Compagnia de' Colombari’s 20th Anniversary Season
In 2024, Compagnia de' Colombari celebrates 20 years of reimagining classic texts and generating spectacle accessibly in surprising places! Colombari was born in 2004 in Orvieto, Italy, where the company re-imagined the medieval mystery plays and performed them in the streets and piazzas. Having revitalized the tradition of theater during Orvieto's annual Corpus Christi Festival, the company launched a parallel theatrical experience in its home base of New York City called Strangers and Other Angels (currently in development for a return to Orvieto in 2025). Since then, for two decades, the ever-expanding international company of actors and collaborators has created and performed extraordinary productions adapted and directed by Karin Coonrod across the USA and around the world. Please stay tuned for the exciting offerings on tour and in development for our 20th anniversary season!
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Whitman on Walls! (WoW!) is a hybrid event that brings living poets and Colombari performers on film together to explore Walt Whitman's iconic words and uncover what democracy and community mean to artists and poets today. It's a drive-in movie meets poetry slam!
In response to the host of performance cancellations in 2020, Compagnia de' Colombari turned Karin Coonrod’s original production of MORE OR LESS I AM into short films. Working with Whitman's iconic poem, "Song of Myself," Colombari created seven short films with actors and musicians around the globe, bringing Whitman’s words to life in startling and beautiful new ways intermixed with live responses from local poets and performers.
Whitman on Walls (WoW!) Tour Dates:
March 25, 2024 - SUNY Stonybrook in Stony Brook, NY
May 5, 2024 - WoW! Harlem at Denny Farrell Riverbank State Park Robert Frederick Smith Center for Performing Arts (679 Riverside Drive at 145th Street in Harlem) on May 5 at 6:30p.m. RSVP HERE
September 25-29, 2024 - Santa Fe, NM
Whitman on Walls! (WoW!) design created by Kyle Morrissey of White Bicycle
KING LEAR, adapted and directed by Karin Coonrod is a raw, primal, and potent “paper crown” Lear that strips down the Shakespearian classic to its essence through a vigorous exploration of the text and characters’ psyches and motivations. An ensemble of ten actors ranging in age and gender all embody King Lear at the beginning. One by one, they strip off their paper crowns, transform into other characters, and conduct a take-over of the text and the theatre space. This fresh, vital, and urgent exploration of encountering oneself is a journey of a fractured soul and a broken community discovering wholeness through almost unbearable suffering.
Colombari will host a KING LEAR "share-out" presentation and 20th Anniversary celebration in Brooklyn on May 23, 2024, from 6:30 to 8:30p.m. at Saint Paul's Roman Catholic Church (234 Congress Street). The event is FREE and open to the public. RSVP HERE.
The world premiere of Colombari's KING LEAR debuts June 14-16, 2024 at the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, CT. Tickets are available HERE.
King Lear workshop presentation at Torn Page. Photo by Paul Lieber
Compagnia de' Colombari Introduces Three Artistic Associates
Get a glimpse of the creative process with select scenes from Colombari's Artistic Associates' works-in-progress!
On Monday, May 6th, at 6:30p.m. at Torn Page (435 West 22nd Street), Karin Coonrod passes the "crown" to the next generation of theatre makers, Colombari’s Artistic Associates: Rory Pelsue (recipient of the 2023 NYSCA Support for Artists Theater Commissions Grant), Jesse Rasmussen, and Jacob Basri. Each director will present selected scenes from classical works currently in development. In anticipation of Colombari’s much-anticipated world premiere of King Lear, the theme of the evening cheekily refers to Coonrod as King Lear and the Artistic Associates as Lear’s three children.
Come celebrate Colombari's 20th Anniversary Season and meet the team who will follow in Artistic Director Karin Coonrod's footsteps, looking towards the next 20 years of generating spectacle and forging new paths of “deconstructing to reconstruct” classic texts. FREE with limited seating. RSVP HERE.