Jack Ferver will present “horror play/goth ballet” at the Kitchen as part of ADI/NYC Incubator residency program
Who: Jack Ferver, Carling Talcott-Steenstra, Barton Cowperthwaite, Reid Bartelme
What: ADI/NYC Incubator residency program
Where: The Kitchen, 519 West 19th St. between Tenth & Eleventh Aves., 855-263-2623
When: June 30 – July 2, $25
Why: Wait, what! You still haven’t gotten tickets to see the inimitable Jack Ferver’s latest show, I Want You to Want Me? Are you out of your mind? We’ve been telling you for years about Ferver, a genuine New York City treasure who is a storytelling marvel, mixing humor and melodrama, pathos and bathos, fiction and nonfiction, fantasy and reality in works that examine the state of our fame-obsessed world through a wacky and wild pop-culture sense and sensibility. Part of the American Dance Institute’s NYC Incubator program, I Want You to Want Me runs June 30 through July 2 at the Kitchen and features, alongside writer, choreographer, and star Ferver, Carling Talcott-Steenstra as Ann Erica Rose, Barton Cowperthwaite as Bartholomew, and longtime Ferver collaborator and costume designer Reid Bartelme as Reid in what is being billed as a “horror play/goth ballet.” Ferver, whose previous works include Chambre, Rumble Ghost, and All of a Sudden, explains, “I thought I would try to make something for everyone. You know, like ballet or a good subscription audience kind of play. I consider myself a populist, but some people really hate my work. They even hate me they hate my work so much. So I thought: ‘Well, why don’t I make a really pretty ballet or a play about a straight couple and their issues?’ So that’s what I’m going to do. Oh, I also just wanted to say that not everyone is going to make it. I don’t mean make it to the show. I mean make it out of the show alive.” The Incubator program continues in September with Zvi Dance and Steven Reker / Open House and in October with Morgan Thorson and Kate Weare Company.