SHADOW PLAY Opens TSTC's 2013 Season

As part of its two-year residency at The Performance Project at University Settlement, Trusty Sidekick Theater Company has developed a new model for developing theater for the very young. Through an artistic partnership with the Early Childhood Program at University Settlement, TSTC artists create a symbiotic relationship between the rehearsal room and the preschool classroom. Through a series of creative play and story development workshops led by a team of teaching artists, the students offered their ideas and acted as dramaturgs, informing the devising process of the artists for both Shadow Play and Off the Map as they created these shows. During the season, students will have an opportunity to see the final productions in which their direct participation made a significant impact.

The Performance Project at University Settlement provides established, emerging and young artists and local audiences with opportunities to connect and enrich each other's lives. They aim to encourage greater participation in the live arts and to help cultivate diverse creative communities on the Lower East Side. Resident artists are fully immersed in the Settlement House community though a year long process in which they will engage program participants and staff while documenting their experience. Performance opportunities include a shared Works in Progress Festival in the winter followed by a weeklong performance run in the spring, giving artists the chance to continue developing their work in a familiar space over an extended period of time.

Trusty Sidekick's play series for very young audiences is part of the Company's 2012-13 season. Taking place in the historic Old Stone House of Brooklyn-the site of the first official battle of the Revolutionary War-The House of Ichabod Crane was an immersive retelling of The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, which combined original text of Washington Irving's classic with history of the Battle of Brooklyn as an eerie and inventive new legend unfolded.

TSTC is a Brooklyn-based theater company creating bold, sophisticated, and high-quality artistic performances for young people and their families. The company combines immersive staging and inventive theatricality to tell old and new stories, challenge preconceptions of live performance, and introduce theater to a new generation. The company's work is multidisciplinary, and its ensemble of collaborators includes artists trained in physical theater, puppetry, music, dance, animation, and video projection. Since its founding in early 2011, Trusty Sidekick has developed and presented new work at The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, The New Victory Theater, Cleveland PlayhouseSquare, Old Stone House, Abrons Arts Center (The Little One and the Sea of Letters), and The Performance Project @ The University Settlement (Shadow Play, March 2011).

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