WHAT
WE
DO
The Mercury Store is a start-up space for theatre artists – stage directors, choreographers, and devisers – providing people, space and time to look at and examine their work. It offers residencies, studio and co-working space, community and funding.
The Mercury Store is committed to a new way of thinking about how theatre gets made; artistic excellence, a wide diversity of artists and practice, creative and intellectual risk-taking and rigor, and equitable working conditions are the guiding principles. The Mercury Store occupies a 16,000 square foot warehouse in Gowanus, Brooklyn that was once a metal foundry.
ARTISTIC PROGRAMMING
PROJECTS
The purpose of a Mercury Store project is to create time and space for the theatre artist to ask a question – about a text, a form, a style, a specific production – and examine and interrogate that question in three dimensions in the studio.
Projects are one week long and include a weekly salary for the lead artist, workspace, a company of actors, a budget for theatrical materials and collaborators, peer support and critique.
Mercury Store offers theatre artists the opportunity to exercise their creative muscles with the benefits of citizenship – working Monday to Friday – to create radically contemporary, artistically rigorous theatre work.
DIRECTING LAB
The Lab is a program for emerging and early career directors who have completed Directing Technique.
The purpose of the lab is multi-fold: to provide space and resources to work experimentally; to practice and develop craft; to solicit and receive useful feedback; and to build community.
Monday evenings, directors present work to the full cohort for critique. Each director will present several times over the Lab's run and is assigned a directing adviser - to talk through their ideas and approach, attend their showing and, schedule permitting, rehearsal.
For more information on Directing Technique, please click here
TRAINING
Mercury Store offers a variety of training opportunities for professional artists, including workshops at a subsidized rate. Open to everyone, they cover both the practicalities of the life of an artist (unions, unemployment, e.g.) and artistic practice (directing fundamentals, independent producing, rehearsal processes, e.g.)
We also offer application-only longer programs, including Directing Technique:
Directing Technique is for early career directors. The purpose of the class is to strengthen and grow directorial practice; learn to solicit and receive useful feedback; and build artistic community.
Meets over five Monday evenings led by Mercury Store staff.
Topics include: ground plan and staging approaches, dramaturgical preparation, tension and rhythm in directing, and work with both dramatic and non-dramatic texts.
All assignments and exercises are designed to build skills, refine technique, and explore craft. This is essentially a “return to the barre,” an opportunity to practice the fundamentals of directorial practice.
For information on how to apply or sign up, click here