The Mercury Store is a start-up space for theatre artists – stage directors, choreographers, and devisers – providing bodies, 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, 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.
The Mercury Store is a start-up space for theatre artists – stage directors, choreographers, and devisers – providing bodies, 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, 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.
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.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.All directors have the resources of the Mercury Store at their disposal, including studio space and actors from the Mercury Store Lab company.As with all Mercury Store programs, the focus is on experimentation and artistic exploration; a draft in three dimensions.
Friends
Mercury Store is honored to have a large group of artists in New York and beyond who act as friends to the organization, offering recommendations, counsel and feedback on our programs and initiatives.
Members
Mercury Store is committed to developing artists at all points in their careers and to providing space to be as well as to work. To that end, the Mercury Store will offer a membership program for theatre artists which provides workspace, studio time, and community. Members are invited to all events, classes and open studios. Due to Covid-19, our Membership Program has been delayed and will begin in 2022.
