LUNGS Theater Festival 2023

Loisaida United Neighborhood Gardens (LUNGS), FRIGID New York and GOH Productions present the 2nd Annual LUNGS Theater Festival at the 6B Garden (Avenue B and East 6th Street New York, NY 10009). The festival will feature performances by Lower East Side artists, curated by Erez Ziv, Riki Colon, Roman Primativo Albear, Bonnie Sue Stein and Charles Krezell. This year's festival includes:

Winter in the Summer
Presented by Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre
With antique marionettes performed by Master Puppeteer Vít Horejš
June 3 & June 4 @ 3 PM
Vít Horejš performs Czech fairy tales (in English) replete with mountain wizards, clever village maidens and spirits. His marionettes speak in dozens of voices, dance, play violin, swim and fly. The program includes The Snow Maiden Snehurka, in which a childless couple find a little girl in a winter blizzard, and an adaptation of Josef Capek's all time favorite: How the Little Dog and the Little Cat Found a Doll Who Cried in a Very Thin Voice. The audience, both children, adults and inner children, are encouraged to bring their own toys to participate in the performance. A native of Prague, Vít emigrated to the United States in 1979, bringing with him the love for puppetry and one miniscule century-old childhood marionette. In 1990, he found a trove of large antique marionettes in the attic at Jan Hus Church on East 74th Street, in the heart of the once-upon-a-time Czech and Slovak neighborhood. He founded Czechoslovak-American Marionette Theatre in New York City, a renowned member of the worldwide puppetry community, and has lived in the Lower East Side since 1980. 

Everybody's Fine
Written & Performed by Roberta Levine
June 3 & June 4 @ 3:30 PM 
Roberta Levine will perform an excerpted chapter from her family-situated novel, Everybody’s Fine. Chapter 12 reveals a moment in the lives of Lorraine and Frankie as they make life-changing decisions. Author Roberta Levine worked as an actor and solo performing artist for many years in NYC, appearing at iconic downtown venues Dixon Place, PS 122, La MaMa, St. Mark’s Church and more. Besides gnashing her teeth over politics, she is deeply invested in dream work, spiritual development and healing. Currently she lives in Philadelphia with her partner and skittish cat. 

As You Will  
Created by Conor D Mullen, David Brummer & George Hider
Performed by Conor D Mullen, Zev Hurwich, Michael Luca, Allison Furlong, David Crozier
June 3 & June 4 @ 4 PM
Friends, foes, fools! Do you ever bemoan the fact that the 884,647 words William Shakespeare wrote have been performed already? Do you yearn for the experience of seeing The Bard's works for the first time? Then celebrate the glad tidings of As You Will and our Unscripted Shakespeare Show! These Shakespearean Scholars are here to present all the monumental works the immortal Bard would've written if he hadn't gone and died. With just the title given by the audience the players of As You Will bring a Shakespearean comedy to life complete with Shakespeare's themes, language, poetic verse and some scholarly footnotes thrown in for good measure. As You Will have performed such classics as Eight Merry Spiders, That Doth Not Go There and 1601: A Space Odyssey, and though those shows will never be seen again, there’s always a Shakespearean world premiere in our makeshift Globe Theatre. 

That's My Son, Miguel Pinero (new play staged reading)
Written & Directed by Riki Colon
Performed by Samuel Flores as Miguel Pinero and Teresa Reese as Adelina Pinero
June 3 & June 4 @ 4:30 PM
A new play based on the home life of renowned wordsmith, playwright, poet, actor Miguel Pinero (1946–1988), co-founder of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe and author of the award winning play, Short Eyes. Riki Colon takes an inside look at the strong relationship between Pinero and his mother in this premiere. 

Yo soy Nezahualcóyotl
Written by Roman Primitivo & Miguel Loyola
Directed by Roman Primitivo Albear
Performed by Andrés Gallardo Bustillos, Miguel Loyola, Leí Zhou with Annette Buesaquillo-Voll (woman warrior Aztec Dancer)
June 3 & June 4 @ 5 PM
Nezahualcóyotl is a one-act play where the main character is the tlatoani or King of Texcoco, Mexico. He is in the antechamber going to meet the giver of life (god) or returning to Coatlicue (the earth-planet) and is accompanied by two power animals, tonal and nagual (unconscious and conscious), who will give him both good and bad advice on how to face a ballgame that was practiced in Mesoamerica. He must confront the King of Death, Mictla, and the Mayan King, Pakal, and defeat them. His legacy and poetry will endure.   

The Weavers
Written & Directed by Charles Krezell
Performed by Owen Engesser, Kate Goorland and Shabbi Sharifi.
June 3 & June 4 @ 5:30 PM
An absurd web of stolen threads and borrowed songs from the Triangle Shirtwaist Tragedy and the struggles of the Iranian women strung together with the pain of Gaia.