The Brick presents The Dastardly Thornes v. The Town of Goldhaven by Ben Holbrook and Nate Weida
In The Dastardly Thornes v. The Town of Goldhaven, a new musical by Ben Holbrook and Nate Weida, an audience of local cowboys pile into an old western theatre filled with bizarre and unsavory characters, where the local theater troupe facilitates the trial of the century. Explore contradicting colonizing narratives and themes of toxicity, manifest destiny, beans, and the ownership of history, in a collection of truly ridiculous reenactments from the bloodiest shootout in the town’s history.
After the most rootinest, tootinest showdown in local history, the town of Goldhaven, Arizona has (despite its lack of infrastructure) decided to carry out due process and put the treacherous Thorne gang (a family of outlaws) on trial. The town theatre, being the largest building in town, becomes the hotspot for this legal spectacle, the only catch, per their agreement with the mayor, everything performed on their stage is liable to be scrutinized, dramatized and set to music by their artistic director. Pull up a chair, crack open a can of beans and rub shoulders with an audience full of outlaws, neer-do-wells, and horses with ill-intent, as the local acting troupe performs each testimony with gusto, slowly revealing the lascivious lies and troubling truths that led to the most violent shootout in town history. “Goldhaven,” an immersive, comedic western musical, by Ben Holbrook and Nate Weida, explores contradicting colonizing narratives and themes of toxicity, manifest destiny, beans, and the ownership of history.
Playwright Charles White, 2023 "UNENTITLED" 59E59 Theaters & The Negro Ensemble Co.
Set in the heady days of late 2008, with the Obama campaign as a backdrop, an upper-middle class African American family wrestles internalized racism, class anxiety, and each other when a sudden job loss and a revelation about their shared past threaten to upend their comfortable lives. Tempers and tensions boil over at a cherished Long Island vacation home that becomes the focal point of an intense family drama. Unentitled explores the nature of risk – how much someone would risk to get what they want, and how hard it is to make that choice when history, tradition, and family all hang in the balance.
Ben Beckley, 2023, IN CORPO By Ben Beckley and Nate Weida In the last corporation on the planet, everything is great and everybody’s happy. But when an outsider arrives and starts asking questions, the office's fragile equilibrium starts to rupture. Driven by a thrilling original electro-folk-funk score, IN CORPO is a zany, audacious new musical about human connection, the seductions of technology, and what to do when the system lets you down. IN CORPO draws freely from Franz Kafka’s The Castle, Herman Melville’s "Bartleby the Scrivener" and the artists' own experiences negotiating hellish bureaucracies and corporate “day jobs.” The common thread: a deep interest in the individual’s relationship to forces that curtail autonomy and limit self-expression, as well as the ways employees adapt to and against these forces.