The Eva Steinmetz Project
The Eva Steinmetz Project creates original, ensemble-driven works of performance in Philadelphia, PA. Each new work begins with a line of political inquiry or a feeling of unrest, using theater as an exercise in radical compassion, self-examination, and human connection. Collaborators of The Eva Steinmetz Project are an ever-changing group of creator-performers who ask hard questions of each other and our community.
We believe in examining the muddy spaces between tragedy and delight, between ego and humility, between narrative and abstraction, between justice and crime. We believe in a playfully generative artistic process. We believe in the value of witnessing, healing, and celebrating each other and the troubled world we inhabit.
The Eva Steinmetz Project is a recipient of the 2019 MAP Fund Award and the NET Travel Grant, and is fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas.
Please consider making a tax deductible contribution to our ongoing work!
Projects
BOY PROJECT
BOY PROJECT (lead artist: Nell Bang-Jensen) brings together young Philadelphians, ages 12-16, to collaboratively create and perform an original theater piece about what it means to be a man. In fall 2018, FringeArts invited the piece to be part of its 2020 High Pressure Fire Service Festival (a curated festival of world premieres from Philadelphia’s leading performers), and in June 2019 The Eva Steinmetz Project received the MAP Fund, supporting the development and premiere of BOY PROJECT.
REENACTMENT
REENACTMENT (lead artist: Brett Robinson) will be a performance ritual in remembrance of the MOVE bombing. A free-to-download .pdf script, it is intended for people to read and “perform” at home around a dinner table. The piece began development at the HATCH residency in summer 2018. In winter 2018 and spring 2019, Brett and Eva self-curated a series of writing workshops, which culminated in a reading at Brett’s house. The Eva Steinmetz Project is pursuing funding to support further research in preparation for an official release of the script.
Shuttlefish
The piece that started it all! Beginning with a desire to create a piece about grief, Eva gathered together 5 women and a string trio for a series of rehearsals exploring the mundane, un-romantic, often bureaucratic experience of coping with a loved one’s death. Eva worked in collaboration with the ensemble, culminating in the 2017 premier of SHUTTLEFISH: a dancetheater fugue.
The Trial
THE TRIAL: an absurdist adaptation of Kafka’s novel. Joseph K, the doomed protagonist, revealed that we are all in our own way condemned–to poverty, to solitude, to sickness, to lovelessness, to death, and to the tyranny of a senseless system of government.
poster art by Erik Ruin