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Aisling Arts was
founded in 2001 by Wendy Remington and Bryn Manion and works in residence at
the New York Irish
Center in Long Island City.
The aisling in Aisling Arts means dream or vision in the Irish language, and dreamlike qualities imbue all
aspects of the plays produced by our company. Whether they are plays from the
Irish repertory, radical reinterpretations of classic plays, or original creations,
Aisling productions emerge gradually from the collective psyche of our
ensemble. In our process of exploration, everyone is both author and actor,
and plot, structure,
and character remain in flux until a play begins to crystallize. Theatre conceived
in this way communes with the intellect and the subconscious of its audience,
revealing our collective social and cultural preoccupations via dreams, nightmares,
and poetry.
BIOS
Wendy Remington, is
a co-founder of Aisling Arts and has acted and designed extensively with the
company. As part of the off-off Broadway community, she has worked as an
actor, designer, and writer collaborating with companies including the
Obie-award winning Peculiar Works Project and TOSOS II, was a festival
adjudicator for the clown, mask and burlesque category of the New York
International Fringe Festival, and she was a reviewer for nytheater.com as
part of their festival reviewing squad. Wendy graduated with honors from the University of Massachusetts,
Amherst where
she studied theater and education. Additionally, she trained in scene study
at Michael Howard studios with Deborah Kampmeier and studied Shakespearean
acting at the London Academy of Performing Arts. Wendy has a particular
interest in physical theater and studied the LeCoq movement and mask
technique with David Gaines, clown and commedia dell'arte with Jim Calder,
and puppetry with Emily Stork. Wendy is an Assistant Research Scientist with
the Institute for Civil Infrastructure Systems, also holds a degree in elementary
education and has taught children’s theatrical outreach in Everett,
Fall River, Holyoke,
MA and conflict resolution through theatre
in Springfield, MA. She lives in Brooklyn
with her fiance, Micah, and their sweet infant daughter, Samirah.
Bryn
Manion is a Pulitzer Prize nominated playwright/director and the co-founder
of the Long Island
City based theater
company, Aisling Arts. Her plays include Eleanor,
Apocalypse Not Now (I Have a Headache),
A Few Hallelujahs, Imminent, Indeed (or
Polly Peachum’s Peculiar Penchant for Plosives), and the Force Trilogy (Wanderlust, Threshold,
Convergence). Her directing credits include The Force Trilogy, Wanderlust, Threshold, Imminent, Indeed (or Polly
Peachum’s Peculiar Penchant for Plosives, Don Quixote, A Beggar’s
Opera, Macbeth, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Twelfth Night, Ruth and Me, Eleanor, When
the Levee Breaks, and Playboy of
the Western World. As an actress, Bryn has appeared with Shakespeare and
Company, SITI Company, the KO Festival for Performance, the Edinburgh
International Fringe Festival, the International Symposium for Performance
Art, HERE, Aisling Arts and the New
York Irish Center.
Her play Convergence was published by NYTE in February 2007, and she
directed the Force Trilogy (Wanderlust,
Threshold, Convergence) for repertory production at New York City’s theater for emerging
artists, The Chocolate Factory, in January/February 2007; the play was
subsequently nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in Drama. Bryn most recently
directed Obie Award-winning Peculiar Works Project’s Off Stage, The Plays of the East Village, and is
working on a new play, Private
Conversations, and a film adaptation of the Force Trilogy.
As a theatre educator, Bryn
taught for five years at the Drama Studio, a conservatory for young actors in
Springfield, MA. She has also taught workshops and
summer programs as the Williston Northamton School,
Smith College
and was an instructor for the towns of Westfield
and Southwick, MA. She developed and taught theatrical
outreach for the Massachusetts Cultural Council throughout the state from
1999-2003. She has also created an annual creativity retreat called
Work/Dream for adult artists in New York City and was awarded a fellowship by
the prestigious White Oak Foundation in 2005.
Bryn works in publishing, and
lives in Long Island City,
NY, with her husband, Sam
David, and their two cats, Buddhasaurus Rex and Pachuka.
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