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Six Feet by Melanie Hoopes
October 17, 2020 @ 8:00 pm - 10:00 pm
Saturday, October 17
8 PM EDT
ZOOM link will be provided to registrants the day before the performance
Doctor, caterer, therapist, lover. It’s been 217 days since the virus changed their lives. At 6 PM (Hawaii time), they’ll meet on ZOOM to discuss a tragic event that connects them all. But will this call tear them apart?
RiverArts has commissioned an original, innovative play to be performed live on ZOOM. Written and directed by Melanie Hoopes (Netflix’s Bloodline, Here’s the Thing hosted by Alec Baldwin), SIX FEET is full of tension, intimacy, and a cathartic, biting clarity. It’s a play about confronting emotions that are made more raw, volatile, and intense the more they are confined. It shows us what happens when we rely on flat, 2D interactions to communicate things that are so much bigger than the spaces we inhabit.
Written and Directed by Melanie Hoopes. Starring Jenny Bacon, Anitra Brooks, Kelly Coffield Park, Ed Herbstman, Stephen Park, Nick Wyman, and Jean Villepique. Original music by Steve Horelick. Technical Director Jeremy dePrisco and Assistant Technical Director Josh Govier will orchestrate a smooth and clear transmission of the performance. Lauren Orkus is the Producer. Special thanks to Marie-Louise Miller, Consulting Producer.
CAST
JENNY BACON
Jenny Bacon has brought characters to life alongside some of the masters of the American Theater, including Sam Shepard, Tony Kushner, Sarah Ruhl, Theresa Rebeck, Lisa Kron, and David Rabe. She has worked with groundbreaking directors Ivo van Hove, JoAnne Akalaitis, Daniel Aukin, Walter Bobbie, Robert Falls, Mary Zimmerman, Daniel Fish, and others, garnering awards across America and a Herald Angel Award from the Edinburgh Festival. She has appeared on American television playing a variety of unfortunate souls in horrific circumstances, and has had an absolutely wonderful time doing it.
ANITRA BROOKS
A graduate of Brown University and The Integrative Sound and Music Institute, Anitra Brooks has toured the U.S. and world with Drama Desk Award-nominated puppet performers and masked musicians Big Nazo, Drama Desk Award-nominated “bad-ass masters of vocalogy” Hotmouth, and with Grisha Coleman’s dance and live music performance installation echo::system. In her 20+ years in New York City, she has performed at the Public Theater, Belasco Theater, LaMama, HERE Arts Center, Kraine Theater, Ohio Theatre, National Black Theatre, and other venues. She has also been featured in numerous television and radio commercials, television shows, and soap operas. As a recording artist, she has released two albums of original music: Flood in 2008 and I Walk in Your Light in 2015. She is the co-producer of the community ensemble project and play Where Are We Now?: Race, Pride, Class & Inequity, and teaches Music & Movement at the Greenwich Country Day School. She lives in Cos Cob, CT with her husband and sons. www.anitrabrooks.com
KELLY COFFIELD PARK
Kelly Coffield Park started her acting career in 1978 at the Emelin Theater in New Rochelle, New York. She is thrilled to be back (virtually) in Westchester County! She is currently Zooming from Los Angeles, where her husband Stephen Park and she are holding down the fort for their kids in college. She is thrilled to be working with Melanie Hoopes again, after being part of Laurie Stanton’s Sound Diet.
ED HERBSTMAN
Ed Herbstman is an actor and writer originally from Chicago, and is married to writer/director Melanie Hoopes. Acting credits include Film: Hustlers, The Big Sick, Ode To Joy, Arthur. TV: Manifest, Search Party, Alpha House, Pinkalicious. Theater: Magnet Theater (co-founder) Second City TourCo, Laurie Stanton’s Sound Diet, Mantzoukas Brothers, Armando Diaz Experience. Writing credits include Da Ali G Show, The Truth Podcast. Ed is also a faculty member of the Syracuse University Tepper Semester, and a volunteer firefighter in the Hastings-on-Hudson Fire Department. He is very excited and grateful to be both involved in this show and married to Melanie.
STEPHEN PARK
Stephen Park was born in Brooklyn, NY to Korean immigrant parents. He began his career as a stand-up comedian in New York City and soon after started acting in the theater. His first film role was as the market owner in Do the Right Thing which led to his next role in Quick Change. Upon moving to Los Angeles, he became a cast member of the sketch comedy television series In Living Color during the 1991-1992 season where he met fellow cast member Kelly Coffield, who eventually became his wife. (And his castmate again in this show!) Stephen has been is such iconic movies as the Coen Brothers’ Fargo and A Serious Man, as well as Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer. He is in Wes Anderson’s soon-to-be released movie The French Dispatch.
JEAN VILLEPIQUE
Jean Villepique left New Jersey to study theater and improvisation at Northwestern University. She stayed in Chicago, pursuing improv at the former ImprovOlympic theater, studying with Del Close, and then was hired by The Second City, Chicago. She wrote and performed in five reviews there before moving to New York. There she performed at the UCB and Magnet theaters before moving again to LA. TV/Film credits include The Office, 30 Rock, Sharp Objects, Better Call Saul, and Jean can currently be seen as Michelle Jones on AP Bio, streaming on the Peacock platform.
NICK WYMAN
Nick Wyman is an award-winning actor who has acted in a dozen feature films and sixteen Broadway shows, most recently Network with Bryan Cranston. He was part of the original cast of The Phantom of the Opera, spent six years as Thenardier in Les Miserables, and performed in many other on-stage roles. Film credits include Die Hard With a Vengeance, Maid in Manhattan, and Planes, Trains and Automobiles. He has also appeared in television in Boardwalk Empire, VEEP, Elementary, and The Good Wife, among others. He served as President of Actors’ Equity for five years and his show-business how-to-book, Climbing Rejection Mountain was just published this summer.
WRITER & DIRECTOR
MELANIE HOOPES
Melanie Hoopes writes for screen, radio/podcast and stage. Her credits include Lethal Lit (IHeartRadio/EEP), Bloodline (Netflix), One Giant Leap: The Apollo Moon Landing 50 Years On (New York Times),This American Life, Alec Baldwin’s Here’s the Thing and Unfictional. She is the creator of the long-running New York-based live episodic stage show, Laurie Stanton’s Sound Diet, a dark, modern twist on Prairie Home Companion.
COMPOSER
STEVE HORELICK
A musical adventurer and educator, Steve Horelick’s career encompasses a wide spectrum of the music universe. He performs live electronic SurroundScape™ concerts. He is a founding member of the Electric Art Ensemble whom Bob Moog christened as “virtuosic sonic sculptors”. His TV credits include more than 350 episodes, encompassing such award-winning children productions as PBS’s Reading Rainbow for which he composed the iconic, Buchla-generated “Butterfly in the Sky” theme song. Other credits include Shining Time Station, The Puzzle Place, and The Magic Adventures of Mumfie. His film score credits include everything from an 80’s cult-horror classic to HBO’s legendary baseball documentary series “When It Was a Game,” which earned him his first EMMY nomination. He has also won many other awards, including the prestigious Gold at New York Film Festival, for his many TV and advertising soundtracks.
His original songs have been recorded by Bobby McFerrin, John Sebastion, Phoebe Snow, Peabo Bryson, LeVar Burton, and Kermit the Frog.
As an educator and lecturer he has taught songwriting, synthesis and film scoring at Queens College and City College in New York City. He is currently the publisher and Executive VP at NonLinear Educating, Inc. overseeing the production of over 2,000 courses for their MacProVideo.com and Ask.Video online education websites.
TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
JEREMY DEPRISCO
Jeremy dePrisco has worked with children’s programming (Rainbow’s End Theatre Co.) and continued a decade’s long collaboration as sound designer/composer for director/writer Dr. Stephen Schrum (Penn State University, University of Charleston, Pitt-Greensburg Theatre Co.). Throughout the 2000s, Jeremy worked with the Bloomsburg University Alumni Players as sound designer for their summer murder mysteries with director James Slusser. Jeremy also contributed original music for Compassion Moves, a combined dance/poetry/music performance directed by Anthony Ferro. Jeremy has written grants, and supported organizations with live events (Noboborsho, Philadelphia Maker Faire 2019, Electro-Music.com). As a producer/engineer, Jeremy has recorded bands/soloists and released his own music as an independent artist. Most recently has ventured into the world of video synthesis and now offers his talents for streaming events.
ASSISTANT TECHNICAL DIRECTOR
JOSH GOVIER
Josh Govier is an audio video tech from Hastings-on-Hudson, NY. He has a strong passion for technology, the arts and all of the places that they intersect. He is a longstanding friend of RiverArts, first starting as a student, he has gone on to serve as a Videographer, Sound Recordist, and Music Tour Associate Producer.
PRODUCER
LAUREN ORKUS
CONSULTING PRODUCER
MARIE-LOUISE MILLER
In September 2018, Marie-Louise directed the interdisciplinary art performance project, Braiding. The show took two years to develop, was a RiverArts production and supported by an NEA grant. Braiding included 15 artists from 5 disciplines. Marie-Louise has studied directing and acting at the British American Drama Academy, the Royal Court, and Northwestern University where she earned her MFA. Ms. Miller worked as an assistant director with several theaters in West Germany. After the Wall fell, she was the first American with The Staatstheater in Dresden, Germany. She went on to do experimental work in East Berlin, and study directing at Ernst Busch Academy in East Berlin. In the US, she worked with playwright/ director Craig Lucas at NYC’s Rattlestick Theater and NY Theater Workshops, and for the renowned Romanian director Liviu Ciulei at the Seattle Repertory Theater. She has directed 24-hour musicals and been part of the SoHo director’s lab and Lincoln Center’s Director’s Lab. She has taught improvisation, acting/writing for the camera, character development, scene study, and movement. She has also created dynamic classes exploring inner voice through story writing, performance, and drawing.
