The 16th annual Bring a Weasel and a Pint of Your Own Blood Festival, created by experimental theater legend Mac Wellman, will take place this year at the BAM Fisher from September 13 to 15.
As the only department within CUNY to offer a comprehensive selection of graduate programs in theater (acting, design and technical theater, directing, performing arts management), the Brooklyn College Department of Theater capitalizes on its New York City location and the expertise of its nationally recognized faculty in order to give students an excellent yet financially accessible education in the art, craft, study, and appreciation of theater.
(Top row left to right) Haruna Lee, former M.F.A. Playwriting Program co-chair; Diana Lobontiu ‘23 M.F.A. Playwriting, Marissa Joyce Stamps ‘23 MFA Playwriting and Weasel 2024 director; Max Keane ‘23 M.F.A. Playwriting; Nic Adams ‘23 M.F.A. Playwriting and Weasel 2024 stage manager; Dennis Allen II, Playwriting Program co-chair; and Alina Jacobs ‘23 MFA Playwriting.
(Bottom row left to right) Madison Wetzell ‘24 M.F.A. Playwriting and Weasel 2024 playwright; Leslie Gauthier ‘24 M.F.A. Playwriting and Weasel 2024 playwright, Utkarsh Rajawat ‘24 M.F.A. Playwriting and Weasel 2024 playwright; Tracy Carns ‘24 M.F.A. Playwriting and Weasel 2024 playwright; and Lori Felipe-Barkin ‘24 M.F.A. Playwriting and Weasel 2024 playwright.
The festival is written and presented by the college’s M.F.A. playwriting program’s 2024 graduates: Tracy Carns, Nurit Chinn, Lori Felipe-Barkin, Leslie Gauthier, Utkarsh Rajawat, and Madison Wetzell.
Other Brooklyn College playwriting students and alumni who will lend their expertise to the programming are director Marissa Joyce Stamps ’23 M.F.A.; co-producers and current M.F.A. playwriting students Kurt Chiang, Ann Marie Dorr, Claire Greising, and Andrew Hardigg; and Nic Adams ’23 M.F.A., who is working as stage manager.
The festival was founded in 2006 by Mac Wellman and a group of Brooklyn College alumni M.F.A. playwrights, including Erin Courtney ’03 M.F.A, Kate E. Ryan ’04 M.F.A, and Karinne Keithley Syers ’06 M.F.A.
This year’s plays are all inspired by The Marriage of Heaven and Hell by the 18th-century poet, artist, and iconoclastic visionary William Blake, common source material suggested by program directors Sibyl Kempson and Dennis A. Allen II. Playwrights, directors, designers, and actors from Brooklyn College and the wider New York City theater community collaborate on these explosive, form-bending new works, presented in two programs featuring three plays apiece.
The performance schedule is as follows:
PROGRAM HEAVEN
(September 13 at 7:30 p.m.; September 14 at 2:30 p.m.)
The Peepholeman
By Lori Felipe-Barkin; directed by Benjamin Viertel
Synopsis: Lillian and Frank, an elderly couple, share everything: a home, a life, and a liver. What they don’t share is an outlook. That is…until a mysterious peephole salesman knocks on their door. Lillian is convinced he has come for their liver. Frank is convinced Lillian is crazy. Slowly, they begin to share one more thing in common: paranoia.
SLIMRZ
By Utkarsh Rajawat; directed by Kedian Keohan
Synopsis: SLIMRZ by White Castle is a first-of-its-kind fast-food-style slime restaurant, in which we explore slime as the sublime, and “brat” as symbol of theater industry complicity with genocide, and of the union of reason/desire, the marriage of heaven and hell, through a chiasmus of scenes all set in the restaurant itself.
Corrosives Are the Cure for Her Crushing Nostalgia
By Tracy Carns; directed by Benjamin Viertel
Synopsis: Corrosives Are the Cure for Her Crushing Nostalgia is a haunting, an ache, a revolution of the mind, a blown-out Polaroid. Dixon and Sue Lyon plot away on a blistering hot day. The radio’s playing, there’s beer in the cooler, and some devils may be writing a manifesto in acid on flesh. Welcome. The devil knows you’re here.
PROGRAM HELL
(September 14 at 7:30 p.m.; September 15 at 3 p.m.)
Choreomania
By Madison Wetzell; directed by Marissa Joyce Stamps
Synopsis: A scream into the void in which the void is also me screaming. Includes fun facts about death, a conceptual exploration of puppets, an encounter between strangers, and a dance number.
Proverbs of the Mojave
By Leslie Gauthier; directed by Marissa Joyce Stamps
Synopsis: Proverbs of the Mojave is a post-grief, post-Americana desert “sand study” in which a cowboy and housewife reveal desire in the creosote.
Godbird
By Nurit Chinn; directed by Kedian Keohan
Synopsis: Deb’s up early and can’t sleep. During off-leash hours in a neighborhood park, she meets Hugo and his pit bull. Also lurking in the shrubs: a birdman, with a birdlike view on things. A play about wanting to be seen, fully and inexplicably.
Tickets for Weasel Festival are $20 and can be reserved by calling (718) 636-4100, online at http://www.bam.org/theater/2025/the-weasel-festival, or in person at the BAM box office, located in the Peter Jay Sharp Building at 30 Lafayette Avenue.
