Theater Breaking Through Barriers (TBTB) presents their first Virtual Playmakers’ Intensive, May 25 through May 31. This workshop will be streamed on Facebook and YouTube Live with all performances beginning at 7:30 PM (EDT). This unique online workshop will feature the world premiere of seven original works, created by and for TBTB artists and written exclusively to be performed on the Zoom conferencing platform.
Appropriately titled, VPI:2020 - Pandem-mania! will feature one, short play each evening during the week. The intensive will feature the work of 28 artists, including DG members Fareeda Pyracha Ahmed, Kathryn Grant, Anita Hollander, and Jeff Tabnick.
Theater Breaking Through Barriers is the only professional off-Broadway theatre company dedicated to advancing artists and developing audiences of people with disabilities and altering the misconceptions surrounding disability by proving that disability does not affect the quality or integrity of art or artists. TBTB began in 1979 as Theater by The Blind and is celebrating the 40th season! In 2008, the name became Theater Breaking Through Barriers, to include artists with all disabilities yet retaining the TBTB acronym and becoming the preeminent off-Broadway theatre for people with disabilities, hailed by The New York Times as “an extraordinary troupe designed to defy expectations,” and The New York Post as “quite simply one of the most enjoyable companies in the country.”
Every year since 2016, TBTB has hosted a Playmakers’ Intensive in which actors, directors, and writers gather together for one week to create new short plays, which are given a public viewing at the end of the week. TBTB would pick shows from past Intensives and transform them into polished work. Normally, the Intensives take place in the Fall and the Playmakers’ Redux in the early Spring.
“In spite of all that our New York theatre community continues to endure in the face of this pandemic, it is so inspiring to see how we are all discovering new ways to keep our art vibrant and flourishing. TBTB has chosen to adapt one of its most popular live programs to our most readily available medium. It will be a great experiment and we are very excited about sharing it with our audiences. We hope you’ll join us for what promises to be a very exciting week of original short plays, written expressly to be performed on the Zoom platform for an online audience, streamed live and in real time,” said Viselli.
For more information about any of Theater Breaking Through Barriers’ productions and upcoming programs, visit tbtb.org.