Transit Lounge

about transit lounge//

Writer Christine Evans, director Joseph Megel and multi-media designer Jared Mezzocchi formed Transit Lounge to create ambitious, aesthetically adventurous, collaborative theater works, in dialogue with innovation in fields outside the theater. The company’s aim is to tell great stories for and about our times by 21st century means. We combine the use of cutting-edge technology and a focus on media design with a belief in the power of strong writing and acting. Transit Lounge builds script-centered work where digital media design is a full partner in the creation process, in close connection with partners (such as the Virtual Iraq design team) from other fields. Transit Lounge puts the artists in charge, builds work with long research and development
phases, and values audience and community outreach as an integral part of the journey.

Originally from Australia, Christine Evans is an internationally produced and awarded playwright. Selected plays include Trojan Barbie (RISCA Playwriting/Screenwriting Award; Plays for the 21^st Century Award; Jane Chambers Award; published Samuel French); Slow Falling Bird (Rella Lossy Playwriting Award), Mothergun (Perishable International Women’s Playwriting Award), Weightless and My Vicious Angel. Selected theaters producing her work include HERE Arts (NY), Red Fern (NY), the American Repertory Theater, Perishable Theater, Crowded Fire, Playbox Theatre (UK), Charing Cross Theatre (London), Belvoir St. Theatre (Sydney) and the Adelaide International Festival of the Arts. Christine is an Australian Fulbright alumna, a MacDowell Fellow and the recipient of a Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Creative Residency. She is a member of the Dramatists Guild, a 2013 Resident Artist at HERE, a 2010-12 Women’s Project Playwrights Lab member, and an Assistant Professor at Georgetown University’s Department of Theater and Performance Studies. She holds an MFA (Playwriting) and Ph.D. (Theater) from Brown and taught playwriting at Harvard from 2007-12. She is currently based in Washington DC.

Jared Mezzocchi (Projections Designer) was awarded the 2012 Princess Grace Theater Fellowship. He is the first projections designer to receive the award. New York City credits include The Downtown Loop, 3-Legged Dog; You are Dead. You are Here., HERE Arts Center; Goldor$Mythka: A Hero is Born, New Georges; Jet Lag, The Builder’s Association; and Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, United Theater Company #61. Regional credits include The Elaborate Entrance of Chad Deity, Woolly Mammoth; The Mountaintop, Milwaukee Rep; and Astroboy, The Studio Theatre and Company One. Mezzocchi has toured with Big Art Group (SOS, The People and The Sleep: 2007–2010) in the Vienna Festival, Germany, France, Spain, Slovenia, Canada, San Francisco and New York. Recent awards include Metro DC Dance Award in Multimedia for Once Wild, and two Bel Geddes Awards in Technology Enhancement for HERE Arts and New Georges. He is currently building a curriculum at The University of Maryland in Projections Design for the MFA Design program. He is currently based in Washington DC.

Joseph Megel is Artist-in Residence at U.N.C. (Chapel Hill) in Performance Studies where he runs the “Process Series: New Works in Development”. He served for six years as Artistic Director of Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey and is the Co-Executive Producer of Harland’s Creek Productions. Selected directing credits include Guillermo Reyes’sMen on the Verge of a His-Panic Breakdown , Off- Broadway, 47th Street Theatre (Outer Critics Circle Award), Los Angeles (Ovation Award Winner) and elsewhere; and Jennifer Maisel’s award-winning The Last Seder in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Washington, D.C. Megel has directed at 78th St. Lab ,NYC, The Justice Theatre, Jewish Theatre of the South, Theater J, ManBites Dog NC, Borderlands Theatre, AZ, The Working Theatre (NYC) and elsewhere. As Artistic Director of Theatre of Note, A Renegade Theatre Ensemble and Words Across Cultures in Los Angeles he directed over forty productions and received several Drama-Logue Awards. He holds an M.F.A. degree from U.S.C.

You are Dead. You are Here.

You Are Dead. You Are Here. (YADYAH) is a multi-media theatre piece that tells the charged story of an encounter between an American soldier and an Iraqi girl blogger through the lens of the technologies that connect them. Inspired by the convergence of video game environments, virtual technology and military research, YADYAH is the world’s first theatrical production licensed to incorporate animated landscapes from “Virtual Iraq,” a virtual-reality (VR) program based on video-game war scenarios used in veterans’ PTSD therapy.

TOURING:

You Are Dead. You Are Here. is coordinating a national tour projected to begin January 2015, in coordination with military-afiliated organizations. Interested producers and presenters should contact us for more information on the tech rider, schedules, and script.