FAMILY

THE NEW YORK TIMES: "Directed by Alec Duffy, Family courts disgust and other dark emotions as it pries up the floorboards of this family’s history. . . they set ablaze almost every piety about the nuclear family. If the unofficial contract between an audience and a playwright stipulates that the audience pays to be entertained or edified, Song has revised that with Family. This play wants to offend, to disturb, to create an ash heap out of your expectations. There’s value in that, too." - Rhoda Feng

THE NEW YORKER: “A deliberately repulsive haunted-house fever dream written by Celine Song. Past Lives, Song’s delicate, realistic film, will in no way prepare audiences for how deranged this show is.” - Helen Shaw

EXEUNT: “The whole thing gets a giant charge–of energy, intensity, intimacy, discomfort–from the site-specific production.” - Loren Noveck

In this site-specific production, three half-siblings lead the audience through the twisted roots of their family tree. Grotesque and deeply dark, this early play by Oscar-nominee Celine Song is more Possession than Past Lives. Experience this disturbing kaleidoscope of co-dependency rendered by one of the most adventurous theater companies in New York City. 

CAST

David: Luis Feliciano

Alice: Izabel Mar* (Sept. 12 - 21 & Sept. 28)/ Violet Savage (Sept. 24 - 27 & Sept. 30 - Oct. 4)

Linus: Jonah O’Hara-David

CREATIVE AND PRODUCTION TEAM

Director: Alec Duffy

Composer/Sound Design: Steven Leffue

Choreographer: Dan Safer

Set Design Consultant: Mimi Lien

Costume Design: Oana Botez

Lighting Consultant: Tuçe Yasak

Stage Manager: TaTyana Smith*

Fight Direction/Intimacy Coordinator: Dan Renkin

Assistant Director: Zachary Desmond

(*denotes member of Actors Equity Association)

LOCATION: Site-specific location in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn

ABOUT THE ARTISTS:

Hoi Polloi is an OBIE-winning New York-based collaborative theater company formed in 2007 by director Alec Duffy.  The company uses the transformative power of theater to upend conventions and bring about a more imaginative society. Original work includes White on White, Quiet, Comfort, Republic, All Hands, Three Pianos, The less we talk, and Dysphoria. Hoi Polloi also has produced existing work by adventurous writers that include Suzan-Lori Parks, Toshiki Okada, John Cassavetes, Samuel Beckett, and others. www.hoipolloiworld.com.

Amanda + James (Co-Producer) is a New York-based company dedicated to producing the work of emerging artists. They provide a space for this community to follow creative impulses, refine ideas into projects, and collaborate and learn from their peers. In fulfillment of our mission, A+J produces a suite of ongoing programs: Sessions (chamber music), PlayTime (theatrical work), Dance+ (interdisciplinary dance work), Sightlines (choreographic residency), Summer Happenings (performance art) and Working Titles (opera). Amanda + James also develops and presents larger-scale, multi-disciplinary productions and co-productions. They have ranged from an original EDM opera, to a communist burlesque musicale, to a new immersive project based on the music of Olivier Messiaen and an original chamber oratorio, The Lydian Gale Parr. Over its ten year history, Amanda + James has collaborated with a diverse range of over 250 artists and counting. The company is dedicated to supporting today’s rising artists and is proud to have supported and furthered the work of an impressive group of creators across all mediums of art, having presented at venues including Target Margin Theater, Pioneer Works, the Chelsea Hotel, Martha Graham Studio Theater, Ars Nova, and more.

Celine Song (Playwright) wrote and directed the 2023 film Past Lives (Oscar-nominated for Best Picture & Best Original Screenplay). Her play Endlings received its world premiere in 2019 at the American Repertory Theater, was produced subsequently at New York Theatre Workshop, and was a finalist for the 2020 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Song was a member of the Public Theater’s 2016-2017 Emerging Writers Group and Ars Nova’s 2014-2015 Play Group. Her play Tom & Eliza (JACK, 2016) was a semifinalist for the American Playwriting Foundation’s Relentless Award. She holds an M.F.A. from Columbia. Song was a staff writer on Amazon’s “The Wheel of Time.” Her next film project, Materialists, is in production with A24.

Alec Duffy (Director) is a playwright and director, and the founder of both Hoi Polloi and the Brooklyn performance venue JACK. He has created many original works with Hoi Polloi, including Dysphoria, The Less We Talk, and All Hands. In 2010, he shared an OBIE Award for Three Pianos, a paean to Schubert's Winterreise song cycle, co-written and performed with Dave Malloy and Rick Burkhardt in a production directed by Rachel Chavkin that toured to New York Theatre Workshop and American Repertory Theater after its premiere at Incubator Arts Project. In addition to his work with Hoi Polloi, he directed acclaimed productions of T.S. Eliot’s Murder in the Cathedral at The Cathedral of St. Joseph in Brooklyn, and the English-language premiere of Yukio Shiba’s Our Planet at Japan Society. His production of Moto Osada’s opera Four Nights of Dream premiered at Japan Society in 2017 and toured to the Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. Duffy studied at L'École Internationale de Théâtre Jacques Lecoq and is a Drama League Directing Fellow.

Mimi Lien (Scenic Design Consultant) is a designer of sets/environments for theater, dance, and opera.  Arriving at set design from a background in architecture, her work often focuses on the interaction between audience/environment and object/performer. In 2015, she was named a MacArthur Fellow, and is the first set designer ever to achieve this distinction. Selected work includes the 2023 revival of Sweeney Todd (Broadway, Tony nomination), Parsifal (Bayreuth Festival), Natasha, Pierre, & The Great Comet of 1812 (Broadway, Tony Award, Lortel Award, Hewes Design Award), Fairview (Soho Rep/TFANA), and An Octoroon (Soho Rep/TFANA, Drama Desk and Lortel nominations). Her stage designs have been exhibited in the Prague Quadrennial in 2011 and 2015, and her sculptures were featured in the exhibition, LANDSCAPES OF QUARANTINE, at the Storefront for Art and Architecture. 

Oana Botez (Costume Designer) is a Princess Grace Recipient, NEA/TCG Career Development Program Recipient and NEA/TCG Round of Global Connections Program. Nominated for The Lucille Lortel Award, Helen Hayes Awards, The Theatre Bay Area Awards, The Henry Hewes Design Awards, and The Barrymore and Drammy Awards. Her designs have raised critical acclaim in New York’s BAM Next Wave, Bard SummerScape/Richard B. Fisher Center, Baryshnikov Arts Center, The David H. Koch Theater/Lincoln Center, The Glimmerglass Festival, Soho Rep, LCT3, The Public Theater, 59East59, La MaMa, The Kitchen, PS122, HERE Arts Center, The Joyce Theater, The Ontological-Hysteric Theater, BRIC Arts Media, Big Apple Circus/Lincoln Center and The Classic Stage Company. Ms. Botez is a Bucharest Art Academy (Romania) graduate and received an MFA in Design from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Ms. Botez significantly contributed to the first Romanian theater design catalog, Scenografica. She taught costume design at Colgate College, Brooklyn College and MIT. Ms. Botez is an Associate Professor Adjunct in the Design Department at David Geffen School of Drama at Yale. She resides in Manhattan, New York.

Steven Leffue (Sound Designer/Composer) is a West Coast-based sound designer, saxophonist, and computer musician.  A long-time collaborator with Hoi Polloi, his work is a synthesis of musical intuition, experimentation, and auditory immersion.  Creating for all manner of live performance, recent productions have been seen at the Under the Radar Festival, Vienna Festwoche, and the International Computer Music Conference in Seoul.

Luis Feliciano (David - he/him/any) is an actor who focuses on Clown, Bouffon and Commedia dell’Arte. He performed in 2024 with Bouffon Ensemble in Flock the Vote at the ATL Fringe (alongside master bouffon Eric Davis). Luis will be making his debut Commedia dell’Arte performance with The Department of Fools at The PIT this August. In 2023, his theater company, Torch Ensemble, won “Best Play” at NYC Fringe with The Climate Fables after a five-star run at the Edinburgh Fringe. Other theater credits include Hispanic Whiteboy (Oscar), Sonnets for an Old Century (Boy), Rhinoceros (Berenger), Hamlet (Polonius), and The Sex Myth: A Devised Play (Ensemble Director). He has been trained by Philippe Gaulier (Le Jeu/Clown), Christopher Bayes (Clown/Commedia), Giovanni Fusetti (Bouffon), Benjamin Moore (Linklater/Stanislavski/Meisner), and Emmanuelle Delpech (Lecoq Pedagogy). He recently completed a Clown Teaching apprenticeship with Christopher Bayes (Head of Physical Acting at Yale) and worked as Studio Manager for Clown Gym’s 10th season. 

Izabel Mar (Alice - Sept. 12 - 21 & Sept. 28 - she/they) Film: Babygirl, Showing Up (A24), Year of the Fox (SIFF). Off-broadway: MAC BETH (Red Bull), Clubbed Thumb, The Public Theatre. New York: Joan of Arc in a Supermarket in California, galatea 2.0, Audible, Improvised Buffy. Regional: Stacy by Ruby Rae Spiegel, MAC BETH (Seattle REP). Reps: Authentic, Daniel Hoff. She is a founding member of The Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research. @izzyetc, izabelmar.com

Jonah O’Hara-David (Linus) performed recently in Zoomers, Messages, and Afters at the Brooklyn Center for Theatre Research and was recently featured in Jeremy O. Harris’ documentary Slave Play. Not a Movie. A Play.

Violet Savage (Alice - Sept. 24 - 27 & Sept. 30 - Oct. 4) is an actor based in NYC. Theater: galatea 2.0, Falling Sideways Off the Edge of the Earth (Invulnerable Nothings), Mad Forest (Theater for a New Audience, The Fisher Center), Promenade in Concert (Mabou Mines) Promenade (The Fisher Center). Film: The Invisible Girl (BKE productions), The Philosophy of Dress (Fair Form), Foxhole (Glass Eye Pix). Violet is a graduate of Bard College’s Theater and Performance program. Rep: David Sweeney. @violetsavage

TaTyana Smith (Stage Manager) is a native New Yorker from Brooklyn. She graduated from the City College of New York with a Bachelor's Degree in Theater. She’s worked at HERE Arts Center, The Wild Project, Lincoln Center, Signature Theater and Playwrights Horizons. Her off-Broadway credits include: Porto, The Gett, Mister Miss America and PlayOn!Shakespeare festival. Member of Actors Equity Association.

Support for the production comes from the Venturous Theater Fund of the Tides Foundation, the Edith Lutyens and Norman Bel Geddes Design Enhancement Fund, a program of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (A.R.T./New York), a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grant, and Jody Falco & Jeffrey Steinman.

Pictured above (left to right): Jonah O’Hara-David, Izabel Mar, Luis Feliciano. Photography by Maria Baranova.