The festival is produced by LoNyLa, a global artists network fueled by graduates of Yale University, in partnership with Innovation Warehouse, a leading British accelerator for digital startups, and the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City.
“I am really looking forward to being a part of the TimeWave festival – I believe that all the artists involved aspire to set the bar higher for new writing and that the results will be at the cutting edge of storytelling and performance.” Cannes Golden Palm winner, writer/director Neil LaBute
TimeWave gathers audiences to experience a performance that is simultaneously theatrical, cinematic, and Internet-driven, and where audiences can contribute via social media.
“I can only appreciate having the chance to be part of the act of pioneering.” Drayton Hiers, Artistic Director, LoNyLa Singapore
Theme: Transformation
Dozens of award-winning artists and multimedia creators, such as Berkeley’s Smith/Wymore Disappearing Acts and Montreal’s Teoma Naccarato, from around the world will gather in London, May 2013. Writers and multimedia creators have reflected on change. It could be a personal cathartic moment — a window into the cosmos — or an imagined couple’s journey into space.
We’ve also encouraged traditional theatre artists to spread their wings and explore the use of new technology in their work. Many have embraced the opportunity, and written startling pieces that take advantage of mediated reality and environments.
Theater allowed you to imagine scenes anywhere in the world; film allowed you to see scenes anywhere in the world; Timewave allows for scenes to occur anywhere in the world and for audiences to connect directly to those places.
Our Vision: to unleash the creative potential of a multicultural collective via technology.
Timewave aims to bring audiences together to experience a performance that is simultaneously theatrical, cinematic, and Internet-driven, and where audiences can contribute via social media and telepresence.
By using telepresence and broadcasting technologies that have been migrated to the cloud, TimeWave creates a new code for an international live arts event. Theatre from multiple locations can be streamed into a single performance, enabling local audiences to travel around the world and never leave their seats.
Current technology integrates HD video, audio and interactive tools, which results in a powerfully immersive experience. By combining technology and production design, local and remote artists and audiences feel as if they are existing in the same time and space.
The Programme
Each performance in the festival will consist of a two-hour event, knitting together 8 to 10 short pieces from playwrights and multimedia creators to form a kaleidoscopic tapestry. Over the five-day run, the programme will resemble a prism shifting every few minutes to reveal a unique voice, style or viewpoint.
As TimeWave progresses, multiple works from different artists will unfold like the ebb and flow of water currents — intersecting, overlapping, interweaving — that form, in total, a wave.
Audiences can participate TimeWave not only as commentators but as creators.
In one format for TimeWave, audiences can interpret a piece in real time. They can hone in on the subtext of a scene and write their own dialogue, expressing it via SMS text inputs. The scene can be as simple as a couple having a cuppa – but are they truly enjoying each other? Conflict may be bubbling beneath the surface, so what’s really going on? Actors may also pose a high stakes scene in which a person is about to jump from a rooftop. Audiences can riff on the jumper’s internal monologue.
In another audience-participation format, we will set up a virtual room.
A question will be posed, such as “if you had one power, what would it be?” Remote audience members can pop in and out of the room and answer the question in one or two lines. Instead of a roving interviewer traveling to different parts of the world, people from various regions of the world can leap into the virtual space and have their say.
Production Team
J Dakota Powell, Producing Artistic Director
J Dakota Powell was Producing Artistic Director of Brave New World on Broadway (NYC) in which over 150 major artists performed plays in response to 9/11 (see BBC press). As Head of Entertainment for KPE Europe, Powell was responsible for producing digital content across multiple platforms. Powell’s plays: Bliss Moon, The Impostor, Savage Light, Blackwater, Harry Black. Harry Black was produced in the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s New Work Series.Blackwater was selected for the National Playwrights Conference, O’Neill Theatre Center and the Lincoln Center Reading Series. Powell has been produced by the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Philadephia Theater Company’s New Works Series, Circle Repertory Theatre Lab, the Ensemble Studio Theatre and Duke University’s New Works Series; she has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory Theatre, Talking Wall Pictures and PBS Great Performances. AB, Economics/Political Science, Yale University. MPS, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Simon Gethin Thomas, Lighting and Production Designer – London
Simon is a London-based lighting designer, and trained for a Master’s Degree at the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama. Recent production credits include the Arensky Chamber Orchestra (Queen Elizabeth Hall, Southbank Centre), Twelfth Night (Victoria Baths, Manchester) and Fear of Music (York Theatre Royal, then touring).
Jake Witlen, Literary Advisor – International
Jake Witlen is a theatre and video artist based between Brooklyn and Berlin. After spending three years as the Artistic / Literary Associate at the award-winning Rattlestick Playwrights Theatre, he helped found The Internationalists, a collective of directors from around the world. With the Internationalists (theinternationalists.org), he has devised and developed many pieces using new technologies, and presented work live and virtually from dozens of countries. Previous work examples includes: a collectively written adaptation of the Odyssey with 12 writers around the world using wikis, emails and waves (OD@C); an interactive puppet show written live in a wiki and performed in English and German (Rubble Room; winner 2010 Zitty Top Buhne); and a simultaneous dinner between New York and Berlin (The Virtual Dinner Party). US Work: Williamstown Theatre Festival, Actors Theatre of Louisville, HERE Arts, 3-Legged Dog, PS122, the Ohio Theare etc. International Work: Berlin, London, Athens, Bucharest, Oslo, Sibiu, Quito and Bagalore, India.
Luisa Marieth Morales, Producing Partner – London
Morales is the International Community Developer at Innovation Warehouse, a co-working space and incubator in central London. Luisa is also co-founder at Poksea Studios, a company she launched with a friend that focuses on social media marketing for startups. Having studied economics and law at university, she finds the art of setting up a business and seeing an idea reach fruition absolutely fascinating. Thanks to her varied interests, the beautifully creative and intelligent people she gets to work with and the locations from which she works, every day is challenge filled with a new learning experience. She loves this!
Alison Reader, Producer – New York City
Alison Reader is an actress based in New York City, currently pursuing her Masters in Acting at The Actors Studio Drama School at Pace University. Most recently she was the New York Broadcaster for LoNyLa’s Velocity Lab, in an off-broadway production, and working for The New York International Fringe Festival. She has had the privilege of working with The Old Vic in London with their Old Vic New Voices division. She attended The Hotchkiss School, The London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts and Colby College.
Nicholas Hart, Associate Producer – London
Hart graduated from Central School of Speech & Drama in 2011, with a BA (Hons) in Acting, specialising in Collaborative & Devised Theatre. He played Jack in SOLD at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2011, which won the Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award and received five-star reviews. He recently played Don Ricardo in a rehearsed reading of The History of Cardenio at Shakespeare’s Globe, directed by Wilson Milam. Nicholas is also a freelance digital designer, and is responsible for the design and implementation of timewavefestival.com.
LoNyLa Artistic Directors
John Gould Rubin, New York
Directing credits include: Hedda Gabler staged in a Town House for 25 people per performance, Little Doc at Rattlestick, The Importance of Being Ernest for Twin Tiers Theatre and In the Daylight at the McGinn-Cazale. Was Co-Artistic and Executive Director of LAByrinth Theater Company for which he directed the premieres of Philip Roth in Khartoum and Penalties & Interest (both as part of Public/LAB at The Public Theater); STopless; The Trail of Her Inner Thigh by Erin Cressida Wilson; John Patrick Shanley’s A Winter Party; Dreaming in Tongues; and Mémoire. He co-created and directed The Erotica Project for the NYSF; Trial By Water for Ma-Yi; A Taste of Honey at Playwrights Horizons; Blood in the Sinkat Urban Stages; both A Matter Of Choice and NAMI for Partial Comfort; Rebecca Gilman’s The Land of Little Horses, Frank McGuiness’ Factory Girls, Timberlake Westenbaker’s Three Birds Alighting on a Field and Richard Nelson’sFranny’s Way, for the Stella Adler Studio; EST’s and Naked Angel’s Marathons;The Fartiste for the NY Fringe Festival (Best Musical.) He wrote (and played Ivan Boesky in) The Predators’ Ball (collaborating with Karole Armitage and David Salle) for the Teatro Comunale in Florence, Italy, and at BAM’s Next Wave Festival. He recently directed his first film, Almost Home for Trigger Street Independent at The Berkshire Film Festival.
Elyse Singer, New York
Elyse is a director/writer/producer and the Founding Artistic Director of the OBIE-winning Hourglass Group. Her work has been seen Off-Broadway, regionally and internationally. Her original multi-media play Frequency Hoppingwon the International STAGE Playwriting Competition and ran at 3LD Art & Technology Center. Singer’s Off-Broadway directing credits include Trouble in Paradise; the first NYC revival of Mae West’s 1926 play SEX; the first US revival of West’s Pleasure Man (starring Charles Busch); and Deborah Swisher’sHundreds of Sisters & One BIG Brother. Singer’s other original works includeLove in the Void, Care-less: Eva Tanguay and Private Property. As producer:Beebo Brinker Chronicles Off-Broadway at 37 Arts (co-produced with Lily Tomlin, Jane Wagner and Harriet Newman Leve), winner of the 2008 GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding New York Theater. A Yale graduate, Singer is a Usual Suspect at NYTW, an alum of the LCT Directors Lab and a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women. She is represented by Bret Adams, Ltd. and is a member of the Stage Directors and Choreographers Society.
Drayton Hiers, Singapore
Drayton is a writer, director and dramaturg. His plays, films, and performances have been seen in Singapore at the Arts House, 72-13, and the SPORE Arts Salon; in New York at Eyebeam, the Bushwick Starr, Anthology Film Archives, and The Tank NYC; and in Amsterdam at Het Muiderpoort Theatre. He has worked as a director and dramaturg with Jean Tay (“Between Us”), Chong Tze Chien (“The Book of Living and Dying”), and Su Ching Teh (“Call Me Bea and Ubin”). He lectures at NYU Tisch School of the Arts Asia and Singapore Repertory Theatre, and holds an MFA in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch Asia.
Rebecca Argyle
Rebecca Argyle is a director at London Investment Partners based in London. Prior to this, she worked in events management launching large scale healthcare innovation events. She has lived in New York, Sydney, Perth, Washington DC, New Haven and St. Andrews. Rebecca has worked in a variety of positions such as the GMAT product director for Kaplan and a toy/candy buyer for Toys “R” Us. She has an MA from University of St. Andrews and an MBA from Yale. She also volunteers for Panthera, leaders in wildcat conservation.
Nixi Cura
Nixi Cura read East Asian Studies at Yale University, then specialized in Chinese painting and Buddhist art at the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. She taught or held post-doctoral fellowships at several institutions in the US before becoming Course Director of the Arts of China postgraduate program at Christie’s Education London. She has also served as co-founder of the Arts of China Consortium, as visiting scholar at the Chinese Academy of Arts, Beijing, as visiting professor at Kansai Gaidai University, Osaka, and currently as Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow. While pursuing her research and professional interests around the world, she has remained engaged with the Yale community through its Alumni Schools Committees, in supporting rising juniors and seniors in the Yale Bulldogs internship programs abroad, by organizing events for Yale alumni and students in Beijing and London, most recently for the Yale Arts Network, LoNyLa and TimeWave.
Chas Cowing
Chas Cowing is President of Access Talent. Formed in 1999, it is New York’s premier talent agency for Voice Over and the Spoken Word. Chas attended the Hotchkiss School and Colby College, doing graduate work at the Yale School of Drama and NYU’s SCPS. He has worked with Mabou Mines, both in residence at the Public Theater as well as on tour in North America, Europe and Australia. Chas performed onstage with Mabou Mines in addition to executing audio designs and live audio mixes for the company’s pieces, most notably a revolutionary sound design for JoAnne Akalaitis, Dead End Kids, incorporating sound cues as diverse as a custom live recording of Philip Glass and a point-blank atom bomb detonation. Before opening Access, Chas was Vice President and Head of Voice Over for J. Michael Bloom and Associates for 17 years. While at JMB, Chas pioneered the industry’s use of Compact Discs for house VO demo compilations and created the first talent agency website in 1994. In 1995, he was the first to bring ISDN audio codec technology to the agency environment, allowing instantaneous, real-time, global transmission of hi-fidelity audio.
Chris Huntington
Chris Huntington was a member of the US Olympic Rowing Teams in 1984 and 1988, and rowed at Oxford in 1986 and ’87. He is currently a Partner with New Energy Fund Advisors, a New York-based strategic consulting firm working with start-up and early stage renewable energy and clean-tech companies. Prior to forming NEF-Advisors, Huntington was one of six founders of SkyFuel, a leading utility-scale solar thermal power technology provider where he oversaw Business Development, originating and managing strategic projects and relationships. Before SkyFuel, Huntington was a Principal at Red Hook Renewable Energy Ventures which invested in and advised renewable energy companies. Huntington moved into renewable energy and clean technology after a 17-year career as a financial news Correspondent and Producer at CNN. Chris earned his undergraduate degree in Rhetoric (pre-law) from the University of California at Berkeley and a graduate degree in Social Studies (Politics, Philosophy & Economics) from the University of Oxford.
Andrew Jaffe
Andrew Jaffe is Professor of Astrophysics and Cosmology at Imperial College in London. He studied at Yale and the University of Chicago and held postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Toronto and the University of California, Berkeley. His main scientific interests are in deciphering the history and evolution of the Universe by analysing observations of the faint echoes of the Big Bang and to that end is a co-Investigator on the European Space Agency’s Planck Surveyor Satellite. He has also collaborated with the Architecture Association in London as part of their Beyond Entropy research cluster, through which he exhibited a prototype reconstruction of Alfred Jarry’s time machine in the 2010 Venice Architecture Biennale.
Michael Jung
As Vice President of Creative Development for Walt Disney Imagineering Creative Entertainment, Michael Jung is in charge of developing theatrical experiences for the Disney Theme Parks, Cruise Lines and Resorts around the world. Most recently, Michael launched the inaugural entertainment program for the Disney’s newest Cruise Ship, The Disney Fantasy. Jung spearheaded the creation of The American Idol Experience at Disney’s Hollywood Studios in Florida. Michael was the principal Creative Director on “Finding Nemo – The Musical” at Disney’s Animal Kingdom. He spearheaded the successful development and execution of the entertainment program for Hong Kong Disneyland and was the principal Creative Director on “The Lion King” and“Once Upon a Dream” parade, both for Disneyland Paris. He has been a key figure in driving the theatrical Blue Sky projects forward, integrating new artists into the Disney fold, crafting and shaping scripts, and spearheading the design concepts for Disney Parks’ theatrical productions. Michael has very successfully worked with the Parks’ entertainment teams on a wide variety of projects including “Playhouse Disney” in both Anaheim and Orlando. Michael trained at the Children’s Theatre Conservatory in Minneapolis. He was appointed resident associate director at the Guthrie Theatre under the artistic direction of Garland Wright. Michael earned his MFA from the California Institute of the Arts in directing and locally has produced and directed at The Mark Taper Forum, The Tiffany Theatre, The Matrix, Actor’s Gang, West Coast Ensemble, Long Beach Playhouse and the Taper New Work Festival. In 1994 he joined the artistic staff of the Mark Taper Forum, where he spent five years coordinating the new play development programs and acting as associate producer for the New Work Festival. Michael has also branched into producing, writing and directing television. He was the co-producer for the ACE award winning series Intimate Portrait on Lifetime Television.
William Lipschutz
William Lipschutz is the Director of Portfolio Management for Hathersage. Prior to helping form Hathersage, Lipschutz was President and Chief Executive Officer of Rowayton Capital Management Inc., an asset management firm that he founded in August 1991. Prior to that, Lipschutz was President and Chief Executive Officer of North Tower Management Group, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Merrill Lynch, Pierce, Fenner & Smith Inc. Prior to forming North Tower in September 1990, he was a Managing Director of Salomon Brothers Inc., where he was Global Head of Foreign Exchange. Lipschutz received a BFA in Architectural Design from Cornell University and a MBA in Finance from the Johnson School of Management at Cornell University. Lipschutz is featured inThe New Market Wizards: Conversations with America’s Top Traders, by Jack D. Schwager, 1992 and The Mind of a Trader: Lessons in Trading Strategy From The World’s Leading Traders, by Alpesh B. Patel, 1998. He was inducted into the Trader Monthly Hall of Fame in October, 2006.
J Dakota Powell
J Dakota Powell was Producing Artistic Director of Brave New World on Broadway (NYC) in which over 150 major artists performed plays in response to 9/11 (see BBC press). As Head of Entertainment for KPE Europe, Powell was responsible for producing digital content across multiple platforms. Powell’s plays: Bliss Moon, The Impostor, Savage Light, Blackwater, Harry Black. Harry Black was produced in the Ensemble Studio Theatre’s New Work Series.Blackwater was selected for the National Playwrights Conference, O’Neill Theatre Center and the Lincoln Center Reading Series. Powell has been produced by the Bay Area Playwrights Festival, the Philadephia Theater Company’s New Works Series, Circle Repertory Theatre Lab, the Ensemble Studio Theatre and Duke University’s New Works Series; she has been commissioned by South Coast Repertory Theatre, Talking Wall Pictures and PBS Great Performances. AB, Economics/Political Science, Yale University. MPS, Interactive Telecommunications Program, New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts.
Melissa Wolff
Melissa Wolff is an actress, producer, marketer and project manager. She has appeared in numerous productions in New York City (Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway) and has performed in regional theaters and in the Edinburgh, Washington DC and New York fringe festivals. She has also recorded numerous voiceovers for television, radio and film. Currently, she is the Director of Client Services and Marketing for Tierra Innovation, a leading strategy, design and software development firm. She also provides strategic marketing, project management and writing services for a variety of consulting clients. As a marketing executive, Melissa has extensive experience building brands and devising integrated marketing strategies for entertainment and digital media companies, including Showtime, MTV, Nickelodeon, Oxygen Media and Imaginova. Melissa is a graduate of Yale University and co-chairs the NYC Chapter of Yale in Hollywood.