COMMUNAL SPACES

Garden Play Festival

September 13-28

Saturday & Sunday afternoons

Our 13th garden play festival!

Plays every Saturday & Sunday @2pm

Concerts Sundays @1pm

Community picnic Sunday, Sept 28, @ 3:30pm

Lead Artists

  • As a playwright, Genevieve Simon (he/they) centers queer people in magical worlds at the intersection of family, identity, and bodies of water. He is a 2025 NYSCA Commission Winner, a 2023-24 New Georges Audrey Resident, and a member of the 2024 Page 73 Writers Group. His climate-doom-comedy BLOOM BLOOM POW was a Finalist for the 2022 EMOS Ecodrama Playwrights Festival. Genevieve’s work has been supported by Ars Nova, The Bushwick Starr, The Brick, Fresh Ground Pepper, New Georges, Shadowland Stages, Actors Theatre of Louisville, Arts on Site, Holton-Arms School, Cincinnati Fringe Festival, The Parsnip Ship, and The Tank. They are a New Georges Affiliated Artist, and their writing has been published in Howlround Theatre Commons. Genevieve’s plays are being produced and developed in 2025 at Oberlin College, Willamette University, Skidmore College, and The Drama Studio. Up next: presenting “Envisioning The Future of Trans Identities on Stage” at the 2025 National American Alliance For Theatre and Education Conference. Playwriting Lecturer, Skidmore College.  www.genevieve-simon.com

  • Averi Israel is a multi-disciplinary artist exploring dynamics of American culture and the Black experience. Into community. Into liberation. Into the wisdom of nature. 

    www.averiisrael.com / @averiisrael

  • Anton Handel is originally from Maine and has moved to the Bronx after a decade in Los Angeles working in TV and film. Playwriting credits include: Silos of Duanesburg, Analogue, The Internauts, The Live Ones.

Concerts every Sunday!

Directors

  • Mahayla Laurence (they/she) is a Colorado-raised, Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist, theatermaker, and educator with a penchant for genre-expansive work that seeks to generate action toward reciprocal stewardship of our communities and selves. In addition to performing and obsessing over plants, Mahayla regularly facilitates creative development programs and directs independent theater projects all over NYC, teaches playwriting to K-5th graders through Chautauqua Institution’s Young Playwrights Project, and seasonally roams the country with The Story Pirates Tour. Recent work has been seen: Ars Nova, HERE Arts, The Bushwick Starr, Space at Irondale, Radio City Music Hall, Clubbed Thumb, The Brick, & Smith Street Stage. Mahayla is also a certified breathwork practitioner and an uncertified nerd. In their free hours, Mahayla spends a great deal of time going on walks and gossiping with the birds.  www.mahaylalaurence.com

  • Caitlin is a native Southerner who’s lived in Minnesota, Brazil, and Spain and taught acting across mainland China. She’s an actor, director, producer, and creative consultant who’s currently the managing director of The Motor Company and an artistic director with DreamStreet Theatre Company. Recent directing work has been seen on The High Line (for West Side Fest), The Battery, Hudson River Park, El Barrio’s ArtSpace PS109, PBS, BRIC, and Littlefield. Grants and residencies include: Foundation for Contemporary Arts, The Tank, Drop Forge & Tool, Turkey Land Cove Foundation, and Culture Mill. She seeks out new work that centers equity, the unpredictable, rigorous physicality, exposed plumbing, risk-taking, and raucous play. Caitlin is based in Brooklyn. www.caitlinjwells.com

  • Lillian Meredith is a director, arts educator, and the Artistic Director of The Motor Company. She has directed, devised, or assisted on shows at Rattlestick Theatre, Theatre for a New Audience, Soho Rep, and Clubbed Thumb, among many others. Proud alumna: Vassar College (BA), Brooklyn College (MFA). 

Actors

  • New York: The White Devil (Red Bull Theater), Henry V and Love's Labor's Lost (Smith Street Stage) Tender Napalm (HERE Arts Center). Regional: The West End (Cincinnati Playhouse), In The Heat of the Night (Barter Theater), The Tempest (Oregon Symphony), Peter and the Starcatcher (Argyle Theatre), The Blameless (Old Globe) MFA: The Old Globe

  • Lida Darmian (she/her) is an actor/comedian/clown/writer/podcaster/master-of-slashes from LA, but based in NYC. She currently performs at UCBNY with the Maude Team, Pamela, and helps run the Diversity Jam. She was an artist in residence at Ars Nova CAMP comedy residency and created One Clown show. She holds a BFA in Drama from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts, and has trained in improv, sketch, and clowning at UCB, Annoyance, Magnet Theater, BCC, and with Chris Bayes & Ècole Philippe Gaulier. You may have seen her on NBC, IFC Shorts, the Tribeca Film Festival, or a random commercial. 

  • Lauren Dortch-Crozier is a Brooklyn based actor, singer, creator & self proclaimed coffee addict. Her credits include Off-Broadway & World Premiere stage roles, various national commercial & voice-over credits, & the co-writer of It's Fine a series on Amazon Prime. When offstage, she can most likely be found on a soccer pitch or searching for fellow beautifully chaotic souls to collaborate & create with. 

  • Flowww was born in France and raised between Paris, Lyon, and Dakar, before moving to New York in 2018 to keep rising. Inspired by the city, its people, and the A train, I took an interest in photography, poetry, and acting. I’m currently based in Harlem, expanding as an actor, poet, photographer, jiujitsu practitioner, seasonal painter, and sketcher between New York and Paris. 

  • Jaz Astwood is an Afro-Latinx Bronx Native who is thrilled to be rejoining the Motor Company for her 3rd Communal Spaces Festival! What a better way to share the love of Theater than in nontraditional spaces?!  Recent productions Jaz has been involved include NOSTRADAMUS in North Star Theater Company's production of SOMETHING ROTTEN, COMEDY OF ERRORS presented by Stairwell Theater, and THE FULL MONTY presented at the Philipstown Depot Theater. @JazAstwood. JazAstwood.com

  • As an artist, Jonathan Nathaniel is inspired to create theater that is accessible to inner-city communities of color. As a Brooklyn College BFA Acting Program graduate in NYC, he has had the pleasure of working with many artists from diverse communities of varying skill sets and various community outreach projects. He has worked with many local organizations in New York City such as Abrons Arts Center and The Motor Company NYC, a company whose work focuses on increasing site-responsive theater in local hubs around NYC such as parks, bars, laundromats, and rivers. Jonathan teaches improvisation and theater devising and is currently the director of Urban Youth Theater, an acting ensemble for teens. Jonathan would love to thank his students at Abrons Arts Center and UNHS, his mom Ms. Redd and SamMom.

  • Tom Cryan has been performing as a clown and psycho-physical actor in a variety of projects mostly in New York and Vancouver, including experimental theater, film, TV and underground clown shows. Some of Tom’s roles include a man’s shadow, Master of Ceremonies at a Turtle Race and, now finally, a sentient plant. Tom is particularly enthusiastic about public art and the power of theater as a vehicle to turn a group of me’s into a we.

  • Marvin is very happy to be back at it again with the Motor Theater Company. Being able to bring new works to life is something that never gets old.

  • Maia Karo (she/they) is an actor, director, and educator based in Brooklyn, NY. She loves outdoor theater and is so happy to be back at Communal Spaces! Past collaborations include: Rattlestick Theatre, Bushwick Starr, The Brick, Clubbed Thumb, New Ohio Theatre, Target Margin, HERE, Dixon Place, New Dramatists, O’Neill Theater Center, LARK, Incubator Arts Project, Edinburgh Fringe. Upcoming: Ugly Face Theatre's Oh, Honey at Little Egg. TV/Film: Blacklist (NBC), NewYork (YES./Dori Media). Training: Rutgers University MFA, Yale University, Moscow Art Theater (Russia), Shakespeare's Globe (London)

  • Born of the arts, my first mural was in my first habitat: my mom's womb. I'm a minimalist human, who dwells on a rock in space called Earth. 

    I dig creating music, poetry, short stories, and visual art of all sorts. Nature is my natural dwelling and would gladly live in a tree. Studied at various schools here in New York including SVA, The New School, and The Guitar Study Center. My home away from home is the Moore Jackson Community Garden. A quaint little spot nestled within Woodside, NY; sharing creativity with the neighborhood families, friends and critters of all ages... 

“A great afternoon & a great mission”

The Motor Company’s 2025 season is made possible (in part) by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, as well as the Queens Arts Fund, a re-grant program supported by New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council and administered by New York Foundation for the Arts. This organization is funded in part by the Howard Gilman Foundation administered by Flushing Town Hall.