Co-artistic directors Kyra Sims and Rob Neill and the award-winning New York Neo-Futurists (NYNF), a collective of writer-director-performers now in their 19th season of writing and performing original work rooted in non-fiction, announce the expanding of the ensemble with four new artists: Amelia Bethel, Brent Whiteside, Maya Carter, and Jezz Chung. These new Neo-Futurists will start working with the company immediately and will each have initial individual five-week runs in The Infinite Wrench at the Kraine Theater (85 East 4th Street, NYC) now through August of 2023. Tickets are available at nynf.org.
“We are so fortunate that Amelia, Brent, Maya and Jezz have agreed to bring their artistic talents to the company. Each of their backgrounds, aesthetics and visions for what Neo-Futurism can be can only enhance the already rich theatrical landscape of our ensemble”, says Sims. “The infusion of these four stellar artists will cultivate new collaborations, new perspectives, and new plays, along with the continued evolution of what we devise and how we create”, adds Neill.
Amelia Bethel (she/her) is a theatre artist whose work confronts the performance of identity and the materiality of the body, with a focus on sexuality and a mixed-race experience. Her original work has been presented by Ars Nova, Atlas Obscura, The Tank, San Francisco Olympians Festival, Chicago Women’s Funny Fest, and elsewhere across the country. She can be heard as Marisol on the award-winning podcastUnwell: A Midwestern Gothic Mysteryfrom HartLife Studios. Amelia is a former associate artist in residence with poet Tracie Morris and playwright Sibyl Kempson at the Atlantic Center for the Arts, and received her MFA in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College.
Brent Whiteside (he/him) is a multi-hyphenate producer hailing from Chicago and currently based in New York City. He is a firm believer in creating your own opportunities and is committed to creating works that align with his passions and beliefs. Through storytelling, Brent advocates for the livelihoods that deserve space in media and society. His aim is to create works that both enlarge and resemble the real, multifaceted, and vivid lives of Black, Brown, Queer, and Trans people, with an emphasis on accessing and restoring narratives lost, dismissed, and untold. In his career, Brent has served multiple roles and positions across leading media and film outlets, such as HBO, VICE, Freeform, Buzzfeed, Quibi, and more. Most recently he field produced a new eight-episode Disney cable and Hulu docuseries, The Come Up. He has also had the pleasure of working with brands such as Pinterest, General Motors, Hugo Boss, and Unilver on creating content that marries the brands with culture in ways that ignite conversations while also celebrating diversity.
Maya Carter (they/them/Maya) is a trans-genre maker/performer + teaching artist/facilitator + cultivator of joy; based in Brooklyn, NY—on the unceded land of the Lenape People. Performance credits include: Seven Guitars (Actor’s Shakespeare Project), Little Women (Perseverance Theatre), A Raisin in the Sun (Sharon Playhouse),and It Will Rise Soon Enough (Columbia/Lenfest). As an educator + guest artist Maya has worked with: The Child Center of New York, Hofstra University, Stages on The Sound and within the NYDOC.Additionally, Maya strives to prioritize ease + creative liberation while facilitating the emergence of new plays and devised work. Developmental projects include: Tanya’s Lit Clit with Experimental Bitch (Dramaturg + Creative Doula), Elle S’envoie with Linked Dance Theater (Co-Creator + Director), and GIRLS ACT OUT with Hawkhouse (Choreographer + Associate Director). Much of Maya’s generative work is an examination of the queer utopian ideal and of Black queer folk who grew up/out of/through trauma in Faith Communities. An excerpt of their play, How We’ll Get Over was commissioned for the Poetic Theater Productions annual festival in early March of 2020.
Jezz Chung (they/them)is a multidisciplinary artist from Georgia and Texas, now based in New York City exploring the intersection of personal transformation and collective change. With a background in movement, performance, and community organizing, Chung blends elements of their personal history as an autistic, disabled, queer, Korean American into their work to explore accessible, equitable, liberated futures.
They have been featured internationally in Paper Mag, Vogue Italia, Spain’s El País, and Portugal’s Público, have been invited to speak at Columbia University and Google, have written for Washington Post and i-D, were named a Pride honoree by Logo TV and a mental health advocate by Made of Millions. In 2022, they were a featured artist for 1969 Gallery’s “Pure Joy: 14 Disabled Visual and Performance Artists” curated by Chella Man. They have an audio series with Deem Journal titled “Dreaming Different” about building a neurodivergent future out May 2023, and have a book with Chronicle Prism due Spring 2024 titled “THIS WAY TO CHANGE.” You can follow their journey @jezzchung on Instagram, where they sing from their bathroom, share resources for artists and changemakers, and document the realities of living with chronic depression.
The New York Neo-Futurists are a prolific, dynamic ensemble of multidisciplinary artists who write and perform original work rooted in the truth of our own lived experiences. They fuse elements of poetry, game, and performance art to create ever-changing theater and other artistic experiments to respond to the world around them. Since opening in Brooklyn in 2004, the New York Neo-Futurists have premiered over 6,500 short plays in their radical theatre mechanisms Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind (2004-2016) and The Infinite Wrench (2017-present), and have become a downtown New York institution. The NYNF have been a stalwart presence in the Off-Off Broadway community since their inception; they have won numerous Innovative Theatre Awards, earned multiple Drama Desk Nominations, and were honored at The 2018 Fresh Fruit Festival Awards with the Honeyberry Award for Unrecognized Service to the LGBT Community. The Infinite Wrench unleashes a barrage of two-minute plays, and while each one offers something different, be it funny, profound, elegant, disgusting, topical, irrelevant, or terrifying, all are truthful and tackle the here-and-now, inspired by the lived experiences of the performers. In addition to performing The Infinite Wrench fifty weeks a year, the NYNF will premiere season four of their NYT-recommended podcast Hit Play later this year.
2018 Fresh Fruit Festival Honeyberry Award for Unrecognized Service to the LGBT Community
2006, 2011, & 2017 NYIT Award for Outstanding Performance Art Production
2015, 2014 & 2012 Drama Desk nominee for Unique Theatrical Experience