Ancient Mariner, STRIKE Theater Company's first full-length production, is an immersive, interactive adaptation of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. The experience unfolds around the spectator-participants and includes them as they become the crew of a 17th century sailing ship, navigating the rocky sea by starlight.
Together, utilizing both high-tech wizardry and the most ancient theatrical devices, we go in search of adventure, stumble into unintended environmental devastation of our own making, and reckon with collective responsibility
Support Us
Your financial support helps us rent rehearsal space, pay actors and members of our creative and technical teams, purchase equipment that allows us to build interactive tools, and pay for essential services such as insurance and legal assistance. Please consider making a tax-deductible donation.
STRIKE Theater Company is a sponsored project of Fractured Atlas, a non-profit arts service organization. Contributions for the charitable purposes of STRIKE Theater Company must be made payable to “Fractured Atlas” only and are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.
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About Us
David Eric Davis
Artistic Diretor/Ancient Mariner Co-Creator, Co-Director, Music & Lyrics
A lyricist, composer, visual artist, writer and director, Davis’ critically acclaimed rock musical F#%king Up Everything, since retitled Brooklyn Crush (brooklyncrushmusical.com), was a 2013 Off Broadway Alliance Nominee for Best New Musical and a NY Times Critics’ Pick, won Best Book and Honorable Mention for Best Lyrics at the NY Musical Theatre Festival in 2009, and received accolades for its 2011 production at Woolly Mammoth Theatre in Washington, DC (2011). He directed Tarot Reading: Love, Sex and Mommy at the NY Fringe Festival (2005). And he wrote and directed Strike!, a performance piece using the sounds of bodies moving through air and colliding to explore themes in Erich Fromm’s The Art of Love at Movement Research at Judson Church (2003). He presented new technology and works-in-progress Harvestworks in NYC, utilizing optical motion-sensing, accelerometers, gyroscopes and wireless mics to control sound with movement (2014).
Davis was the singer, songwriter and guitarist with indie rock band Uncle Izzy, NYC (uncleizzy.bandcamp.com) and drummer with Dieselmeat, American Empire Records, NYC. He is an accomplished visual artist whose work has been shown at numerous museums including Queens Museum of Art, is featured in permanent collections, was represented by Wünderarts Gallery, and featured in publications. His photo collection “Contemplating My Pipik” can be seen at davidericdavis.com. Davis has also works as a software development project manager, digital product manager and technology operations and management consultant.
Davis is the recipient of grants from The Theater League Fund for New Musicals (2009) and Anna Sosenko Assist Trust (2009), was a participant in CAP21’s Writers Co-op (2011) and earned a BA with Individual Concentration in the Creative Process, University of Massachusetts (1996).
Adrienne Kapstein
Ancient Mariner Co-Creator, Co-Director
Adrienne is a theater maker, director and educator. She specializes in the creation of innovative, interdisciplinary physical theater and her original work has been presented in the U.S., Scotland, Canada, Ireland and Romania. Highlights include Light, A Dark Comedy (The Duke on 42nd Street, New Victory LabWorks Residency), Love is Love (Sibiu International Theater Festival), Every Day Above Ground (PS 122), and Fathom (Ice Factory Festival; Dublin Fringe Festival, Winner Best Production, 2004). Adrienne was the Associate Director of Movement and Horse Choreography on War Horse (Broadway and National Tours).
Areas of current creative research include immersive performance practice and the convergence of technology with live performance. Projects include Beast, a site-specific, flash-mob inspired adaptation of Lord of the Flies (2011); Washeteria, a site-specific production set in a theatricalized laundromat (Soho Rep 2015); and a chapter on immersive practice for an upcoming book, Immersive Performance: Engaging the Audience (Common Ground, 2017). During the academic year 2015 - 2016, Adrienne worked with students in the International Performance Ensemble Program at Pace University to create original interactive installation experiences. Adrienne and her students collaborated with the To Be Another Lab, an international, interdisciplinary collective dedicated to investigating embodied and telepresence experiments.
Adrienne is an Associate Professor of Acting/Movement at Pace School of Performing Arts teaching collective creation and physical theater. Education: The University of Edinburgh, Scotland (MA English Literature), Ecole Jacques Lecoq (certificate of 2 years), and Brooklyn College (MFA Directing).
Sara Wentworth
Ancient Mariner Video & Interactive Designer
Sara Wentworth is a multimedia artist interested in the use of technology as artistic practice: as a means to generate ideas, and as a medium with which to create. Integrating audio, video, and performer and audience action, she creates mediated narratives and immersive environments. Sara has worked collaboratively with performance groups and individually as an installation artist in New York and Ireland. She received a PhD in Digital Arts and Humanities at University College Cork, Ireland. See her work at www.sarawentworth.com.
Deb O
Ancient Mariner Set Designer
Selected set and costume designs: This Is Reading (Reading, PA) Ready Set Go: Race (Falconworks, NY), Airness (Humana Fest, KY) Selkie (Z Space, CA) Thieves (El Portal Theater, LA) Sweeney Todd (Perseverance Theater, Alaska) Christmas Carol and Middletown (Trinity Rep, RI) Light: A Dark Comedy (New Victory, NY) Rite Of Spring (Kimmel Center, PA) The Seagull, Ivanov, Platonov, Uncle Vanya (Lake Lucille, NY) The Nature of Captivity (Mabou Mines, PS 122) Salsalandia (La Jolla Playhouse, CA) Savannah Disputation (The Old Globe, CA) The Lacy Project (Premiere Yale) Jihad the Musical (Edinburgh Festival) The Mistakes Madeline Made (Yale Rep). She received her MFA from Yale. She teaches design at NYU-Tisch/PHTS. See more of her work at www.debo.nyc.