! with Tribe of Fools (2018). He is currently a company member with Almanac Dance Circus Theatre, where their work was curated alongside other Philadelphia artists by choreographer Reggie Wilson in Grounds that Shout! (2019). 
 
 
Devin Preston (Will): Devin is a performer and interdisciplinary artist based in Philadelphia where he works on explorations into the intersection of live performance and game design. He received his MFA in Devised Performance from the University of the Arts / Pig Iron school. Devin also has a BA in Film, Television, and Theatre and a BS in Physics from the University of Notre Dame. He most recently developed a series of interactive performance installations for the Franklin Institute's Science After Hours program. As a collaborator and deviser he has worked on projects such as Spectre Vivant with New Paradise Laboratories and A Period of Animate Existence with Pig Iron Theatre Company. Devin also leads workshops in clown, slapstick, and mask performance. Originally from Anchorage, AK, Devin aims to inspire imagination and joy in his work.
 
 
Ciera Gardner (Felicia): Ciera is a Philadelphia-local actor and performance artist interested in and driven by pushing boundaries through art. A graduate of the University of the Arts and Headlong Performance Institute, credits include: Peter and the Starcatcher (Theatre Horizon), The Gap (Azuka Theatre), Coriolanus (Shakespeare in Clark Park), Liberty to Go to See (National Trust of Cliveden). Ciera creates solo performance art, and has collaborated with other performance artists like Becca Khalil, Deen Rawlins, and Plant Me Here.
 

Linnea Bond (Cedar/Artistic Producer): Linnea is an actor, creator, and educator in Philadelphia, PA. She has created several performances collaboratively, including a piece created in outreach and engagement with veterans and their communities, a historical meditation on WWI researched in three countries, and a four person adaptation of Three Sisters. She has worked as a playwright, producer, and actor with a queer reading company she founded based in Cincinnati, Ohio, and as a dramaturg with various local Philadelphia playwrights. She directs and teaches at the collegiate and professional levels, as well as with PhillyASAP serving elementary students. She has trained with a myriad of new works and classical companies, including the RSC, SITI, and Pig Iron, and acts professionally on both stage and screen. In Philadelphia she has worked with the Arden, PAC, and Azuka Theatre, and can be seen in the Todd Haynes films Carol and Dark Waters. Her MFA is in Acting with an emphasis on New Works and Devising from Ohio State.

Frankie Ferrari (Julie): Frankie recently made the move from St. Louis, Missouri to Philadelphia this past fall. Her Philadelphia credits include The Fleecing with Almanac Dance Circus Theatre and Heat Wave directed by Jillian Jetton. Some of her favorite St. Louis credits include: Whammy! with YoungLiars, I Now Pronounce with New Jewish Theatre, Macbeth with Shakespeare Festival St. Louis Educational Touring Show, and V.A.N.Y.A with Rebel and Misfits. Frankie has a degree in theatre performance from Southern Illinois University of Edwardsville.

Tenara Calem (Dana/Lead Artistic Producer): Tenara is an ensemble theater maker, playwright, and educator based in Philadelphia, PA. Born in Israel with deep roots in the Midwest, Tenara has worked as an artist and collaborator with the following organizations: Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company, Trinity Repertory Company, Pig Iron Theatre Company, Lightning Rod Special, Strange Attractor, Shakespeare in Clark Park, Bread and Puppet Theater, and InterAct Theatre Company. Tenara works in community engagement and public practice at FringeArts in Philadelphia.

Sarah Gardner (Director): Sarah likes to make things that she can share with people. Originally from Boise, Idaho, and now living in Philadelphia, Sarah has worked in performance, directing, Shakespeare, children’s theater, dance, burlesque, and puppeteering. She graduated from University of the Arts/Pig Iron Devised Performance Program with her MFA.

 
Our budget
 
Because you'll want to know what your money funds, below you will find a copy of our budget. We aim to produce our work not only with transparency in our collaborative process, but in our fiscal priorities and commitments. As you can see, the biggest line item in our budget pays people.
 
Personnel  
Actor 1/Lead Artistic Producer stipend $600
Director stipend $600
Actor 2/Artistic Producer stipend $600
Actor 3 stipend $500
Actor 4 stipend $500
Actor 5 stipend $500
Actor 6 stipend $500
Actor 7 stipend $500
Front of house coordinator $100
Designer $300
TOTAL PERSONNEL: $4,700
   
Space  
Performance space $400
Rehearsal space $795
TOTAL SPACE: $1,195
   
Supplies  
Digital/print marketing $300
Wheelchair ramp rental $300
Set/design $400
TOTAL SUPPLIES: $1,000
   
Miscellaneous  
Contingency $545.00
   
TOTAL PROJECT BUDGET: $7,440
CULTURETRUST FEE: $560
TOTAL PROGRAM BUDGET: $8,000
 
What or who is CultureTrust, and why do they have a fee in your budget?
 
CultureTrust - the fiscal sponsorship program of CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia - is a management commons for arts and cultural organizations in Philadelphia. They act as our fiscal sponsor - which is how we're able to accept grant money and tax-deductible donations reserved only for nonprofits. CultureWorks accepts grants and donations on our behalf, provides the legal paperwork and platforms to be able to accept them, and regrants these funds to us. It's how we're able to accept Philadelphia Cultural Fund's generous support of our Cooperative and its work!
 
Because of this agreement, CultureTrust takes 7% of all contributed revenue for our project to cover the costs of their administrative support. It's why we have a total project budget (money that will just go to cover our project costs) and a total program budget (which includes our fee to CultureTrust). We can't make Brian's House without CultureTrust- which is why our goal is $8,000!
 
 
Why cults?
 
Tenara Calem, Lead Artist on Brian's House, has a bizarrely high number of people in her life who have been in or currently are in (yikes) a cult. She learned this in high school, and interest piqued, she couldn't help but notice cults everywhere, in closer proximity than always made her comfortable. What circumstances or qualities allowed a person to suspend their disbelief completely and buy into a mythology? Why did people endure abuse beyond any reasonable limit, in the name of a shared goal? And if these people in her life - people that she loved, respected, and cared about - if they were in cults, then what cult was she in?
 
Tenara became obsessed with the theatricality and sensationalism of cults. People happily consume media about cults as voyeurs, reveling in the schadenfreude of but I wouldn't be duped. Brian's House came about not because of a desire to categorically define the kind of person who would be in a cult, or to sensationalize the topic even further, but rather to bring it closer to the audience. The Brian's House team has concluded that cults - in all of their diversity - are actually not all that different from a more mainstream lifestyle. They are highly pressurized containers for the same power dynamics we find in our everyday lives. What then can we learn from cults as we seek to become even more aware and critical to the abuses of power around us?
 
 
A little bit more about us
 
Though small and emerging, Lupine Performance Cooperative associated artists have between us a wide breadth of artistic experience and work. We see our size and our youth as a positive, as it allows us to emphasize what many arts organizations see as negatives: that our processes are slow and that we have the time to make our decisions collaboratively and deliberately. Our artists are involved in multiple projects with multiple streams of income, which make them more robust and exemplary artistic practitioners. As such, it is imperative that we go slow so we don't drain our collective resources (time, energy, money). It's why our projects can take years to develop.
 
In our first piece, Me, More Normal (2017), the LPC audience emerged at the intersection of activism and cultural curiosity. These audiences are thoughtful and interested in bettering their local communities, and believe that art is an integral part of that process (even if they do not seek to patronize more traditional performance opportunities). With a diversity of ages, this audience largely lives and works in the city of Philadelphia and is attracted to our work because they see their interests represented. We develop mutual stake in the issues and themes that intersect with our work and our audience's lives. It is one of the LPC commitments to treasure our audiences, and we expect to learn even more about them in Brian's House.
 
We takes our name from the children's book Miss Rumphius, in which a young child identifies three life goals: to travel to far-away places, live by the sea, and do something that makes the world more beautiful. The child's commitment to this third goal leads her to spread and sow lupine seeds all over her final home in a sea-side town on the Eastern coast, and in the spring and summer, lupine flowers burst from every plot of land perennially. LPC likewise seeks to enrich our work with new perspectives, dig deep into our local community, and make the world more beautiful through our work. 
 
Because LPC sees the membrane between artist and activist as porous and agile, we take our model and structure from decentralized, democratic movements that progress social change. Groups like IfNotNow, the Sunrise Movement, Movimiento Cosecha, Black Lives Matter, and Youth Jobs Coalition are all organized based on the skills and strategies taught at Momentum, a training institute and movement incubator. Though we are not mobilizing for a mass movement, the Momentum strategies provide healthy structural alternatives to collaborative models that can easily slip into paternalism, hegemony, and burn out. For more information about what those structures are, you can visit this page on our website, and scroll to the bottom to check out our Cooperative Map.
 
 
Questions? Comments? Exciting ideas?
 
You know where to find us. You can reach out to us through the "Get In Touch" page on our website: www.lupineperformance.com