EST/Sloan Project presents a Reading of
S P A C E
written by L M Feldman, directed by Larissa Lury
CREATED BY BOTH
Drawing on history and imagining the future, S P A C E unearths the forces at work in our own time. Before any human travels to space, thirteen female pilots excel at the medical testing to become astronauts. Their story collides with the pilots and astronauts across time—like Bessie Coleman, Hazel Ying Lee and Jasmin Moghbeli—who burst their own path in, out, and up. Through transcript, fiction, feats of endurance, and the ridiculous, S P A C E takes us into moments of expansive missions, lays bare invisible forces at work, and brings us close to the personal side of facing them. It asks: What is the mission of our time? And will we fulfill or betray it?
L M Feldman is a queer, feminist, GNC playwright who writes theatrically audacious, physically kinetic, ensemble-driven plays that are both epic & intimate. So far, her plays include S P A C E ; Thrive, Or What You Will [An Epic]; Another Kind Of Silence; Scribe, or The Sisters Milton, or Elegy for the Unwritten; The Egg-Layers; Grace, or The Art Of Climbing; A People [A Mosaic Play]; Tropical Secrets, or All the Flutes in the Sea; and 7 full-length devised works. L's work has been nominated for the Venturous Award, Herb Alpert Award, Wendy Wasserstein Prize, Barrie & Bernice Stavis Playwright Award, New York Innovative Theatre Award, Doric Wilson Independent Playwright Award, and twice for the Susan Smith Blackburn Prize. Her work was also a finalist for the Jane Chambers Award, Terrence McNally Award, FEWW Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Drama. She couldn't be more grateful for the validation each of these has offered. L is also ongoingly thankful to have been a Shakespeare’s New Contemporaries winner; an Orbiter 3 playwright; a fellow at MacDowell, the Playwrights Realm, New Georges, and the Dramatists Guild; an alum of the Yale School of Drama and the New England Center for Circus Arts; and a core writer with InterAct Theatre and The Playwrights’ Center. As a circus artist, L performed duo trapeze at festivals around the world. She continues to teach & dramaturg for circus artists around the country. She’s passionate about theater that MOVES, and circus that DELVES. L has lived in seven cities and is currently based in Philadelphia, where she writes, teaches, advocates, and handstands.
Larissa Lury is a freelance director, associate professor at New Mexico State University, deviser, and former acrobat. She loves artwork and experiences that open her to new ways of looking at the world around her, and strives to create those experiences for others. She’s directed and workshopped plays for companies including: Nashville Rep, American Shakespeare Center, San Diego Rep, The Assembly, Cherry Lane (Mentor Project), The Playwrights’ Center, Urbanite, Dorset Theatre Festival, Portland Center Stage, Southern Rep, San Diego Rep, InterAct, Ensemble Studio Theatre, Clubbed Thumb, New Georges, Ma-Yi, New Jersey Rep, Keen Company’s Keen Teens, McCarter Theatre’s Youth Ink!, Curious Theatre Company, American Southwest Theatre Company, Lake Dillon, Passage Theatre, Abingdon/Small Pond, Leviathan Lab, and Prospect Theatre. Larissa and L first began developing work together through an Audrey Residency with New Georges. Larissa was a member of the inaugural group of National Directing Fellows, received a Next Stage Residency through The Drama League, was an LMCC Process Space Resident, a Resident Director at Ensemble Studio Theatre, and a chashama AREA Award recipient. She was a member of the Lincoln Center Theater Directors Lab, and is a New Georges Affiliate Artist. She received a BS from Northwestern University and an MFA from UC San Diego. She works to cultivate practices, processes and structures for our field that are as innovative, equitable, inspiring, productively malleable, supportive and humane as an industry built on creativity warrants. larissalury.com