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The Weasel Festival is an investigation into adaptation: pairing experimental playwrights from the Brooklyn College MFA program with classic texts.

This year the featured playwrights are: LaShea Delaney, Paul Ketchum, Megan Murtha and Mark Sitko. They were given an assignment by playwright and mentor Mac Wellman: write a play inspired by the work of Curzio Malaparte.

Curzio Malaparte was the jumping off point for a whimsically disturbing theatrical landscape filled with dying soldiers, dining German aristocrats, disgruntled prostitutes, playful sisters and a dog. All of our playwrights have written wonderful, disturbing, exciting, funny, sad and innovative plays that explore different aspects of war, moral collapse and humanity. The festival is being directed by the wonderful Jose Zayas and will take place at:

The East 13th Street Theatre

136 East 13th St (btwn. 3rd & 4th Ave) NYC

(4, 5, 6, N, R train to 14th St, Union Sq)

Thursday, August 9 - Saturday, August 11 @ 8 pm
TICKETS: $18/15 students, reserve tickets at bringaweasel@gmail.com

Your contribution will go towards paying all of the artists involved in helping to bring the plays of these playwrights to life and improve our production values. We held a fundraiser in early June, but fell short of our budget goal. every little bit will help to foster the work of the talented and emerging playwrights whose work is being featured this year.

The experimental Brooklyn College MFA program, led by the celebrated playwright Mac Wellman, has decisively shaped New York downtown theatre over the last 10 years. Alumni of the program include Thomas Bradshaw, Annie Baker, Young Jean Lee and Ken Urban. The program has spawned the annual Weasel Festival, now in its seventh year, as a vital breeding ground for new work. Previous playwright/producers include Normandy Sherwood, Erin Courtney, Kate Ryan, Scott Adkins, Sibyl Kempson, Richard Toth, Bianca Bagatourian, Susan Dunlap, Trish Harnetiaux, Laura Jones-Katz, Karinne Keithley, Matt Korahais, Kristen Kosmas, Valerie Work, Corina Copp and Kobun Kaluza.Meet this year's Playwrights:

LaShea Delaney holds an MFA from the Brooklyn College playwriting program. She makes work that belongs in boxes, bathtubs and bars. LaShea's work has been performed at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London, Dixon Place, Jimmy’s 73, The Bowery Poetry Club , Barbez, The Geraldine Page Salon and a few other places she'll talk to you about later.... if you'd like. LaShea is a Himan Brown Award Winner, a New Georges Fellow and a former MacDowell Resident. Her play is an adaptation of Curzio Malaparte’s Kaputt.

Paul Ketchum is a pataphysicist and real live necromancer, which is important to note. He recently graduated from Mac Wellman’s playwriting program at Brooklyn College. His mad works have been on display at the Bushwick Starr, Little Theater at Dixon Place and the University of Denver. He is on the committee for the Pataphysics Workshop at the Flea and bakes his own English muffins. His play, The King of Poland, is an adaptation of Curzio Malaparte’s Kaputt.

“Nazis had lots of dinner parties, and they talked about knitting, carrying the new baby Jesus, and how Hitler is actually the mother of the German people. Oh, and they all carry big knives, too.”

Megan Murtha writes plays about other shitty worlds like this one and collages visual art from body parts, seashells, and her eternal pessimism. Her theater work has been presented at The Threepenny Opera, Bowery Poetry Club, Dixon Place and Theater for the New City. She has exhibited visual art at Red Horse Gallery, ZSpace, Think, Theater for the New City, and The Observatory Room. She studied playwriting with Mac Wellman and Erin Courtney in the MFA program at Brooklyn College. Visit: lacqueredbemusement.blogspot.com for more... Her play, Il Gradoni di Chiaia, is an adaptation of Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin.

“In the face of war and a volcanic eruption, can alleviation for a gro

up of women be found in a can of Spam?The jelly fish might know the answer...”

Mark Sitko is the Artistic Director of Van Cougar (ROCKY PHILLY and Gonna See a Movie Called Gunga Din) and the Associate Artistic Director of the Obie-award winning Bushwick Starr. A recent graduate of Mac Wellman's Brooklyn College MFA Playwrighting program, Mark is currently directing Punkplay and Football/In the Pony Palace out in California as an extension of Alphabet Arts, an arts education program based in Brooklyn. His play Febo, Spaghetti and Spam, is an adaptation of Curzio Malaparte’s The Skin.

“My dog has gone missing, and this boy is sure to die.”