A New Play

Each night, when the lights rise on A New Play, the players enter a new set for the first time. New blocking guides their feet and new lines are summoned to their lips, as a ghostly new world materializes from the shadows, ephemeral and singular, like a flake of snow.

A New Play brings technical theater to improv, with a capsule wardrobe and flexible geometric props that are all painted white to look like spectral incarnations of traditional space objects.

“Physical Improvisers” — improvised stage technicians clad in black cloaks and white morphsuits — build and change the set, and can reveal parts of their body to become props themselves. Uncloaked, they move in unison to create dynamic stage effects like weather or abstract representations of a character’s internal state.

Performances vary radically in pacing and tone, with the symmetries and architecture of the physical set inspiring the narrative structure of the play. Nothing is preplanned, but everything seems scripted.