Elevator Repair Service Theater

Throughout the 2024 fiscal year, Elevator Repair Service Theater (ERS) fulfilled its mission of creating original works with an ongoing ensemble that explore and challenge the fundamentals of live performance. In the past 12 months, ERS continued development and performances on two recent original works - Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge and Ulysses, and engaged in additional ancillary activities to further bolster our cultural and educational partnerships and increase audience engagement.Ulysses is ERSs take on James Joyce's iconic modernist novel. ERS has a successful history of reinvigorating and bringing new perspectives to pieces of classic literature, and our goal in presenting Ulysses is to transform the notoriously inaccessible text into a performance piece that is both accessible and compelling to a broader audience. Ulysses was originally slated to have its world premiere at Bard Colleges Fisher Center for the Performing Arts for nine performances in September 2023. However, after company members tested positive for COVID early in the run, all but the first two performances were canceled. After negotiating with the Fisher Center to reschedule the run, Ulysses was presented as the featured performance in Bards SummerScape festival in June/July 2024. The rescheduled world premiere ran for twenty-two performances to nearly sold-out audiences, and received a New York Times Critics Pick.In March 2024, ERSs original production Baldwin and Buckley at Cambridge toured to Cal Performances in Berkeley CA for five performances. BBAC is a verbatim depiction of a debate between James Baldwin and William F. Buckley, Jr. at Cambridge University. The piece is a new staging of the text of the 1965 debate whose subject - "The American Dream is at the expense of the American Negro" is as relevant today as it was almost 60 years ago. Most recently, BBAC was presented at Cal Performances / UC Berkeley in March 2024.ERS has also recently participated in ancillary activities in collaboration with other artistic and cultural organizations. In October 2024, ERS collaborated with the Metropolitan Opera on a marathon reading of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, as told to Alex Haley. This reading was organized by ERS and the Met Operas Public Works Program, and was performed over the course of 18 hours in The Mets Grand Tier Lobby. The entire book was delivered live by a group of performers, writers, artists, scholars, students, including Malcolm Xs daughter Dr.Ilyasah Shabazz, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Michael R. Jackson and the actor Leslie Odom Jr. The reading was open to the general public and free to attend, and had an attendance of approximately 600 people. ERS also presented an excerpt of Ulysses during CUNYs PRELUDE Festival in October 2023. This reading was open to the public and free to attend, and had an attendance of around 80 people. These ancillary activities allow us to reach broader audiences, present work-in-progress showings at low/no cost, and also interact with groups that may not traditionally attend live theater.